I used to have quite a few hives of honeybees. I worked with my bees almost daily, and they were used to me and I didn’t have to wear any protection.
One day I discovered that a bear had knocked over several of my hives. I didn’t even have a shirt on, but I ran down and tried to set the hives back upright. Those bees ate me up. I had many stings.
I also used to go collect swarms of bees. People would call me. When bees are swarming, they are extremely gentle. I would pick them up in my hands, but them in a cardboard box, and take them home to give them a hive to live in. People called me from all over two counties to get swarms that landed on their properties.
So, because the bear knocked them over, they were excited, so they bit you, even though they normally wouldn’t have?
There’s a guy that videos swarms, removals etc. called Mr & Mrs Bee Rescue & most of the time he’s in a t-shirt. I recall one removal he was 2-3 stories up on a roof & he was fully covered in gear & he was screaming at the people on the ground to take cover because of the aggressiveness of the hive he was removing. Crazy stuff to watch.
I like bees.
I went to a bed and breakfast in Vermont where the guy kept bees, and I am interested, so after asking a bunch of questions, he asked if I wanted to help him do something with the hive...of course I did! I had a blast. He said the key was to be slow and deliberate. And calm. If I lived where I could have a few hives, I absolutely would.
I did have an interesting interaction with bumblebees one time. Different from honeybees, to be sure!
I have a shed out in my backyard, and one day while working around it, I noticed the large black bumblebee types landing on the concrete ramp, and walking under the large sliding door into the shed.
That usually isn’t a good sign, and sure enough, when I watched one land, it walked under a table with a bunch of stuff piled around it, I saw a large dome on the floor, about 2 feet by two feet, and the bumblebee walked right into it.
It looked kind of like a mouse nest.
Now, those large, mostly black bumblebees looked nasty with a visible stinger on them that looked to me like it stuck out a quarter inch from their abdomen, so I went inside, and had one of those helmets with the netting on it, put on a pair of woolen german army pants that had a plastic liner over a pair of sweatpants, put on a heavy jacket, used duct tape around my pant legs and jacket cuffs over heavy leather gloves, and had the jacket zipped all the way up with the netting tucked inside. It felt impenetrable.
So, I grabbed a large, thick, heavy duty garbage bag, a small rake, and walked up to the thing where I could hear a faint buzzing inside.
I poked it gently with the rake, and heard the buzzing volume increase dramatically. I stepped back and pondered it, wondering why I felt so damned nervous...as covered up as I was.
I screwed up my courage, opened the bag on the ground, held it open with my legs, and took the rake to scoop the whole nest inside.
I put the rake behind it and moved the whole thing about an inch, and it erupted with a really, REALLY loud, ANGRY buzzing...and the entire nest visibly VIBRATED!
LOL, I left it alone and called some guys who advertised themselves as “The Bee Guys”. They showed up in a beat up red pickup, and got out wearing white coveralls and ZZ-Top style beards...they looked to be crittery guys in their mid-sixties!
They went out back and came back about a minute later, no other protective gear, and had the nest in a large black garbage bag...I think we paid them $75 and they left us a jar of honey...:) When we asked what they did with the bees, one laconically said “We just kill em, they ain’t good for honey or nuthin’ anyway...”