The gifts of beekeeping: How taking care of bees helped me overcome physician burnout

As I approach the three beehives comprising my tiny backyard apiary, I pause several yards away to check in with my mental state. I’m about to perform brief, targeted inspections on each of the hives, encountering tens of thousands of bees in the process.

Inspections require exquisite focus to interpret what is going on in the colony and calm, steady movements to avoid crushing bees and setting off their alarm pheromones. Thoughts about the recredentialing packet sitting on my desk, what I’m going to make for dinner and the hospital discharge I’m managing in the morning all must take a backseat to the task at hand.

Perhaps the most important lesson the bees have taught me so far is this: If you approach a beehive with anxiety, anger or distraction, they will make sure you’re jolted back into the moment. Bees are perceptive that way.

The bees have taught me many things since I brought my first colony home over a year ago. I’m a newcomer to the hobby, an endeavor I considered off and on for several years before I finally found myself in a place to take on the investment in time and energy. It was a combination of burnout and a few weeks’ break in between jobs that ultimately brought the bees into my life, igniting a passion for learning I hadn’t experienced since my first clinical rotations in med school.

Finding a new passion

After only a handful of years out of training, I was feeling depleted at the end of my last job. Intense work environments, systemic inadequacies and limited resources had taken a toll. The joy I usually felt in my work was muted, and it was somewhat difficult to imagine how I was going to continue working the same job every day for decades until retirement.

I knew these thoughts were distortions. I went into medicine for a reason, and I still loved so many things about my specialty. I needed some time to reset between one job and the next, and I was fortunate to be in a position where I could take an entire month off from any form of work for the first time in over a decade. Such luxury!

Two days into my time off, I was already finding “relaxation” more difficult than I expected. Most physicians tend to be goal-driven people. We like to check things off lists and make progress toward some kind of outcome.

Sitting on my porch, I noticed the flowers were starting to bloom, and the bees were reappearing in my yard. It occurred to me that this might be a good time to think about beekeeping. I’d learned just enough in my casual reading over the years to know where I might start, and it was surely better than sitting around trying to figure out what to do with myself for a whole month.

I picked up my first beekeeping book, “The Idle Beekeeper” by Bill Anderson. The book was good, even entertaining with its endearing tongue-in-cheek prose. I looked up a few things about the many different types of hives and acquired another book, “Keeping Bees with a Smile” by Russian beekeeper Fedor Lazutin. Within a week I’d read more nonmedical books than I’d read in the prior year.

Soon I was in an online beginner beekeeping course, listening to beekeeping podcasts on my way to the gym and watching beekeeping YouTube demonstrations before bed. I read up on my state’s beekeeping rules and regulations. By the time I reached for “The Mind of a Bee” by Lars Chittka, a book on bee neurobiology, I decided it was time to find myself a hive and preorder some spring bees.

Headfirst into bee education

The excitement to learn and explore was exhilarating, awakening a piece of myself I had lost sight of amid establishing my life after training and finding my early-career professional identity. I channeled my inner med student into learning everything I could about bee biology, division of labor in the colony and the fascinating biochemical properties of hive products like propolis and royal jelly. Reading bee books led to reading fiction again too, and drew me outside to observe the plants in bloom and the subtle shifts in the weather around the equinox.

I carefully selected hive styles appropriate to backyard beekeeping. I found horizontal hives, in particular, to be best-suited for my climate, physical abilities and time constraints. When my beekeeping neighbor offered me a swarm of live bees hanging from the branch of his tree, I suited up head-to-toe with big heavy gloves, my hands still a little shaky knowing I was handling thousands of venomous creatures.

At first, I had a tendency to scurry away when a bee would bump the top of my veil, warning me about an impending sting. Over the course of my first beekeeping season, I developed the skills to be still and slow with the bees, and I traded my thick gloves in for more dexterous nitrile ones (note for aspiring beekeepers: always wear as much gear as you need to be safe and comfortable, no matter what anyone else does).

As my comfort with the bees grew, the trepidation I had about returning to work in the hospital started to lift. Recovery from burnout doesn’t happen overnight, and I wouldn’t be so bold as to claim the bees were the only thing that helped. Connecting with trusted colleagues and finding a job suited to the kind of work I knew I wanted to do furthered my recovery process.

I arrived at the hospital in my next clinical role with greater strength than I started with, and as I went through the onboarding process with my job, the bees continued to thrive. They reminded me of the importance of staying present in the moment, being aware of my surroundings and focusing on the task at hand.

While beekeeping can be challenging and even heart-wrenching work when many apiaries see approximately half of their colonies perish each year, the hobby’s constant puzzles and learning opportunities outweigh these downsides. And of course, the occasional gifts from the hive are an excellent perk.

The episodic nature of beekeeping requires a few hours of work every one to two weeks in blooming months, and quiet, watchful waiting during the withdrawn winter season. I find I’m able to make the time to take care of them when I need to, and often just enjoy watching them work for a few minutes in the afternoon. These days, I cannot imagine my life without the bees in it.

As physicians, we all need connections to a greater world beyond our work, whether through family, pets, community engagement or hobbies. The things that bring us joy are just as essential to sustaining our work in medicine as any continuing medical education course or board certification.

Many of us may have put old hobbies on the back burner during training; activities we can resurrect as our schedules become slightly more predictable. Engagement in volunteer organizations, adult-oriented community classes or local meetup groups may provide opportunities to explore past interests or pick up something new.

It is my hope that all my colleagues tend to these important pieces of their lives, whether it’s through a dance class, a knitting group or several thousand stinging insects in a box.

Related reading:

Pursuing creative hobbies as a physician: Advice from a musician DO

Making time for the little joys of life amid the bustle of medicine