By Rod Hentz, MD

After 40 years in academic medicine, the arthritis genes inherited from my father began to tell me that the scope of hand surgery I had so enjoyed for so long was going to become more and more difficult. I now had to ask the resident or fellow to tighten the last screw on the compression plate. My joints were telling me that retirement was coming. Ten years or so before, I had concluded that, along with the arthritis genes, I had likely inherited my father’s longevity genes, and that the words “sudden and massive” were unlikely to appear in my obituary. That realization led me to start seeing a dentist more or less, mostly still less, regularly and to exercise more.

At about the same time, and stimulated by the joy expressed by a hand surgeon colleague about motorcycling, I got back into the sport after too many years away, went to motorcycling kindergarten, got a license, bought a small bike, then a larger bike, broke a collarbone in a no-mile-an-hour fall over and rode the empty roads of New Zealand, most of the mountain passes between Switzerland and Italy and Germany and the great roads of California. I found motorcycling to be a total hoot…so Zen-like in its demands to focus totally on what is under your wheels and maybe 60 feet ahead.

But…the motorcycle is pretty heavy, far too heavy for the older me to pick up if it falls over, and the natural angle of repose for any two-wheeled vehicle is…you guessed it…on its side. So, as retirement approached, and to me this meant working less rather than not at all, I looked in other areas. For reasons that I now can’t remember, along with an increasing number of things I can’t remember, a friend bought me a beekeeping lesson on Groupon. One Saturday, I drove to a nearby city and spent most of the afternoon learning about bees, their life cycle, and what is needed to obtain and maintain a beehive. I felt like an astronaut when I put on my bee suit and stood close while my teacher opened the hive, smoked the bees to calm them—not that they need much calming as they are very docile things unless overly agitated—and proceeded to point out all the activity that was unfolding. It was so cool.

Soon, I had bought all that was needed to establish two colonies, except bees. I learned that UPS will deliver bees from a grower, right to your house, in a bee-proof, ventilated box. However, it was too late in the season to order bees this way. I found a source about 100 miles from my home, and so, one Saturday morning, I drove there and paid $90 for 5 pounds of French bees and 5 pounds of Italian bees, along with a fertile Italian queen and a fertile French queen. Back home, following the instructions in my “Beekeeper’s Bible,” I dumped the bees into their new home, Italians into one and French into the other. A real European Union of bees. The trick is that the queen that came with each bee nation is not the queen that laid the eggs that turned into larvae that hatched into the exclusively lady bees now inhabiting my beehive. She is a usurper of the crown and as such this queen has to be “protected” from her hopefully new, soon-to-be loyal subjects, else regicide ensues. The queen arrives in her own little ventilated test-tube-like container that I hung inside the hive. In a few days, her pheromones will convince the locals that she is indeed the legitimate queen. They will release her from her tube by slowly consuming the plug of sugar that seals her in the tube. Once released, she begins her life’s work, laying eggs to replace retired bees i.e., they die, with newbies. I feed them concentrated sugar-water for about 2 weeks while they acclimate and fly off to find food. Then, they pretty much go on autopilot. Once a week, I open the hive and make sure the queen is active and that the normal bee parasites are in check. The French colony was far more active. I think the Italian bees get up late, drink coffee and smoke until late morning, and then began work. I love those Italian bees.

I started the 2 colonies in late April 2015, and by August had frames full of honey. A beekeeping friend brought over his centrifuge and we harvested about 10 kilograms of the best honey ever. I did not need to buy any Christmas presents for staff and colleagues. Hentzie (catchy label, yes) French or Italian Honey instead.

Since then, I have twice experienced the heartbreak of “colony collapse.” One morning, the bees were all gone. Where? I don’t know. Why? Don’t know either. Just happens to every beekeeper. In my Silicon Valley area, bee mortality approaches 50% per year, mostly from parasites and pesticides.

So, I bought new bees, this time delivered to my doorstep by the brown-suited guys, not just for the honey but for the pleasure of watching the bees as they come and go, also very Zen-like. The two hives sit at the end of my garden, facing East, the preferable direction. As the bees come and go, they remind me of those Star Wars movie “fighters,” the way they walk out the door of the hive, pause on the flight deck, and suddenly, zip, zip, they’re gone, faster than the eye. And they return the same way. Suddenly a bee lands at the door; she just materializes. She does a little salsa/rhumba move, I guess communicating something, and then goes inside to deliver her cargo of pollen, which she carries in two tiny pouches, one on each leg. In the right sunlight, the pollen pouches give off a wonderful golden glow. Bees are so cool.