Steve Vai On Beekeeping

Several years ago, Metal Hammer used to run a recurring feature called “Houses of the Unholy,” where photographer Stephanie Cabral and I would interview well-known musicians about their hobbies. Some of those features included Robb Flynn talking about wakeboarding, Scott Ian discussing his Stephen King book collection, and In This Moment guitarists Randy Weitzel and Chris Howorth on their KISS memorabilia collections. There was one feature that never made it into print however — a 2015 interview I conducted with legendary guitarist Steve Vai about his passion for beekeeping. A gifted storyteller, he revealed a staggering knowledge of all things bee-related in an interview that went well over the allotted time. The reason that the feature was never published was that at the time of the interview, Steve was between bee colonies — he had none on his property and consequently, we couldn’t send Steph over for pictures.

I don’t know if he’s has set up any new colonies since then, but I came across the interview while reviewing some old transcripts and I think it would be a shame if these stories never saw the light of day. And so, with the caveat that the interview below is nearly seven years old, here is Steve Vai on beekeeping.

How on earth does a world-famous guitar virtuoso get into beekeeping?

My wife and I moved into this two-acre property in Encino with our two little boys and it had been vacant for ten years. I wanted to revitalise the property so I did some research and found that carpenter bees are good pollinators, so I sent away for some carpenter bees but it didn’t work. They built a little house that was like three inches high. It didn’t work. So I did some more research and discovered that honeybees are incredible pollinators and that it’s a really simple hobby. It’s fun and interesting. So I called a local beekeeper and he brought me a swarm and I started my own colony. I built my own super – the box with the frames where you keep the hive – and we populated it with the bees. It was fascinating and I loved it right away. The one colony turned into another because during swarming season they’d swarm and I’d capture them. At one point I had about seven colonies.

That sounds like a lot…

It was! I couldn’t handle them all because when you’ve got to pull the honey, it turned into like three days work out of the year, which was really just a big wine and cheese party for my wife and her friends to come by. But it’s a wonderful hobby and it’s easy. I highly recommend it. I know it sounds esoteric, but it’s really not.

How so?

It’s helpful to both the environment and the bees and these days, you can go to places like Williams Sonoma for beekeeping equipment. I find it really relaxing. Bees are fascinating creatures with a social infrastructure that you can’t begin to imagine – the communication, the focus, everything they do. Whenever I’m with the bees, because they’re completely connected with nature, I become very present. They invite you to become present with nature and it’s one of my favourite things to do. And there’s not a ton you have to do; it might take maybe an hour a month. You go in the hive, make sure they’re OK and not getting sick but that’s it. When you pull the honey, that’s a lot of work though. It takes about a year for a hive to mature to the point where you can start pulling honey.

Let’s just dive right into the most metal part of bees — they can literally kill people. What’s the difference between those kind of bees and the ones that you keep?

The bees that I keep can kill people, but it’s based on the temperament of the hive. Honey bees in general are docile, they don’t really attack unless you start poking them around. They usually never attack when they’re swarming. Swarming is their process of finding a new home. I know way too much about bees… ha ha You’ve got this hive full of bees and most of them are worker bees – all female. Then there’s one queen. What happens is this phenomenon where the hive gets too small and the colony is growing, so they need to swarm. The queen leaves the hive – one of only two times she leaves – and she takes about half of the bees in the hive with her. The first thing they do is swarm into a neighboring tree or something. While they’re swarming, they’re not aggressive. Unless, of course, if you do something stupid. But that’s why that’s the best time to capture a swarm. I’ve captured many swarms. You get sugar water and you spray them – and they don’t care – and then you cut the branch, shake it into a box, and if you get the queen – which I’ve only missed once – they all stay in there and now you’ve got a new hive. But while they’re in that tree, a committee of fifteen or twenty bees get together and communicate with pheromones, which are orders, and each goes out in a separate direction to look for a new place to make a hive.

Are some hives more aggressive than others?

The hive will have a particular temperament based on the queen. If she grew up in a rough neighborhood, you’re going to have a rough colony and I’ve had some really rough colonies – I’ve had to wear two suits to get into them and they still stung me. But that’s different from the Africanized bees which are a threat and which will kill you. You have to piss off a regular honey bee for about 45 seconds before the send out a pheromone that says “Ok, let’s get this fucking guy.” But you can still get away from the swarm – which isn’t a big swarm anyway – before they attack you. But if you get into an Africanized hive – which are called ‘killer bees’ – they only take like ten seconds to respond and they’re very aggressive. They look like regular honey bees but they’re a tiny bit smaller.

Is that when it’s time to hit the pool?

You can’t even jump into water to escape Africanized bees, because they’ll just wait. If you ever get attacked by an Africanized hive, the only thing you can do is run in a straight line without stopping for at least a quarter mile. At least. Or half a mile. You can’t do anything else because they won’t stop. You’re dead.

So you’re currently between bees?

My last colony collapsed six months ago and I lost my last hive and what’s funny is that they were Bette Midler’s bees. She had a bee problem at her place and my beekeeper friend went over there and captured the swarm from some part of her property and brought them to me. Every now and then I’d go past the hive and I’d hear them singing Wind Beneath My Wings… ha ha!

Is it hard work to get the honey out?

I just had the gardener clean out an area where I’m putting some new hives. They’re great for the property and it’s fun. When they boys were little they used to love going into the hives and the honey harvest is just a blast! You gather all these supers full of honey and I have an extractor and you take the frames that have all honeycomb on them and we have this hot knife that melts the caps off them. You take the frame in the extractor – you put like ten frames in there – and it spins around electronically and splashes the honey against the walls and you strain and strain and bottle it. My last big harvest was five hundred pounds.

Steve Vai’s Fire Garden Honey, 2000

Can you eat it right away?

Yup. You can just reach into the hive, pull out a chunk and eat it just like that. It’s really nice. I was selling it through my web site for charity (note that at this time, Steve is not selling any on his site). And for years I’d send it to people for gifts and as thank yous and of course, we ate a lot of it. One Christmas season can claim two hundred bottles…

Let’s get down to business — have you ever been stung?

(laughs) Too many to keep count, but only when I’ve done something stupid. One time I’m in my backyard and there’s this big tree, right by the studio. The sky turns black with the swarm, so I wait for them to land in a tree. One of the things you can do when you see a swarm, if they’re not going to their new home – if they’re just going to some tree nearby to wait for the committee to come back with their findings – if you take two pots and bang them together, the queen will come down. Something about the sound does it. So I’m banging these pots and one of them breaks and lands on the roof of the studio. So I climb up on the roof of the studio and I have my suit on and I’m climbing up the tree with this empty cardboard computer box with a rope tied to it and on the end was the broken pot handle which I was throwing over the branch so I could pull the box under the swarm, shake the tree and capture the swarm. But every time I looked up, the veil was in the way, so what does Stupid do, but he takes the veil off… So I’m in a tree, I’ve got this pot handle with a rope on the end and I’m trying to throw it over this gigantic branch with this gigantic swarm over my head and what did I do? I hit the swarm. Half of it – probably ten thousand bees – fell on my head, down the back of my suit. I was out of the tree and onto the studio roof, completely  naked, in about four seconds. And they stung the piss out of the back of my neck.

That qualifies as properly horrible.

Another time there was a huge swarm in the sky at the corner of Encino Avenue and Ventura Boulevard, right down the street from my house, and people were freaking out. When people see bee swarms, they freak. Of course, you rarely see people get stung by a bee swarm unless they try to swat at it. So I go down there in my bee suit with my computer box and it lands in a bush. So there’s now a crowd gathered around and here’s this dude walking down the street in a beekeeper suit to save the day. So I pick up the branch and everybody’s like “Ooooo!” and I put it in the box and close the box. Now inevitably, there’s always a bunch of bees that will sort of swarm around the box. They’re from the swarm but they’re not in it. So I’m walking down the street in my suit with these bees, and I know I’m completely safe, because they don’t sting when they swarm, and secondly I’ve got my suit on. But I started running up and down the street, screaming and pretending to panic, crying “Help! Help! They’re killing me!” People are freaking out and I’m just laughing my ass off…

On a scale of one to ten, how metal is beekeeping?

(laughs) Well, let’s see who else tries it.

Steve with a box full of bees