It’s been a fantastic Auckland Anniversary weekend – no, not because I’ve had good blood sugars, absolutely far from it. (After waking with a 20 something on Saturday, I woke with an 18 something on Sunday then got it down and then it rocketed back up into the 20s in the late afternoon for no apparent reason, VERY frustrating).

Anyway – the reason it’s been such a great weekend is because it’s been absolutely faultless weather for one, and secondly because this morning I went on my very first ever beekeeping excursion – yeah!

I was offered the chance to go fishing on my friend’s fancy work boat on the same morning, and while the thought of gallivanting about on Auckland’s Harbour was tempting, I opted instead for the new and awesome adventure of going along with my father-in-law and brother-in-law to the former’s stash of beehives out in the Waitakeres. He’s been a beekeeper for the longest time, both professionally and as a hobby and I’ve been asking for ages if I can go along. (To the right is a pic of him at work from this morning).

The whole thing was totally fascinating, and really interesting. But there are a couple of things about beekeeping and being diabetic which struck me. For one, you are covered from head to toe. You wear the white suits with the mesh area around your head, and you have gumboots on the bottom and you cover your hands with gloves. Not great if your pump alarms or if you feel you need to do a BG reading. After about two hours I thought I’d best do a test so had to go far away from the bees and get my gloves off and do a test. I needed a correction, so had to un-suit and fish my pump out of my jeans pocket, then suit up again.

The second thing to watch out for is pretty obvious: honey. By the time you’ve extracted a couple of buckets you’ve got honey on your boots, all over your clothes and everywhere on your gloves. It’s then that you really need to make sure you have sanitising hand gel for the after-beekeeping blood test.

Somehow despite being surrounded by (and covered in) all this sweet honey, I managed to ace my BG – 7.6. Brilliant.

EDIT: It’s one day later now and the bee stings I got (nine in total) have shown themselves properly (as little infected bumps on my hands) and my hands are a bit puffy. Also woke up with a BG of 15.7 which makes me wonder if my body is trying to fight off the infection. Hmmmm. Perhaps beekeeping is not the career for me).