Over on jezebel.com, Shannon Melero offers this intriguing article…
The “Texas Bee Lady”, Erika Thompson, has posted several videos showing her saving bees from various places and somehow -who knows exactly how, its probably in the analytics of the various internet search engines- I’ve become aware of them and seen them.
For example…
Seems like a nice thing, no?
I mean, she’s trying to save bee colonies, moving them from places where they may be in danger and putting them somewhere where they will thrive, right?
However…
Frankly, I was surprised at first to hear that someone would criticize these vidoes…
…but…
I have to give it to the above bee keeper. She points out and gives very specific reasons for why the “Texas Bee Lady” is a “fake”.
And, frankly, I find her reasoning pretty solid.
Look, I’m very much concerned with the environment. I read with great alarm how insect and animal populations are rapidly declining and I hope we sober up and realize we have to work with the environment around us rather than destroy it.
And, watching some of the Texas Bee Lady’s videos I felt like it was nice to see someone devoted to helping this important insect by relocating their hives.
But when you’re right you’re right.
Bees, as much as I want them to survive and thrive, can be aggressive creatures. They can and will sting you. I knew an odd kid way, waaaaaay back in my childhood who got a kick out of provoking bee and hornet hives and then getting himself stung.
I distinctly recall one day he showed up to school with a face so puffed up it looked like something from a cartoon. I really, really hope he got some help regarding this weird masochistic tendency.
Regardless, seeing the Texas Bee Lady without any protection and, as noted by the critic above, with her long hair flowing as it is, is an invitation to disaster. I agree with the critic: What we see is one thing but what we don’t see is quite another.
What does her husband do before they record her moving the bees and their hive? These hives can’t always be as mellow as she makes them out to be, can they?
My guess is no.
As much as I may like the Texas Bee Lady’s videos, I’m inclined to believe the critic. The videos are cute. The videos are encouraging to anyone who wants to preserve the environment and especially the bee population.
But these videos are also clearly modified to the point of fakery.
And that’s a shame.
It reminds me, frankly, of all those lovely HGTV programs out there where people are flipping properties. They make the whole process of buying a home, gutting it, then renovating it look like such a breeze and the end result always looks so good… not to mention we usually end with the kicker of how much this newly renovated property will get sold for and the profits to be made in doing this.
It’s a lovely thought and I’m certain a large reason real estate properties are going through the roof nowadays is because of people feeling like they can do this flipping thing and make themselves money.
But I’ve had personal experience in renovations. Not to the extreme degree of gutting an entire home at one time, but over the course of my life I’ve been involved in enough renovations, including full roofs redone to renovating a kitchen, bathrooms, A/C units, tiles, etc. etc. that I know the nature of that business.
To begin, on the HGTV shows they usually lowball the hell out of the estimates for remodeling something. One time on one show I saw they had to redo the roof and the estimate given was $10,000. I was shocked because at least around where I live, a similar roof being redone would cost at least double that and likely more. And we weren’t talking about a tile roof or anything ornate like that!
If one is skeptical of that price, one has to be skeptical of all the other estimates.
Worse, these shows make it look like a home can be redone without much time or efforts with that jackpot profitable sale at the end of the proverbial rainbow.
The reality is that it takes months, sometimes years to get something like this done. In the neighborhood I live, there is one house that I swear has been worked on for nearly three years now. It looks close to being done, but it still isn’t finished, and it was a flip job: It was purchased, gutted, then they worked on the inside and outside and it took sooooo long!
You also deal with contractors who can be less than helpful. I don’t want to tar all contractors with a single brush, but at least in my experience a job that sometimes starts out great can rapidly devolve into disappointment and plenty of angry phone calls to try to get the contractors to properly finish up the job they were hired to do.
Alas, contractors often take up multiple jobs and if you’re not on top of them, they can put your job on the backburner.
Finally, there’s the inspections, permits, and codes you have to deal with. If you’ve ever experienced these lovely things, you know just what a pain in the ass they can be.
So, yeah, I totally understand the Texas Bee Lady critic.
Sometimes what’s presented is, to say the least, manipulated for effect.