>Do not do what us dumb dinosaurs do.  We are not showing off--we are just 
>lazy.

Most commercial beekeepers I have worked with wear suits. I use the bug 
baffler and usually get some stings.

However a couple beekeepers which seem to insist we enter and work bee hives 
without protection are Horace Bell & Terry Brown. The pictures in my 
articles of Terry & I checking hives without veils is not for show.

I think ( and I expect you will agree) you can tell quite a bit about a 
beekeepers ability when you enter a strong beehive without protection. My 
first mentor ( age in nineties) never wore protection. As a kid I would 
watch with amazement while a bee would set a stinger on his hand. He seemed 
to not notice.
He also said the bees could sense fear and when beekeepers entered the yard 
without protection the bees would always sting the person afraid first. I do 
not know if true but i have one employee which is scared still of bees and 
the bees are always popping his veil while not bothering me.

I do not believe this subject has been discussed on BEE-l. What comments do 
others have to add to the discussion?

Not to brag but when i went into the hospital for tests a few weeks ago the 
nurse which set the IV in my arm said in all her years i was the first 
person which had no reaction at all when she placed the IV.

 Terry Brown said he was surprised when you went to work bees in cut offs 
when he visited you. When he told me I told Terry I had a old picture in an 
office drawer of me hving a swarm in the nude. i did it as a joke in a 
remote area after teasing by a girl friend. Little did I know she had hid a 
camera in the grass.  She and I ( and a cooler of cold ones) worked bees 
together for years. She and I had a spat once in a bee yard in which we 
started tossing frames of bees to each other! Which turned into tossing at 
each other.( in BEE-L archives)

Poor bees! Luckily we had our suits on !

bob

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Access BEE-L directly at:
http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A0=BEE-L