What It’s Like to Get Stung by Bees 30 Times Each Day

Photography courtesy of Philadelphia Bee Co.

When I get Don Shump on the phone he says he just finished up an emergency call with PGW. Not about bills, but about removing a bee colony under a manhole cover. “It’s something that, in my 20 years of doing this, I’ve never seen before,” he says. But every day is a new adventure for the owner/beekeeper of Philadelphia Bee Co.

One day he could be removing bees from a multi-million dollar home, the next, he might have a shop-vac carrying hundreds of hornets stolen off of his truck. “We never did get that shop-vac back,” he says.

Here, Shump tells us about how he got into the bee business, the best urban honey he’s ever harvested, and his craziest encounters with all things that fly and sting.

I grew up in … Delaware County, Pennsylvania — in Media — and I’ve lived in Philadelphia for over 25 years now.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be … a veterinarian. I was interested in animals. I would watch nature shows, probably more than I would cartoons.

I graduated with a degree … in economics. I had originally gone in with the intentions of becoming a vet, changed gears to computer science, then to business, and then settled on econ.

My very first job was … as a web developer. I did that for probably 10 years. I just reached a point where I didn’t want to do that anymore. So, I started taking up weird hobbies to entertain myself until I could figure out where I wanted to go. Beekeeping was originally a hobby.

I first started beekeeping … with my own hives out in the suburbs. I pulled all my colonies back into the city because the honey we get from Philadelphia is more interesting. We have 40,000 abandoned lots in Philly that people do nothing with, and the bees love the weeds that grow there. So we get really complex, interesting honeys. There’s nothing wrong with suburban honey, but it tends to be one-note because it’s only lawns and forest.

I make honey … from some of the colonies we remove. I try to make honey out of all of them, but it’s a matter of the timing and how healthy they are.

The best urban honey came from … my hives above Shane Confectionery in 2016. It was pitch black. I only got 12 pounds of the really dark stuff and I sold it to no one. I hoarded it because it was just … something. I gave some to the Burley brothers. They each got a jar because it was their shop. But I have yet to see another honey that was that dark and rich.

Honey can be graded on … color. So you have water white which is the lights. It’s almost clear. Certain plants will yield a nectar that looks like that, like the black locust tree is known for that type of honey. And then you get different grades of amber, like light amber and medium amber. Then you get into the dark honeys, which are typically fall honey. We also do honeydew, which is the bees collecting from other insects instead of plants.

The best-selling honey is … the spotted lantern fly honeydew.

We produce … several thousand pounds of honey. We run anywhere from 75 to 150 colonies this season, so we try to average about 30 pounds per colony.

I got into bee removal … as an offshoot of my honey business. I had originally incorporated the Philadelphia Bee Co. in 2012 with the intention of primarily producing honey, and I got a call from a fellow beekeeper asking if we would do a removal. I said, “I’ve never done that, but I can try.” So I did. I did a bunch of research on it, and you know, I’ve been doing removals of anything that flies and stings ever since.

My first bee removal call … was for a $3 million mansion. They had somebody remove bees from it years prior, and that gentleman had retired, and there was really no one in the area to take up his spot. So I had to go out with a circular saw on the roof alone and cut open the hole to get the hive out.

I get stung … five to 30 times a day. It’s 12:45 right now and I’ve been stung at least 10 times already today.

I broke my sting record … a year and a half ago. I was pulling a hive off the side of a building. I strapped a cardboard nuke box — short for nucleus colony — to the top of the ladder. As I was climbing down the ladder, the strap failed, and the hive rolled down the ladder and landed on my forearms.

Unfortunately, that day, when I was running out the door, I had grabbed the wrong veil, which is the screen top headpiece. I grabbed the wrong one for the jacket I had, and the zippers were different. So the bees were able to climb up inside the veil and start stinging my head and face. When I got back to the ground, I had to take the veil off because they were actively stinging me inside my ears.

It was like The Wicker Man. I did that as a Halloween costume. I caught a swarm on the 29th of October. It was kind of like what I do for the Honey Festival when I do the bee beard and wear the bees on my face. It was the same kind of thing. I had the queen in a cage and the bees were just kind of hanging out. The cage on my head was more to keep the bees from flying off and bothering anybody else.

The craziest thing that has ever happened on the job … was when I pulled a swarm of honeybees off the center of the Ben Franklin Bridge. The bees were right off the walkway on the south side. I was over the water.

When we’re not removing bees … we’re selling honey and talking to people about bees. We have the [Philadelphia] Honey Festival. We’re looking to set up a Christmas shop next to Franklin Fountain and Shane Confectionery for Christmastime. We’re going to be at the Home Show in Oaks [in February] and then the Flower Show in March. Then it’ll be bee season again.

The worst thing about the job is … the physical demands of beekeeping are hard and I’m aging. It’s difficult to reconcile with the fact that I’m not going to be able to do a lot of this forever.

The best thing about my job is … that every day is an adventure. Every day I get up and I look forward to work because something new and exciting is going to happen every day. Guaranteed.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.