To Bee or Not

I am Pro Bee.

 I’m very active in the Bee Community, I support Bee Causes, I live a Bee Friendly--mostly insecticide-free-- Lifestyle. I even wrote away for my free packet of wildflower seeds from the lovely people at HoneyNut Cheerios. I am a Bee Ally.

"You never can tell, with Bees..."

All my fine activism was called into question a week or so ago when I was stung by a bee. On my toe. If we were playing “this lil piggy went to market,” the toe in question would have rather stayed home. There I was, minding my own bizzzzness, dragging 200 feet of garden house through clover infested grass while wearing flip-flops...what could go wrong? As the philosopher Pooh once famously said, “You never can tell, with bees.”

True, flip-flops are not ideal garden footwear, but it was hot, and I wasn’t planning on staying outside for long, and---STOP BLAMING THE VICTIM!! Why is it every time there is a bee sting incident it usually comes down to blaming the victim? “What were you wearing? Did you eat too much honey? Did you tease the bees in any way?” (Flip-flops, no honey, and of course not. Now can we get back to talking about HOW MUCH my toe hurts?)

So, there I was, hose, flip-flops, clover, dragging. I was also apparently dragging my feet because at some point I scooped up a bee in my shoe, felt something crawling on my toe and looked down in time to see the little bugger giving his all for his cause. Couldn’t he tell I was a Bee Ally?

I’d forgotten just how MUCH a bee sting HURTS.

There was yelping, and hopping, and perhaps some colorful and creative use of language—be glad you’re not my neighbor. I dropped the hose and made a beeline for the house where I mixed up my mother’s bee sting cure: baking soda and water. As I sat there, with my foot elevated, my toe slathered in the drippy, gritty paste, my lower lip only slightly atremble---now I remember why as a child I used to cry when I stepped on a bee—I realized that my elixir was missing the magic ingredient: a mother’s kiss.

To make a long story only slightly shorter I will say that my bee stung toe itched for three days. Right up until I jammed my “this little piggy cried wee-wee-wee, all the way home” toe into an immovable object in the middle of the night and (possibly) broke it.

 I don’t recommend the cure.