THE NOT-SO-SECRET LIFE OF BEES

THE NOT-SO-SECRET LIFE OF BEES

HOW-TO

Guitar god Steve Vai (bee)keeps it real

Jaan Uhelszki

When you think of Steve Vai, you think guitars. Words like “genius,” “expert,” and “savant” come to mind. Frank Zappa, a genius himself (albeit a discerning, cranky one), hired Vai to do his guitar transcriptions when Vai was just 18, and later drafted him into a late-’80s version of his band. He liked to refer to him as “my little Italian virtuoso,” which is a bit of a misnomer, given that Vai is over six feet tall.

Since that time, Vai has bedazzled fans with the timeand speed-defying manipulation of his instrument and sound, causing former Guitar World editor Brad Tolinski to declare: “Steve Vai’s guitar wizardry is so profound that in earlier times, he would have been burned as a witch.”

Over the years, he’s played in David Lee Roth’s first post-Van Halen band, been in Whitesnake at their peak, and worked with Ozzy Osbourne for a hot minute on the Ozzmosis album. He’s a charter member of G3 along with Eric Johnson and his longtime pal (and former teacher) Joe Satriani. He’s won three Grammys and has been on more than 60 albums and counting: nine studio albums, two EPs, two special albums, eight live albums, 12 soundtracks, 20 compilation albums, six DVD releases, and 44 guest appearances on others’ masterpieces. He’s taught guitar classes at Berklee, has a summer guitar camp, and holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest online guitar lesson (not to mention having the longest Wikipedia entry). In short, Steve Vai is the modern brain trust and go-to sensei for all things six-stringed.

What many don’t know is that Vai is also a beekeeper, and an adept one at that—some years even harvesting more than 900 pounds of honey from his hives, which he bottles under the Fire Garden label, the name of his fourth solo album.

“You want to know how I got into beekeeping?” he asks. “My wife, Pia, and I found a piece of property in Encino that was two acres. My wife wanted to plant gardens. I wanted to grow fruits and vegetables. I did a little research, and I discovered that honeybees are a fantastic way to pollinate.”

So on the eve of King Crimson guitarist Arian Belew’s arrival to begin rehearsals for Beat, where

Vai will join him, bassist Tony Levin, and Tool drummer Danny Carey to perform King Crimson’s ’80s oeuvre, we muscled our way into his verdant suburban spread. There the guitar maestro and enlightened apiarist showed us that with a little bit of effort, and an online class or two, anyone can have their own colony of what he calls “beautiful aliens’’—quite the compliment, given that his stripped-down, well-loved second (and best) EP is called Alien Love Secrets.

Vai suited up in protective gear and outfitted photographer Sheva Kafai in a similar outfit, which made it singularly hard for her to snap photographs without getting stung. (But she managed not to. Vai got stung two times!) Here’s Vai on the state of beeing.

“I came across a thread on YouTube of this wonderful young lady who is a beekeeper. She is so connected to the bees; she goes and rescues them when she finds them in bad locations where they’ve built hives, and doesn’t even wear a bee suit. It hearkens back to my belief that the way that you get bees to not sting you is to love them.

“The bees communicate with odors. They’re called pheromones, and they have 24 different ones. They’ll release a pheromone that might say, ‘It’s time to swarm,’ or ‘Let’s get this guy.’ Whatever it is, they can definitely sense you."

1. The queen only leaves the hive twice. The first time is on her maiden voyage to be inseminated by the drones. [Bees have three castes: drones, workers, and queens. Drones are male, while workers and queens are female.] When she leaves the hive there are 13 to 15 drones waiting by the hive. They have these giant eyes so they can see the queen in mid-flight. They’re not from her hive—they’re from other bee colonies. Once the queen is inseminated by these bees, she has enough sperm for the rest of her life, and then she goes back to the hive and starts laying eggs. But after the drone mates it dies because its penis gets snapped off. What a way to go! I know that they die happy because every now and then I find a little dead penis-less drone on my property, and he’s got a little smile on his face.

2. Before you go into the hive, you have got to have the right tools. The first one you see is called a hive tool, and that’s what you use to loosen up the frames because the bees make a substance called propolis that is a resin-like material that they make from the saps of the trees and use to seal the opening and cracks in the hives—and use it as a protective barrier against external invaders.

The other thing that looks like a handle is a clamper that you attach to the frames so you can lift them out easier. The burlap is what you put in the smoker. You light it up and let it burn. Then you tamp it out and put it in the little smoker and it provides the smoke that confounds the bees, so you can go into the hive and not get stung. I’ll occasionally use eucalyptus leaves in the smoker instead if there are enough of them in the yard. The bees like eucalyptus leaves, but they like the burlap, too. I mean, it’s a loose term, really. Meaning they don’t dislike it and it doesn’t hurt them.

3. You open the hive and apply the tip of the smoker in. I use as little smoke as I can; I only smoke about a foot deep into the hive. When they encounter the smoke, they gorge themselves on honey because they believe that there’s a forest fire and they have to grab as much as they can and go to another location. When they engorge their bellies, they can’t bend their little stinger up in order to attack you. The smoke also disrupts their communication lines, and they can’t warn the other bees that there’s an invader.

It doesn’t work for some bees. The temperament of the hive is based on the queen, so if you have a really gentle queen, they don’t attack you. You just give a little smoke and then everything’s fine. But I had a very aggressive hive once, and I had to wear two bee suits and they still came after me, and basically you just run or you just walk about maybe 100 feet or something and they’ll start to dissipate. And it takes about 45 seconds or so for an American hive, honeybee hive to react. Now, the Africanized, the African bees, they’re different. They’re a little smaller, but they’re really aggressive. They’ll react in four seconds and if they attack you, you have to run in a straight line for about a quarter mile. And if you jump in the water you’re doomed because they’ll wait for you.

When I was really working with the bees a lot, I would go into the hives every two weeks, just check on them. You make sure they’re healthy, there’s no ants, there’s no moths, there’s no mites; if there are, you have to take action against those things. The more you go into the hives, the more the bees get to know you and your scent and the less smoke you need and the less caution. But they are very sensitive. They don’t like perfume. Or deodorant or the sound of a lawn mower. There are things that agitate them.

4. This is excess comb that the bees built on top of the frames. They'll do this sometimes if the hive gets crowded. This hive was really packed, so the next day I went in and added a box to the hive so they could stretch out a bit.

BEEKEEPING WITH STEVE VAI

5. There are two chambers in a hive: the worker’s chamber and the queen’s chamber. The queen’s chamber is where the queen bee lays eggs. There aren’t any worker bees in this chamber, and no honey is made here. She is fed by the worker bees. This is also called the brood chamber because it contains the soon-to-be-born brood of new bees.

The thing that looks like a barbecue grill is the queen excluder. Because the queen is a little bigger, in order to keep her from going up into the honey chambers you put that down and only the worker bees can get through it. If you want to create a bigger brood chamber, you just move the screen. You just move that up a box and then she’ll get up there and start laying eggs in there.

6. The bees don’t mind when you take the honey. But I only take the surplus honey. You can tell by the amount of bees [that are in the hive] and the amount of honey. If I don’t have a healthy hive, I don’t take anything. The first chamber is the queen’s chamber, where she lays her eggs, and you never take anything out of that chamber. Then you have what’s called the super, and that’s just a box you put on top [of the queen’s chamber]. It’s got 10 frames in it, and the bees will fill that up. Once they’ve filled that up, I usually leave a super of honey. But if that’s jam-packed, and I’ve got 50,000 bees, I’ll put in another super. When it comes time to pull the honey, it’s very obvious to see the excess honey that they’re never going to use. So you pull that. Actually, what it does is it causes them to make more, and the only reason they’re even usually able to make more is because you’ve been overseeing the hive and keeping it healthy.

After you have extracted the honey, you move indoors to your filtering station—which is really the kitchen. Take caps off the frames with a hot decapping knife, and then the frames are put into an extractor, which is just a glorified washing machine. Once it starts spinning, the honey flies off. The raw honey then goes through its first set of strainers to get big chunks out, and then the honey is put through two more strainers to remove wax. Then it is bottled into sterilized glass jars.

The best use of honey? You put it on the doorknob so the kids can’t get in. [Laughs] But really, once you put it on your tongue, all of the beliefs of what it is and how you got it go away and you just, that’s the best use, putting it on your tongue and giving the flavor your full attention.

7. Why do I relate to bees? Through time they’ve developed this social infrastmcture that is so smart and so interesting, it defies the kind of reason that you learn as you go through life about social stmctures. I mean, they work together. And they make honey. Everybody loves honey. They pollinate your garden and they’re just so productive, they work so hard, and they’ve got it so together. But for me it’s like I’ve developed this love affair in the sense that when I look at a honeybee, they just look like these beautiful little entities that, they’re almost alien-like. If you watch them land on a flower and do their business, it’s just beautiful. It’s really helpful to the environment to cultivate bees. For me it was a weird hobby, but hey, I’m a weird guy.

I never play music for the bees. I like stillness and peace, and just the buzzing of the bees when I’m in the bee yard. But that is an interesting idea. Yeah. Put on Pantera.

The bees have offered me an opportunity to enter a state of stillness and presence because you need to be focused when you’re working with them. And in those periods where I’ve been very comfortable—I know the hives, they know me—it almost feels like a sacred connection to the bees. They know you’re there to help as opposed to attack, and they’re doing their thing and it’s just magnificent.