Honeybee nutritional ecologist Rachael Bonoan begins to worry she's allergic to the bees she studies.

Rachael Bonoan is a Ph.D. Candidate studying honey bee nutritional ecology in the Starks Lab at Tufts University. She is interested in how seasonal changes in the distribution and abundance of flowers (i.e. honey bee food!) affect honey bee health and behavior. Rachael is also the President of the Boston Area Beekeepers Association and enjoys communicating her research and the importance of pollinator health to scientists, beekeepers, garden clubs, and the general public. 

This story originally aired on Nov. 24, 2017 in an episode titled “The Bats and the Bees.”

Story Transcript

So I slowly move the honeybees from the entrance of their hive to the jar of sugar water nearby being very careful not to bump into one of my interns.  Holding my breath, I place the bees at the base of the jar and I kneel down and get a closer look. 

Now, I’m holding my breath because honeybees, and pretty much all insects, do not like carbon dioxide, which we happen to exhale.  They don’t like carbon dioxide because natural predators of honeybees, such as bears or the infamous honey badger, also breathe out carbon dioxide.  So if you don’t want to upset a bee, don’t breathe on it. 

Anyway, I take a look and watch the bees as they stick out their tongues and drink up the sugar water.  I stand up to let out a deep breath and I turn around to go get some more bees.  So what I’m actually doing is training honeybees to drink from artificial feeders.  That’s basically science talk for jars of sugar water, specifically mason jars.  Very scientific. 

I’m doing this because I’m interested in the mineral preferences of honeybees.  This is because beekeepers have noticed that even though they give their bees a really nice, clean dish of water, their bees always go for really dirty water sources.  By dirty I mean bird baths and compost piles and even puddles on cow pies.  So this makes the beekeepers nervous. 

But what I was thinking is maybe these dirty water sources are a way for honeybees to supplement minerals in their floral diet.  In fact, that’s true.  Honeybees actually use dirty water sources as a vitamin supplement.  But before I could figure that out, I had to train these bees. 

So I’m training these bees and I’m not wearing any bee gear because I don’t like the bee gear.  I can be a little bit hard-headed at times.  For example, for our one-year anniversary, my fiancé made me a mix tape.  And the very first song on that mix tape was Cat Stevens’ “Hard-Headed Woman.”  When I saw this, I was at first offended.  But then I listened to the song and I was like, “Oh, yeah, that’s totally me.”  So that’s just an example. 

Also, the bees are usually pretty okay when we’re training them and that’s because they love sugar.  So the way we train them is we basically kidnap them from their homes and we give them candy to make it better, which isn’t exactly right.  But they're usually okay with it.  Sometimes they do get a little upset, understandably so. 

So I’m on my way back to the hives to get more bees and I get dive-bombed.  A bee comes out of nowhere and gets stuck behind my glasses, which obviously upsets her, and she stings the really sensitive skin right below my right eye.  I’m saying “she” because any stinging insect that can sting is actually female.  A stinger is a modified egg-laying organ and males don’t lay eggs.  So male stinging insects can’t actually sting. 

I've never had an adverse reaction to a bee sting before.  I calmly walk inside, have an intern take the stinger out of my face, and continue training bees.  I finish my workday, I go play my softball game like normal, play second-base, all is well.  At the end of the game, the shortstop says, “Yeah, you're a little bit swollen.” 

So I go home, ice my eye, take some Benadryl, go to bed.  The next morning, my alarm goes off and something is not right.  I cannot open my right eye.  I hear my fiancé in the kitchen putting dishes away so I pull myself out of bed. I follow the hallway into the kitchen, being super careful not to look at myself in the mirror.  “Billy,” I whine, “I think you need to take me to health services.” 

Billy turns around, looks at me and calmly answers, “Yup.” 

Now, more than ever, I am extremely grateful for Billy’s calm, level-headed demeanor because I can’t see out of my right eye and I’m beginning to freak out.  So I grab a pair of sunglasses, which does not cover the fact that the entire right side of my face is swollen, and we go to health services.  They take one look at me, get me in there right away, prescribe me some steroids and then EpiPen. 

So Billy takes me to pick up my meds and to lunch, because Chipotle makes everything better, and I notice that the girl behind the counter at CVS is giving Billy a pretty dirty look.  Then the girl making my burrito is also giving him a dirty look.  I’m really confused by this until I realize I am a five-foot-tall female with a swollen face and sunglasses sitting next to six-foot-four tall male. 

Can you believe this guy still wants to marry me?  Really? 

So Billy takes care of me.  He gets me home.  A few hours later after taking prednisone, icing my eye, and listening to a Sherlock audiobook because it’s pretty much all I can comfortably do, I have to go to lab meeting. 

So I grab those same clearly useless sunglasses.  My eye is partially open now and a little less swollen, and I go to lab meeting.  My adviser takes one look at me and says, “What happened?”  So I explain that I was training bees yesterday like normal.  I wasn’t wearing the bee suit because it’s too hot and it’s too big and the bees are usually okay.  That day, my adviser buys me an extra-small bee suit so I will at least have one less thing to complain about. 

The next week, my eye is not even fully back to normal, I’m training bees, and I get stung smack in the middle of my forehead.  As you may imagine, I’m not wearing my bee suit even though I now own an extra-small, my-size bee suit.  I said, “Whatever.”  I brush it off.  I have work to do.  Intern takes the stinger out of my face again, and I get back to work. 

That night, I get home and the house is empty, because Billy’s at work for a dinner party, and I just go about my business trying not to think about my forehead until I look in the mirror and I realize that the swelling is so bad my forehead is lowering over my eyes.  Now that I’m thinking about it, my throat is itchy and my chest feels a little tight. 

I call Billy. “We need to go to the ER.” 

In the meantime, I call my mom, who happens to be at a furniture store picking out a bedroom set, and explain the situation.  Basically, I’m debating whether or not to use my EpiPen.  I can breathe so I don’t need to use it, and if I use it, I have to call 911 anyway, so I might as well just wait.  My mom agrees but continues talking to me to make sure that I am in fact breathing. 

Then finally Billy gets home, we get in the car to get me some medical attention.  I don’t even try the sunglasses this time. 

So we get to the ER and, as you all may have experienced in the ER or know about the ER, I’m telling person after person my story.  Every person is asking me if I’m experiencing any swelling.  I’m pretty offended by this because my face doesn’t look like this.  But then I think, “Well, maybe these people just don’t know what I actually look like.”  So the next person who asks me, I pull out my license and show her that, yes, I’m swollen. 

They finally get me a bed and this time I get steroids via IV.  They pump me with the steroids for a few hours.  My swelling goes down, my throat is not itchy anymore, my chest is no longer tight and the doctor comes in and tells me that I can go home. 

As the doctor is filling out the paperwork, he says, “You need to stay away from bees.” 

Billy chuckles as I explain to the doctor that that’s actually not possible.  I am a graduate student in biology studying honeybees so it is literally my job to be near honeybees. 

The doctor’s face drops and he very seriously says to me, “You have a very dangerous job.” 

That’s when it hit me my job is pretty badass.  I am a badass field biologist.  I’m a badass woman in STEM and I am not going anywhere. 

Since that experience, I have been stung, this time through the suit.  I was wearing a suit.  It was in the arm.  I had a normal reaction, some swelling, some itch, but other than that, I was fine.  As a honeybee biologist, the most common question I get asked is how many times have you been stung.  The answer is always “way too many to count,” plus “you probably don’t wanna know.” 

The follow-up question is usually, “Are you allergic?”  Now, I can answer, “Based on scientific evidence, only my face is allergic.” 

Thank you.