The Beekeeper | Anastasiia Starodubtseva
It is a luminous Sunday morning in April. The Internet connection is somewhat stable. There is a blurry image of her face on the screen. She switches from the front to the back camera and shows her apiary in Sribne, Ukraine. A 21-year-old Anastasiia Starodubtseva is about to start the beehive inspection.
A thorough inspection of all the hives takes her a couple of days to complete. She does it almost every ten days. Monthly, it adds up to approximately six days of her life being dedicated to taking care of the bees.
Today, among her usual tools, she has a tripod, to which she attaches her phone. She shows off her white beekeeping suit with the print of cartoon bees on it and her white hat with a black veil. Then she sits down on a small chair near the beehive and adjusts the tripod.
Her family owns this apiary for almost 20 years now. Anastasiia says, “I remember always watching them take care of bees when I was little. I never thought I’d follow in their footsteps. But it became my hobby or even a job after my father had died. I knew my mom needed my help back then.”
It is her third year as a beekeeper. And she says there wasn’t a time when she thought about giving it up. She loves this place, its feel of both calmness and intrigue when she opens the hives. She says here she forgets about everything: it’s just her and the bees. “I love the atmosphere of the apiary. When I enter, I immediately hear bees buzzing, then I smell honey and propolis. It gives me the energy to work,” Anastasiia adds.
She slowly removes the lid from the hive. The steel smoker in her hand blows a few puffs of smoke over the top of the hive to make the honeybees hide. She pulls out the end frame with the help of scrapers. Anastasiia looks at it and puts it on the side of the hive, saying there is not much going on there. Now she has more space to remove frames without damaging the bees. She gets out the second frame and examines it carefully from every angle. She does the same with the third one. She smiles. Anastasiia says she sees the queen bee, which means the bee family is developing properly.
She continues with a quite unexpected confession, “It is going to sound absurd, but my biggest challenge is actually to enter the apiary. To be completely honest, I’m scared of bees,” she says with a soft smile on her face. “For example, when I walk outside and hear or see a bee, I start to panic. It’s because I’m allergic to a bee sting. And here it’s not just one or two bees…There are thousands!” But Anastasiia explains that the moment she’s here all her stress and fear vanish. And when it’s time to leave, she wants to stay and starts thinking about the next time she’s coming back to her beehives.
She examines the last frame and puts it back in the hive. She places all the frames back in the same order as they were at the start of the inspection. She pushes the frames tightly together. Then Anastasiia picks up the end frame and puts it in the hive. She places the lid back on top. She is done inspecting this beehive. She grabs her chair with tools and moves on to the next one.
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