Becoming Me
By: David L. Glover
Tags: Farming, Friends, Beekeeping

Growing Up A Little Bit Country

I grew up with two brothers farming in rural Tennessee. Our father was in the navy and was on his last hitch onboard a ship ported out of Norfolk, Virginia. That means for six of those years, it was just Mom and three young boys, with Dad visiting one weekend a month to check on the farm and us. Dad’s father often came out to help mom with things that broke and to teach us about farming, raising chickens, pigs and vegetables. Sometimes that involved going into the woods and seeing the wilder animals on the farm. We had a hundred acres in which to run wild, and we did. As Papaw Glover told Mom, “It’s important for the boys to learn where they can go, what they can eat and what not to touch.” Papaw also made moonshine and we weren’t supposed to know about that or go to that part of the woods. It was from him I learned that some bees don’t have stingers, particularly Carpenter bees with a white dot on their foreheads. He would watch them flying around our home and quick as a snake (and we saw a lot of snakes on the farm), he’d reach out and catch one. He would then slowly open his hand to show me the bee he had caught. He handled them very gently, showing them to me, then he’d let them fly away. I got good at looking for white dots and catching Carpenter bees. My younger brother, Allen, wasn’t as quick to see the white dots until after he caught them. He may have missed out on that lesson, because he got stung a lot. He still does.

When starting school, my Kindergarten teacher recognized that I had a very peculiar way of speaking, which indicated I might need “Special” classes. I spoke with an unmistakable slurring of words. Although I was not diagnosed by a doctor, I was pigeonholed for my first couple of school years in the “Special Language” and then “Special Reading” classes for students with problems. The derogatory term used back then was “mentally retarded” and “slow” was the kinder label used for kids who spoke like me and for the other students in those “special” classes. When the “regular” kids were learning to read, I would leave with the other students to learn how to speak and walk.

It wasn’t until I was 7 years old that I had a hearing test at school. During that test, it was suggested that I “might not be mentally deficient.” Amazingly, I went from being “retarded” to maybe having a hearing problem. The school secretary called my mother and I received a real hearing test. I then had several surgeries, and once I could hear correctly, I learned how to speak correctly, that’s with a Southern accent, of course. I also gained good balance and caught up with the other students in the “regular” classes. By the fourth grade, I was reading and understanding The Hobbit on my own.

Fast forward and… my eighth-grade math teacher, Mr. Moore, noticed I squinted my eyes when looking at the chalkboard. The office secretary called my mother again, and within a few weeks, I got my first pair of glasses.

Did you know that leaves on trees weren’t invented until a few minutes after I put on glasses? At least, it felt that way. There were individual leaves and individual limbs in trees, not just a mass of green and brown up there! My penmanship never improved. After years of writing with the squiggles I had seen on chalkboards and in my study books, the practice of squiggles had been perfected. Typing class in my Freshman year of high school got rid of the squiggles for important papers.

Sadly, growing up where we did, the only futures discussed were more years of farming or possibly going into the military. Farming was big. Conversations about college never occurred in my presence. Even though I graduated in the top 10 of my high school class, college wasn’t a suggested option. And yes, there were more than 10 students in my graduating class.

No Job When Everyone Was Looking for One

Fast forward again and… as an adult and seeing changes in the company where I worked, my wife and I talked about the importance of furthering my education to become more employable should things change more drastically. I started college while in my 40s with two kids, one in elementary school and one in middle school. My wife helped all of us with our homework. She also suggested I take the Mensa exam, thinking that if I passed, it would look good on my resume. I passed and now she is stuck, married to a certified genius of her own creation.

In 18 months, I had received my Associates and had started on my bachelor’s degree. It was at this point in my life that the company where I worked decided to sell my department to our biggest competitor. The buyer didn’t need my services. They already had a guy like me. My former employer didn’t need me either because my department no longer existed. Most of the Help Wanted ads looking for people like me in 2009 had this stipulation, “Minimum Requirement: Bachelor’s Degree.” I had years of experience, but not the diploma they wanted. I couldn’t even get into the interview chair. No one else wanted me either. Although I eventually earned an MBA, I didn’t have the required degree when I was job hunting.

While searching for a real job, out of nowhere, beekeeping sort of fell on me. One afternoon my daughter, Simone, and my mother in law came home from a craft fair. They came home with some creamed honey and questions about honey bees. I tried to answer, but Simone didn’t like the answers I gave. In the background, my son, Patrick, was submarining my explanation by saying something about “bee vomit.” I decided to reach out to a real beekeeper to get answers for my daughter.

Early one Saturday, I took Simone to visit Marcia, a friend and local beekeeper. Marcia had ordered new equipment and was preparing to split her hive (making two colonies from her current hive). This would be a great opportunity for my daughter to get her questions answered. On the way to Marcia’s house, I told Simone that her job was to find the bees. Within minutes of getting into Marcia’s home and checking out her new equipment, Simone confidently stated, “I found them!” I asked her where the honey bees were, knowing she had no chance of seeing the bees, and she said, “EVERYWHERE!” Sure enough, looking out Marcia’s back window, we saw bees everywhere. There was a veritable bee tornado about 30 feet wide circling around in the back yard. It was one of the coolest things I had ever seen. Marcia, mumbling, “Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!” raced out the back door, followed immediately by Simone and me. Standing amid the swirling bees, Marcia grumbled, “There goes my honey production.”

On the farm, I had learned to chase down loose pigs, stray dogs, chickens, and the occasional rabbit. I asked Marcia, “How do you get them back?” Her reply was, “I can’t. They’re gone.” We were only in the back yard for a few minutes when the bees started clustering about 20 feet up in a pine tree. Watching this happen, my mind was blowing up with ideas of how to get Marcia’s bees back. I suggested strapping a 5-gallon bucket to a long pole, snaking the bucket under the cluster and banging the limb. In my non-beekeeping mind, it was only logical that the bees would fall into the bucket, and because there were so many bees in the cluster, they wouldn’t all be able to fly away before we dumped them into one of Marcia’s new hive boxes. If the queen was in the bucket, and she went into the box, the rest should follow. I told Marcia my thoughts and she said, “Go for it!”

Marcia got a 5-gallon bucket, a pool pole and some duct tape. (It had to work. We were using duct tape!) The pole wasn’t long enough and I’m not a tall guy. Marcia brought out a ladder. I had asked Marcia if she had a spare bee suit. “Nope.” Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered hearing Papaw Glover say, “Honey bees sting defensively” and “when they are swarming to find a new home, they have nothing to defend, no hive, no baby bees, no honey.” My guy brain was screaming, WE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ SUIT FOR THIS! BE A MAN! YOUR DAUGHTER’S WATCHING!” With no suit, I climbed the ladder with pole in hand, then wriggled the bucket between tree limbs until it was right under the cluster of bees, which was now the size of a basketball. I checked to see if Marcia was ready, then banged the limb. That’s when I learned how heavy a large cluster of bees really is. I also learned that all the bees wouldn’t and didn’t fall into the bucket. Those were landing on me and flying all around me. It took longer to get the bucket out of the tree limbs than I expected, but down it went to Marcia, and she poured the bees into the new hive box. AND THE BEES WALKED RIGHT DOWN INTO THE BOX. And the bees all around and on me flew down to the box. The bees did exactly what I thought they would do, and I was peaking on an adrenalin rush. This was AWESOME, and all I could think was, “Where can I get my own bees?”

Becoming the Bee Whisperer

Over the next few days, I got on the internet and searched all things related to beekeeping. I also did the old-fashioned, but still useful, thing of going to the public library (an ancient, pre-computer age, repository of knowledge, still found in some areas of the world). I checked out a lot of books on beekeeping and read every one. Marcia also took me to my first beekeeper meeting.

Please remember, this was all happening while I was looking for a real, 9–5-with-benefits-real-job, so I didn’t have much money to waste on beekeeping equipment or bees. I’m handy in a woodshop. I also had some simple woodworking tools. With the help of the internet and library books, I built my first bee box! Now all I needed was bees to go into the box.

The books and the internet all said there were free bees to be had, if you only knew where to look. Thinking, “If Marcia’s bees swarmed out of her hive, there’s got to be more swarms out there, and who would you call if a large group of bees decided to hang out on your tree, or mailbox, or car?” The logical answer was a pest control company! I called another friend who owned a pest control company. Sure enough, “We get calls on swarms all the time.” I begged to be put on his short list for swarms. He called back the very next week with a swarm, telling me a homeowner in Arlington, Tennessee had honey bees on the side of his house. On arrival, the homeowner walked me to the side of his house and pointed saying, “There they are!” Yes, there they were, but it wasn’t a swarm of bees. I was looking at a 2-inch white PVC pipe going into the side of a brick wall. Bees were coming and going from this pipe like it was an International Airport. My brain was screaming, THE BEES ARE INSIDE HIS WALL! We went into his garage and to the other side of the bees’ entryway. The bees were behind his sheet rock wall. With my ear against the wall, I could hear them!

Let’s backpedal a moment. In 2005 and in 2008, I had the opportunity to go with my church group to New Orleans to help with cleanup and reconstruction after hurricanes Katrina and Gustav blew through Louisiana. During those weekend trips, I learned a lot more about home structures, adding to everything I had learned fixing things on the farm. I ran a chainsaw clearing downed trees, worked with sheetrock and flooring crews, roofers and brick masons. Several weekends were spent removing water damaged sheet rock from walls to stop mold abatement efforts. Weeks later, we returned to repair the walls.

Now, here I was looking at a sheet rock wall with honey bees inside it. I could hear them and feel their vibrations through the wall. My brain was screaming, “I’ve done this. I can do sheet rock work. I can do this!” I told the homeowner that, with their approval, I could cut open the sheet rock, fold it out of the way and move all the combs and bees into a hive box. I would then place the hive box behind their PVC pipe entryway and returning forager bees would walk right into the box, because it smelled like home. Later in the evening, I would return to close and remove the box. I’d then repair the sheet rock, but the homeowners would have to repaint the wall. The husband thought this was a great idea.

So, I retrieved my newly made bee box and cut open the wall, removed the combs and used rubber bands to hold them into hive frames. Those went into the box and I set the entrance of the box against the wall. I returned that evening to a box full of honey bees. Once again, the bees had done what I thought they would. I moved the box and bees outside and fixed the sheet rock.

As I was leaving, the homeowner asked a magical question, “David, how much do we owe you?” I explained that I had negotiated my labor for his bees. He laughed at me. REALLY! He told me that he and his wife had watched me work, that they had never seen anything like what I had done, and that they needed to pay me something for my labor. I was surprised. How often does someone offer to pay for something they could’ve had for free? They paid me for my time and I got free bees. WOW! I had my first hive of honey bees! Better than that, I had been paid to get them. About 2–3 weeks later, I received a box of beekeeping equipment that they had ordered for me. It was addressed to “The Bartlett Bee Whisperer.” When I called them, the husband told me that they had searched the internet for people doing what I had done and found no one in our area doing anything like what they had seen me do. He also told me that I should stop looking for a real job because I already had one as a Bee Whisperer. I liked the idea. My wife took a little more convincing.

Facebook

I shared that crazy experience with yet another friend, Leah, during a lunch meeting. She had been helping me find real work. As we discussed the removal and the fact that I had been paid for it AND that they had sent me a huge load of beekeeping equipment, she suggested I get a Facebook page to promote this new business venture. “Who knows, maybe this can be a stopgap until you get something better?” I said something crazy like, “I don’t have time for some college kid’s social media hookup.” Leah took it all in stride and told me to just think about it.

Later that week, I received a call about a swarm of bees on the side of another house in Lakeland, Tennessee. The man started his end of the conversation with, “My wife found you on Facebook and I was wondering if you could help us.” I went and caught the swarm from his house. As I left, I called Leah to tell her about this weird call I got. Her reply was simply, “Do you want the password to your Facebook account?” Yes ma’am.

All of that to say, I’ve had a lot of good friends who have pushed me in the right directions to get to where I am today. I’ve had fortuitous events that happened at just the right times to put me in a position to learn how to do what needs to be done. I have the construction and de-construction skills gained through serving others, to be able to look at buildings and know what is hidden in the walls. I’ve read a lot and continue reading about the changing dynamics of the bees in our world. Were it not for friends pushing in the right directions, asking the “what if” and the “have you heard” questions, I wouldn’t be The Bartlett Bee Whisperer that I am today.