When I open my hive, I go in with a full suit of armor: a veil, beekeeping gloves, full bee suit tucked into my socks and boots. The bees can’t touch me! But for Charles Wieand, who runs the Outdoor Adventures YouTube channel, bee suits are for sissies. When he opens a hive, he does it in the full nude.
According to Mirror, Wieand has been interested in bees since he was a kid. But in order to take beekeeping to the dare-devil level he’s taken many of the stunts in his videos, he did it without clothes. He assumed, as most of us would, that he’d get stung all over, but he didn’t. In fact, during the whole hour that he hung out naked with the bees, he didn’t get stung once.
This is probably because unless they feel threatened, bees are actually gentle creatures. Only the female worker bees can sting, and this is a last-resort defense to protect the hive, because once a bee stings, she’s dead. Many beekeepers will even tend to their hives without the full bee suit and only a veil (albeit, with clothes on) for this reason.
So while we wouldn’t necessarily recommend beekeeping naked, it’s good to know that there’s nothing to fear when it comes to your bees.
