Most people who get stung by a bee when they are young hope to then stay as far away as possible from the traditionally antagonizing creatures. For junior Seokyun Hong, though, her initial aversion to bees eventually took the opposite route—budding and blossoming over time into a passion.
While she remembers once wishing that “bees do not exist,” Hong now recognizes them as her favorite non-human companions. After years of watching bees at work pollinating, Hong developed a fascination with them, and decided last year to commit to becoming a real beekeeper through the Orange County Beekeeper Apprenticeship Program, which has enabled her to attend beekeeping school and achieve certification, as well as oversee two groups of hives under the guidance of an experienced mentor.
As president of the Bee Club this year—succeeding former president and club founder Megan Talikoff—Hong has her hands full not only with her bees, which easily number into the thousands, but also with leading an entire group of aspiring student beekeepers. At her hives in the Pollinator Garden behind the football field, she explained the enthralling and rewarding experiences associated with beekeeping and why she recommends the activity to anyone in search of an energizing connection to nature. Carefully pouring water into a dish for her bees, which she affectionately describes as her little “stuffed animals,” Hong also offered some practical tips to protect bees in your own backyard.
What were some of the challenges involved with becoming a beekeeper? What were your initial fears or doubts? How did you overcome them?
Obviously, you always fear getting stung. However, I was quickly able to overcome that fear by simply being around bees more. From my experience, I’ve learned that the more you expose yourself to them, the more you see how truly gentle they are. People always say, ‘If you don’t bother them, you won’t get stung,’ and there’s so much truth behind that, because the reality is that bees are so busy pollinating and taking care of the hive, they don’t care about you unless you provoke them.
By far, the biggest challenge is the emotional connection you get with bees. This may sound ridiculous, but it is so true. Whenever a bee drowns in the miller feeder or gets squashed during an inspection, I feel so devastated and think about them for days. Desensitizing yourself from bee deaths is basically impossible for me and I honestly don’t understand how anyone can move on from a bee death! Currently, I don’t know the solution for this, but I guess with many years of experience you get used to it.
Take us inside the hive—what is beekeeping actually like?
Well, I cannot speak for all beekeepers since I’m not a professional, but I will say that beekeeping involves immense dedication to entomology and a lot of kinesthetic learning. In fact, you simply cannot become an expert from reading books alone, you have to physically practice the procedures for inspecting a hive and so on. Also, beekeeping at times can be very grueling as there is much physical labor involved as well as intense focus during the process. It can sometimes be worrisome as issues may arise spontaneously, such as mass bee deaths, drowning, queens dying, etc. Currently, my bees are being very bad at building bird comb in the miller feeder, that’s another issue.
How often do you conduct hive inspections? Why are they important?
This is hard to say exactly but the average is twice a month. However, you can only do them during the spring, summer and fall. They are important because you need to periodically check on the bees’ progress. Bees are unpredictable as they are vulnerable to many pests—particularly varroa mites. I once found 50 varroa mites in one of our beekeeping meetings. It was disease ridden and the brood was deformed due to the mites. This occurred because the owner didn’t inspect the hive for months. Not having these regular checks can make one completely unaware of bigger issues, so for that, conducting inspections is absolutely necessary.
Why is beekeeping so meaningful to you? Also, how has it developed into a hobby of yours, especially during quarantine when we had extra free time?
Personally, beekeeping is important to me for several reasons. For one, I have a family background in it as my grandmother from my mother’s side worked as a professional beekeeper for 10 years in South Korea. And two, beekeeping has essentially developed my passion for majors like entomology and plant science. Three, beekeeping brought me closer to my family, especially my mom. Ever since I got more involved with life sciences, we have been inseparable.
Finally, beekeeping provides a great opportunity to interact closely with bees and see the world through their eyes!
What do your bees mean to you? Why do you love them so much?
Frankly, my bees literally mean the entire world to me. They are so precious and such extremely hard working creatures! They are also profoundly intellectual and know instinctively what to do when an issue arises in the hive.
I literally love them so much because they look so cute! They look like flying little cats! Every single time I see my bees or bumble bees pollinating, drinking water or holding pollen in their pollen baskets in their legs, I just want to melt away, literally. It’s their innocence that makes them adorable.
What’s special about bees as a species? Why should we protect them?
I think what makes bees special as a species is their immense relationship with flowers, and their fascinating, extreme intelligence. That’s what I notice a lot through my inspections, and most importantly, their diversity. There are many types of bees, and there are a lot of native bees of different colors.
We should protect them as they are major pollinators for hundreds of crops we benefit from on a daily basis. Without bees, we would literally need to survive off of corn and self pollinating plants, because the wind could pollinate them.
In addition, we should protect them because if bees were to go extinct, so would species of birds as well as many species that feed off them, so it would highly disturb our ecosystem. The worldwide ecosystem simply cannot thrive if all species of bees suddenly went extinct.
Would you recommend beekeeping to others?
YES! YES YES YES! I can’t emphasize this enough! Literally, I have developed so many experiences through beekeeping and it is the only thing that could truly get you to understand bees and become closer to them.
However, I would say that beekeeping would only be appealing to those fond of life sciences and insects. But I do think that anyone can enjoy it, you don’t have to love a specific field in order to love beekeeping. When I first approached bees, I was crying like, ‘Oh, no!’ But it’s completely normal because I didn’t really understand, I had this fear that they were going to instinctively attack me, since I heard all these stories about people getting stung.
I’ve learned that the more you interact closely with bees, and research more about their behavior, the less you’ll be afraid. You can’t just tell yourself, ‘Oh, don’t be afraid,’ because that can’t happen without knowing what they’re like. So I think the only solution would be just trying to learn more about [bees] and do more inspections.
What types of activities has your club been involved in so far? What do you hope to do in the future?
So far, we’ve done interactive outdoor activities like the Beekeeping Demo in the fall. In the future, I really want to do group inspections and more collaborative activities.
The Bee Club, Eastainability and the Monarch Butterfly Club have also teamed up twice now to clear the pollinator garden of weeds on “Dig Days.” We will replant it to have flowers that would benefit our bees and other local pollinators.
Any practical advice we should know to help out bees?
I don’t know if anyone knows this, but I seriously discourage you from mowing your clover patch, because it turns out a lot of bees love that. I see many bees, from bumblebees to honey bees, pollinating near clover patches. Also, if you have a lot of trees that have flowers on them, your carpenter bees are going to love them, so you don’t want to take them down. I know that they can be pests, but you still would want bees pollinating.
Photo courtesy of Seokyun Hong
