BEE BEARDS

If you want a beard of bees, you have to be willing to be stung a few times. That's if things go well. If they don't go well . . .

You've probably seen pictures of bee beards, sported by brave and foolhardy people who have arranged to have the lower half of their faces covered with stinging insects, as if they're auditioning for some kind of entomologist-only ZZ Top tribute band. It's an old pastime among thrill-seeking bee fanciers, because it impresses the rubes.

Ukrainian beekeeper Petro Prokopovych modeled the first known bee beard in the 1830s. Besides the bee beard, Prokopovych was also the inventor of several other innovations in beekeeping, including removable frames and the first queen excluder (a slotted board big enough for workers but too small for the queen to pass through, keeping bee eggs and larvae out of the honeycombs). Demonstrating what he'd learned about bee swarm behavior, he placed a captive queen in a cage under his chin and released thousands of bees near his face. Sure enough, the bees went into the typical swarming behavior of bunching tightly around the queen, creating a “beard” that hung off his chin.

His bee beard inspired imitators. Carnival freak shows decided that their discerning audience needed to see this, and bee bearders became as popular as fat ladies, Siamese twins, dog-faced boys, pinheads, and the Wild Men of Borneo.

How to Grow a Bee Beard

The thing is, a bee beard isn't hard to accomplish, but it takes some guts and a willingness to be stung a few times. This is not recommended for children, or anybody with an allergy or aversion to bee stings, any level of good sense, or a litigious lawyer. Please don't try this at home . . . or anywhere else. That said, here's what you'd need to do if you were inclined to create a bee beard. (This is from experts; you don't think I'd be foolish enough to actually do this, do you?)

• Bee bearders select a hive with easygoing bees willing to put up with their outrageous shenanigans without exacting too much revenge.
• They find the queen and lock her in a queen cage (a small wooden box with metal screening on one side that sort of looks like a kazoo that someone made in woodshop).
• For a lush, full beard, they need about 12,000 bees (two pounds). Bee bearders box them up with the captive queen the day before, keep them in the dark, and feed them well. Spritzing them with sugar water is said to work pretty well for this. The hope is to calm them.
• When they're ready for the beard, the bearders tie the queen cage under their chin. protecting their eyes by wearing swim goggles. Bees will be crawling everywhere, so they cover their hair, button their shirt top, tuck their pants into their socks, put cotton loosely in their nostrils and ears, and put some petroleum jelly around their mouth and eyes with the hope of maybe discouraging the bees from crawling into either.
• Remaining calm from this point on may seem counter-intuitive, but it is very, very important. They open the box of bees and hold it against their chest so the bees can smell the queen. The bees, in the best case, will peacefully begin crawling up their neck to surround the queen's cage, hanging in bee garlands from the bee bearder's skin and each other.
• If all goes well, the worst that will happen is that the bearder will have to get used to the sensation of thousands of bees gripping their skin with barbed bee feet.
• The bee bearder can pose triumphantly for photos. Then, while things are still going well, they have their assistant untie the queen cage and place it back inside the box into which they want the bees to return.
• One bee bearder trick is to stand over the box, jump up into the air, and land hard. This dislodges the bulk of the bees onto their feet and the ground. The befuddled bees will again smell the queen and begin crawling into the box. Eventually, all of them will be back in captivity, ready to be transported home again.
• One last note: Bee bearders say they hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Odds are pretty good that they'll get at least a sting or two, even if they do it right. However, even experienced bearders have sometimes misjudged the bees, the weather, the cosmic influences, or their own calmness, and been stung dozens of times. They have to be prepared for the medical ramifications of that and the potential of bees attacking civilians. Although they dread having to use it, pros keep an emergency sprayer filled with soapy water that can kill masses of bees and an industrial shop vacuum to dispose of the evidence.

Extreme Bearding

As if a two-pound beard isn't impressive enough, there's been a trend toward “beards” that cover the whole body as bee bearding became a competitive endeavor. The world record of 87 pounds of bees (approximately 350,000 of them) was set in 1998 by American Mark Biancaniello and still stands. However, if you're judging by style points, give it up for a couple of beekeepers from Ning'an, China, Yan Hongxia and Li Wenhua, who were married while covered in bees. It is a wedding fad that has yet to catch on. But if the bride's wearing a veil anyway, and you want a little extra honey in your honeymoon, why not?