Bees make honey.  Do earwigs make chutney?

So today was finally going to be the day where I got to pay homage to my Comedy Idol, Eddie Izzard, and update my Facebook status with a picture and a post to say "I'm covered in Bees!".  Yep, this morning, i took my life into my own hands and headed into the sketchy depths of the Tenderloin to take a 2.5hr Introduction to Bee Keeping class!  (ahhh....the joys of Groupons for random things to do).

Look!  A bee! (or 50,000!)

As it happened, events didn't quite unfold as expected so i still have yet to post that historic missive, however, the day was still a lot of fun and bloody fascinating.

The bee school was run by an outfit called Round Rock Honey, which is actually originally based out of Texas.  They've since expanded to lots of different locations and this one in San Francisco is one of their more recent additions.

 Round Rock Honey Beekeeping school

The location for the school is on the rooftop of the Glide Methodist Memorial Church in the (in)famous Tenderloin district of the city.  As you may or may not know, the Tenderloin is one of the geniunely dodgy areas of town that you really don't want to be in at night, and also feel somewhat nervous being in during the day.  Lots of drug problems, homeless folk, decrepit buildings, liquor shops and dollar stores.  All in all, dodge-fest central - despite literally being a block away from all the shiny, expensive stores in Union Square.  Its fascinating.  Anyway, obviously i knew i was going into a dodgy part of town, but i didnt know anything about the Glide Memorial Church, all i knew was that it was a 330 Ellis Street, a couple blocks behind the Westin St.Francis and near my favorite sushi place in the city, Ryoko.

Beez Squeeze

So i wasn't really prepared when i reached my destination - to find a lot of scary-looking people hanging around with at least 6 passed out (or asleep) on the sidewalk in front of the entrance.   That's when it became apparent that the church serves as a soup-kitchen, as well as a medical clinic, offering HIV testing and drug counseling to the area's homeless and dispossessed.  Very very admirable work and made you very grateful for everything you have, but it was really quite intimidating to walk past and scuttle inside - and then you felt a little embarrassed to say that you were here for Bee School.  In the moment, it felt a little odd to ask the guy at the front desk who, I'm sure, deals with all manner of craziness and human drama on a daily basis where I had to go for Bee Class.   You half expected him to reply "Bee School?  BEE SCHOOL??  You see the crap i'm dealing with here, lady, and you want to know where the fricking BEE SCHOOL IS??".  Of course, he didn't though and simply replied - on the 6th floor, take the stairs and that was that.

Mail your bees here

So, off I went, up 6 flights of grimy, dirty stairs to finally reach the top, go through the roof exit door - and emerge into another world.  Half of the roof had been turned into a beautiful roof garden, with a multitude of various pots and plants, flowers and shrubs, bushes and tubs - bursting with life and vitality.  It was incredibly impressive.  The garden also serves as a valuable teaching tool for the church (a non-profit organization) and supports a number of social and community initiatives.

http://grazetheroof.blogspot.com/

All this I found out later, when I googled where I'd been - what I did know at the time, however, was that I saw my very first ever hummingbird there!!  There were actually two of them, and they seemed to be particularly interested in a very tall lupin and they were beautiful, all green and iridescently shimmery.  Unfortunately I didn't manage to get a picture cos I had the wrong lens on my camera (bloody typical) but they were just wonderful to see.

Inside the Hive....

Anyway, on to the bees.  This was where the day started to deviate from the anticipated agenda!  We met our two beekeeping experts, a lady called Ariadne (surely she should be into spiders, not bees?) with kick-ass tattoos and very Californian hippy-dippy purple dyed hair and an adorable 22-yr fresh faced grad from Berkeley called Xander (I wonder if his parents were fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer?).  He was an absolute cutie-pie, very smart and incredibly passionate and enthusiastic about bees, so he was a great teacher.  Unfortunately, he wasnt going to be able to teach us much, hands-on, because the caretaker of Glide who had the keys to let everyone into the room where all the necessary bee-keeping equipment is stored (particularly bee suits) had disappeared!  So, they couldnt get out any of the stuff they needed to run the class fully.  Obviously this was pretty disappointing (and hence the lack of the "covered in bees" post) as everyone had been looking forward to dressing up in the bee suits and getting stuck in.  One girl got really stroppy about it (they'd driven for an hour to take the class so were really pissed off) but what can you do?  It wasn't their fault and its just one of those things (especially given the location!).   And - besides - it just meant that I get to come back on another day to do the full lesson, so today was a bonus and more of an Introduction to Introductory Bee-Keeping.

Gently does it....

But that wasn't all the drama for the day.  About a half hour in, when Miss Stroppy Pants had left, and the rest of us were happy to still hang out, listen and come back another day for the Full Bee Suit Experience, the fire alarms went off.  Yep, the fire alarm is sounding and we're on the roof with 50,000 bees.  As everyone always does in situations like this, we all continued to just sit there, looking at each other for a few minutes, and wondering whether it was a false alarm and whether we could be arsed to go find out.  I was down for staying put (as was pretty much everyone else) but one of our group was obviously far more sensible than we were and said he'd be more comfortable leaving the roof and exiting the building.  OK, OK.  Fine.  So, down we trooped and, the closer we got to the ground floor, the stronger the smell of burning became.  Oops.  Good call there, strangely pale chap dressed like someone out of the Blues Brothers.  We exited the building, crossed the road and - after about 5 mins, SFFB rocked on up.  And stayed for about 5 mins before leaving.   The burning smell was coming from the kitchen (cue lots of pissed-off homeless people complaining about their lunch being burnt) and i'm not sure if there was really a fire or not, or if someone set fire to their dreads in the toaster oven.  Anyway, we were quickly let back in, so back up the stairs to resume our lesson!

The awesome fashion of bee-keeping

You had to feel a little bit for Xander by this stage - no equipment, pissy clients plus a fire alarm to boot - not the best start to a class!  But, that was all the drama for the day, so he continued to tell us all sorts of things about bees (there was a LOT of information, so I'm struggling to remember it all - but it was all fascinating) before we all took our lives into our own hands and finally went and had a look at the little furry blighters.  Obviously without bee suits, we were very limited in what we could do and had to be VERY careful not to piss the bees off by swatting at any that flew near us, or appearing too anxious or stressed out (they can tell).  We weren't really supposed to be near the hives without the suits on but we all said we were happy to take the risk and proceed at our own peril.   I'm glad we did - even though we didnt get to get hands-on, it was very exciting to watch Xander carefully easing off the roof of the hive, and slowly slowly levering up a frame, completely - wait for it - covered in bees!  The frame was quite a new one, so it was still under construction by the worker bees and not yet full of honey.  But it was fascinating to watch the bees and marvel at how bonkers it is that they make honey!   They started to get a little peed off with being poked around a bit, but i managed to stay calm even with them all flying around, so was pretty proud of myself.  In the end, no-one got stung, so alls well that ends well.  It was a great experience and one which I'm really looking forward to repeating.  Its probably just as well my condo building doesn't allow you to keep bees because they are so damned interesting, i'd probably have got online straight after class and ordered up a hive and bee starter kit (apparently you can get bees through the mail - how bee-zarre (groan) is that?).  Whilst I learnt a lot, i still have many many questions for Xander and Ariadne the next time we meet, namely:

1. Do bees sleep?
2. Do bees have knees?
3. Are bees aliens?*
4. What is a bumble?

I'm sure you have many other burning bee questions - let me know what they are and I will do my best to find out on your bee-half.  One thing i do remember - if you are attacked by a shit load of bees (no killer bees in SF, thank goodness), then i) don't swat at them in the air - it'll piss them off more  ii) don't bother going underwater - you'll need to come up for air sooner than they will need to fly away and iii) if you are wearing a shirt or t shirt, then lift that up, above and over your face and head.  While exposing your belly to the bees, it will protect your nose and throat from getting stung and swelling up. Unless you are allergic (in which case, all bets are off and you're toast), then people don't generally die from the venom of bee stings, but from the swelling in the respiratory passages which then causes them to suffocate.  Not a nice way to go.  So now you know how to avoid a buzzy painful death.  

More bee blogposts to follow......

"Covered in bees!"

* Doctor Who thought so - "the bees are disappearing"