Frontman of white-reggae band the Police, and sometime rainforest-botherer, Sting, was called Sting because he was known for wearing a black and yellow striped jumper that made him look like a bee (in a certain light, if you squinted your eyes a bit). Our bees don’t look like they’re wearing black and yellow striped jumpers (more of an orange mohair affair), and I don’t think they’re massive fans of reggae either, but they do love to sting. The sting-y little so-and-sos have now got me 22 times (and counting). It’s kind of like the assassination of Julius Caesar, though he was stabbed 23 times. I think I’ll call my 23rd stinger Brutus.
But the thing is – I don’t mind. The stings don’t hurt too much (unless they’re on the fingertip), and I like to think of them as little reminders that bees are wild animals, they don’t really belong to us, they belong to nature, and you can’t train one not to sting, just like you can’t train them to steal a cheese and onion pasty from Gregg’s, or give you a back rub (I’ve tried – it didn’t end well). They are what they are: feral and vicious, pretending to be cute little blobs of fluff. I also like to think of the stings as fleeting moments of pain that are in some way payment for the pleasure that the little brutes give me. Working with a cloud of buzzing fur balls around your head, watching them pottering away tirelessly for the good of the colony, sends me into a kind of Zen-like space, a humming reverie that kind of feeds my soul for the rest of the day. Until I’m snapped out of it by some little prick.
Gary Parkinson, October 2017
