“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” —former heavyweight boxing champ Muhammad AliSince moving back to the climate of Southside Virginia, I’ve wanted to find a local beekeeper from which to buy some home-grown honey. After all, as you may know, the honey produced by local bees is supposed to serve as a natural preventative against regional allergens. I learned this many years ago from a doctor in my hometown. He was a full-time physician and part-time beekeeper. Interestingly, that same doctor also claimed that getting stung by a honey bee was a good antidote against arthritis. And he periodically would allow his bees to sting him on the arm to relieve his arthritic pain. Well, whatever floats your boat!
Anyway, Anacin King—yes, that’s his real name, for those that don’t know him—came by the church office last Monday afternoon to take me to meet a local beekeeper who lived just a few miles from the church. (By the way, Anacin’s a great guy, but—untrue to his pain reliever name—I wound up with a splitting headache by the time our big honey-seeking adventure was over.)
It was a bee-utiful day. The birds were singing. The sun was shining. And—unbeknownst to me—the bees were buzzing. The beekeeper was a very nice Christian gentleman who, interestingly enough, never gets stung by his own bees. But he was very protective of Anacin and me. We got to observe his operation but carefully maintained, at his insistence, a safe distance from his hives.
But just as we were about to make our way to his house, suddenly, this one, solitary bee came flying out of nowhere. He made a beeline—what else would a bee do?—right for me. It was as if he were on a kamikaze suicide mission. He flew straight at me and—somehow maneuvering himself under my eyeglasses—hit me dead square in my left eye, planting a painful sting right on my eyelid. Ouch! I really didn’t want the other guys to know that I had gotten stung—I was too embarrassed to admit it—but the sting hurt so bad there was no way I could fake it. After all, it’s hard to act nonchalant when you’ve got what feels like a hot poker sticking you in the eye. Anacin and the beekeeper both felt terrible. The beekeeper immediately pulled the stinger out, and we went into his house and put some ice on the sensitive area. Anacin felt so bad about it that he bought my honey for me, refusing to let me pay for it. When we drove back to the church office, Karen Haley took one look at my red and watery eye and exclaimed, “Anacin, what on earth have done to our preacher?” We’d only been gone 30 minutes and she knew that I seemed to be fine before we left. Immediately, she got me some Benadryl. Then Karen told Anacin she wasn’t going to let him carry me off on any more misadventures and get me injured.
Minutes later, I put on my sunglasses and drove on home. The area around my eye kept swelling by the minute. By late that evening, the whole left side of my face had ballooned out, and my left eye was almost completely swollen shut. I sort of resembled the creature from the black lagoon, that squinty-eyed man-serpent of 1950s horror flicks fame. Or, better yet, a badly battered boxer, kind of like Sylvester Stallone in his final fight scene from Rocky I. You know the image. His eyes were so badly swollen that he told Mick his trainer to cut the area so he could see and continue the fight. That’s kind of how I looked…and felt. When I looked in the mirror at my 
bloated prize fighter face, I found myself—again like Rocky Balboa —instinctively calling for my wife. “Adrienne, Adrienne!” …or in my case… “Sandy, Sandy!”A night’s sleep did nothing to lessen the swelling. So, the next morning, Sandy drove me to see Dr. Abiose Lasaki, who at first assumed that Sandy must have been the culprit, hauling off and belting me in the eye the night before. When we finally convinced her that I was actually the victim of a sting operation, the good doctor gave me a couple of shots and some prescription meds to try to bring the swelling down.
Anyway, when we got back home, the first thing I had to do was eat some of my newly-purchased honey. With all that I had endured to get it, I needed to see if it was really worth it. Well, the honey was delicious. But, honestly, the sweetness of the honey wasn’t quite worth the pain of the sting. So I think the next time I’m in need of honey, I’ll just ask Anacin to go on alone and get it for me.
By the way, do you remember all the hype and hysteria back in the 1
970s about the South American killer bees that supposedly were slowly making their way to the United States? Back then, the original cast of NBC’s Saturday Night Live did an ongoing spoof on the whole killer bee thing. Cigar-chomping, rifle-toting John Belushi, outfitted like a paunchy Poncho Villa in a striped bumble-bee suit—complete with antennae and stinger and thick Spanish accent—portrayed the tough-talking leader of a rowdy gang of bee banditos.Last Monday afternoon, I thought for a moment that the very first killer bee had finally reached our shores. And that I, of all people, had been singled out as the first victim in the great onslaught. Fortunately, that proved not to be the case. But I still wonder about the origin of that fuzzy little assassin that zeroed in on me. After all, I didn’t have time to check his passport or visa. Although you would think that I would have gotten a good look at him! Oh, I guess sometimes we can’t see the forest for the…bees. Hmm.
Anyway, that’s the latest buzz from around here. 48 hours later, the swelling has largely subsided and life is returning to normal. But what’s the moral of this story? Well, if you plan on visiting a local beekeeper anytime soon, please don’t ask me to go with you. Just take my advice: Please BEE careful, and—most importantly—keep your eyes closed!
Pastor Danny
