An unexpected, beautiful experience of what it is to bee kind

“My dad has bees.

Today, I went to his house, and he showed me all of the honey he had gotten from the hives.

He took the lid off of a 5-gallon bucket full of honey, and on top of the honey there were three little bees, struggling. They were covered in sticky honey and drowning.

I asked him if we could help them, and he said he was sure they wouldn’t survive. Casualties of honey collection, I suppose. I asked him again if we could at least get them out and kill them quickly; after all, he was the one who taught me to put a suffering animal (or bug) out of its misery.

He finally conceded and scooped the bees out of the bucket. He put them in an empty Chobani yogurt container and put the plastic container outside. Because he had disrupted the hive with the earlier honey collection, bees were flying around outside. We put the three little bees in the container on a bench and left them to their fate.

My dad called me a little later to show me what was happening.

These three little bees were surrounded by all of their sisters (all of the bees are females), and they were cleaning the sticky, nearly dead bees, helping them get all the honey off their bodies.

We came back a short time later, and only one little bee was left in the container. She was still being tended to by her sisters.

When it was time for me to leave, we checked one last time. All three of the bees had been cleaned off enough to fly away, and the container was empty.

Those three little bees lived because they were surrounded by family and friends who would not give up on them, family and friends who refused to let them drown in their own stickiness and resolved to help until the last little bee could be set free.

Bee Sisters. Bee Peers. Bee Teammates.

We could all learn a thing or two from these bees.

Bee kind always.

I did not write this, but I love it.

I have not found the source – it is shared all over the internet. If you do, please let me know.