Honey Collector's Bizarre Method of Handling Bees Is Most Unsettling Thing You'll See in Weeks
If you ever need bees removed from your property make sure to call on the fearless beekeeper, 31-year-old Suk Mahammad Dalal.
Dalal is a honey collector from Chandramonipur, West Bengal, who has been practicing the craft for 15 years.
However, Dalal stands out from other beekeepers as he handles the bees in a way that some may consider dangerous.
With just a tank top and jeans for protection, Dalal removes the bees by the handful and houses them under his shirt. This is drastically different from the standard practice of wearing a sealed bee suit, using smoke to subdue the bees and then removing the honeycombs from the hive.
However, having thousands of irritated bees covering his exposed body doesn’t seem to bother Dalal.
It’s clear that the man’s comfort with the bees far surpasses that of the average person, as he repeatedly puts the bees up to his face and blows them away in a playful manner.
He claims that the stings from the bees no longer affect him, but the stings do leave minor swelling around his lips.
“I just need a hot cup of tea to recover from them,” Dalal said.
Dalal’s journey to becoming a beekeeper is even more extraordinary than the technique he uses in the field.
As reported by the U.K. Daily Mail, Dalal previously worked as a doctor’s assistant in Kolkata.
Although the job paid him poorly, Dalal received a piece of invaluable information — honey has many applications.
The doctor Dalal assisted used large amounts of honey in the medications he prepared. This discovery reminded Dalal of the countless beehives he encountered when he would climb trees as a child.
Dalal felt inspired and returned back to his hometown to become a bee collector.
“From my childhood I was good at climbing trees,” he said. “I had seen bee hives hanging from the trees in my village, in Bankura. So, I went back home to become a bee collector.”
The first days of his newfound profession were difficult and frightening as he would experience excruciating pain and swollen limbs from the stings.
However, over time the pain from the stings wore off and Dalal slowly became immune to the venom.
According to New Scientist, beekeepers quickly desensitize to bee venom after being stung countless times. A study in 2008 showed that high doses of bee venom received early in the year mutes the body’s immune response to the venom for the rest of the season.
Since beekeepers are exposed to bee venom on a near-constant basis, they have a subdued immune response to the toxin.
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