Volunteer braves the occasional sting to commune with bees at the Pittsburgh Botanic Garden
By Mary Ann Thomas / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Don’t wave your hands,” Dan Dodson commanded a visitor in the Pittsburgh Botanic Garden’s apiary.
Clad in beekeeper apparel — a rugged work suit topped with the quintessential veiled hood — Dodson knows and loves his bees.
His mantra: If you don’t want to get stung, don’t swat them.
The odds of getting stung “depends on how aggressive you are and they are,” said Dodson, a volunteer at the 460-acre garden in Collier and North Fayette.
If he gets stung, he blames himself because he got too close to their home.
The apiary in the Margaret Lawrence Simon Dogwood Meadow, overflowing with goldenrod in late summer, is more than an attraction. Established in 2015, the 2½ hives of European honey bees promote pollinator conservation.
Its primary role is education, but the bees offer so much more.
“It is much like ‘pets with benefits,’” said Sue Myers, the garden’s horticulture and conservation director.
“You have them because you want to have them and it’s a bonus that they provide these healthy medicinal food products.”
The bees provide free services, pollinating the many plants and producing honey that flies off the shelves of the garden’s visitor center, raising money for the nonprofit garden.
A small group of volunteers maintain the hives, working with a certified beekeeper to harvest, extract and bottle the colony’s honey in summer and late summer.
To avoid stings, Dodson tucks his hood netting under his collar to make sure those little suckers don’t get in.
“When you are in the hive, you tend to move in slow motion,” he said. “The more abruptly you move, the more you agitate the bees.”
Really agitated bees will ping off his hood; slightly annoyed ones fly around his head.
Dodson moves slowly, carefully opening the wooden box hives to check the colony.
“You operate in a zen-like state, generally observing and processing what is happening inside the hive. It’s almost a meditative thing to be among the bees.
“Once you get over getting stung ... it’s soothing.”
Dodson didn’t expect that bees could have a calming effect on people. He didn’t know much about them until he volunteered to monitor the hives four years ago.
Stumbling upon the garden
Dodson, 66, a native of Oklahoma who has been living in Carnegie since 2009, sometimes saw little green signs for the Botanic Garden while traveling to his job as a manager for planning for natural gas pipelines and infrastructure. He finally stopped around 2015.
“The thing that most appealed to me was the fact that this was not a grand estate maintained for 100 years,” he said.
The botanic garden was created on a “moonscape” left barren by coal mining and acid mine drainage that required a passive drainage system to treat and control the pollution before anything could be planted.
At work, Dodson viewed satellite images that showed many areas of acid mine drainage from coal mines and aluminum in regional waterways.
“The effort to restore the environment is what appealed to me. There’s science involved in that,” he said.
As a professional manager, Dodson appreciated the technical know-how required to fix the site’s problems. He wanted to help.
He started volunteering on Saturdays for the horticulture team. After he retired, he pitched in even more, depending on the need.
He weeded, helped plant trees, painted, tested water and more.
‘Like a rhinoceros’
“I will do anything I can to help, if it means digging drenches, monitoring water quality....
“I’m like a rhinoceros. I run fast for a certain distance and then lay down and rest.”
Myers calls Dodson “Dan the Man” and “Clean Dan” when he shows up for special events and fundraisers.
He is among 72 active volunteers.
Dodson calls himself a jack of all trades and an expert at nothing; He is being modest.
“Dan is a very kind and capable person with a kind, generous spirit, which is why he ended up doing as much as he does here,” Myers said.
He signed up for education and training to become a certified Pennsylvania Master Naturalist in 2021.
“When I grow up, I still want to be a forest ranger at a national park,” he said. “The things I experience at the garden are the closest I get to that.”
The buzz with bees
Dodson offered to help and became a regular, working with a certified beekeeper to monitor the hives.
He is fascinated by the bee colony and has acquired an appreciation for native bees as well.
“The bees are always working through summertime. The worker bees in the hive are all female. They literally work themselves to death.”
He has been taking beekeeping classes at Penn State University but says he’s far from an expert.
“I’ll always be an apprentice beekeeper and that’s fine with me.”
The bees are a popular subject in the garden’s educational programs and exhibits.
“Our visitors can walk up and appreciate the bees’ complex interactions,” Myers said. “People can see the bees do their jobs – bringing in the nectar, bringing in the pollen.”
They keep a half hive for demonstrations so the public so visitors can see up close how incredible bees can be.
For example, the hexagonal cells built by bees to hold honey tilt up slightly, Myers said.
“The bees know if they don’t have that tilt, the honey will spill out. The engineering of that is pretty amazing.”
The bee programs often end with visitors tasting honey from the hives.
More honey?
“People are tasting the nectar from our plants when they eat honey,” Myers said.
Besides selling jars to the public at the Forage & Finds gift shop, staff also use the garden’s honey in the cafe, she said.
There’s not always enough for everyone. Currently, there are jars for sale but it might not last until the holiday season, Myers noted.
Dodson prefers his honey in a hot toddy, and he hasn’t had a bad batch yet.
He loves working with the five-gallon buckets of honey extracted by the beekeeper.
“You open the valve and watch the honey flow. It’s soothing and a therapy for some people.”
Just like the rest of his work in the garden.
“It has become one of my happy places and I’m grateful for the opportunity to do the cool things I get to do.”
Mary Ann Thomas: [email protected]