Research scientist Chia Lin goes to great lengths to maximize her time.
Dr. Chia Lin is a Research Scientist at the Rothenbuhler Honey Bee Research Lab in Columbus, Ohio. Originally from Taiwan, she moved to the United States in 2003 to study pollination ecology. Her beekeeping journey began in 2013 when she joined the Department of Entomology at The Ohio State University as a postdoctoral researcher. Her current research focuses on developing farm management strategies to enhance pollinator health and improve crop productivity. During the summer months, she manages over 100 honey bee colonies to support various research projects across Ohio.
In addition to her scientific work, Chia is a kindergarten teacher at the Columbus Chinese Academy. Outside of her professional life, she enjoys crocheting, building with Legos, and spending time with her family and two cats.
Story Transcript
I'm someone who likes routine. Every morning when I wake up, I run the schedule of the day through my head before getting out of bed. And I drink my coffee with the same mug that I had since graduate school. I take the same route to work like an ant following an ant trail.
I also thrive on being on time. But when I say on time, I don't mean arriving early to a meeting. If I have an appointment at 10:00, I don't plan to be there at 9:55. I want to be there at 10:00, that exact moment when the seconds on my digital watch change from 59 to 00. That is on time. And that is what I like to call a small achievement in life.
Now, I also tend to take on more tasks than I have time for. My day job is a scientist at a honeybee research lab where I design experiments, I apply for grants, collect data, and so forth. And I manage the honeybee colonies for research projects that need them. In the evening, I take online classes in Biostatistics. And on Saturdays, I teach Mandarin Chinese to little kids in a non‑profit organization.
I'm doing all of that, not because I have to, but I really want to. I love bees, I love research, I love my students, and believe it or not, I do love studying biostatistics.
So, one Saturday morning, this is about two years ago, I woke up, run the schedules in my head at breakfast, and started packing my bag for Chinese school, which my family goes to on Saturday afternoons. Then I realized that I had left my computer at work and I needed it to teach class.
So I told my husband, “I'll be back in 40 minutes.”
It usually takes about 15 minutes to work, and then 15 minutes back, that would leave me about 10 minutes to unlock the door in the building, find my computer, lock up and go back to my car again. There's plenty of time.
It took me exactly 15 minutes to get to bee lab. The first step was the key.
So, Rothenbuhler Bee Lab, in case you haven't been there, it's an old ranch‑style building with an orchard in the backyard. That's where we also have honeybee colonies. So I get in the building, I found my computer, I did a quick walk around to make sure windows are shut and lights are off, like what I usually do when I'm leaving the building.
I looked at my watch, and I said, “Oh, I still have five minutes.” So I decided to exit through the back door and look at the bee yard to make sure everything is okay there, too.
Now, as I was walking out the door, I looked up and there it was, a basketball‑sized cluster of bees hanging on the low branch of a peach tree. That is a swarm. Now, a swarm, a cluster of bees, may be intimidating for someone who is not familiar with honeybees but, in reality, that's actually the state when the honeybees are most docile.
Swarming happens when a colony grows quickly and is about to exceed the capacity of the hive structure. Now, the queen will take about half of her worker bee daughters and some resource and leave the hive to start a new home, when the remaining bees will make a new queen and take over the colony. That’s just the natural process of reproduction for honeybees.
Now, the swarm leaves the hive without knowing where they're going. So the next thing is they will find a structure to hang on nearby, like a tree or the side of a building, and they just wait there patiently for the scout bees to find a place to go.
If you ever come across a swarm and you feel particularly brave that day, I would encourage you to walk up and gently pet the bees and feel that warm buzz. It's amazing. And you won't get stung, I promise you. 95% of the time, you will be okay. 95% of the time.
Now, for beekeepers, a lot of us fall in love with honeybees through our first experience of catching a swarm. And even as an experienced beekeeper, we still love catching swarms. It's like collecting trophies. Economically, a swarm, if we were to buy packaged bees, that is an artificial swarm from bee suppliers, a swarm of that size, a basketball size, it will cost about $150 to $200. So a decent looking swarm within my arm's reach, that's really hard to pass up.
Remember that the swarms are looking for somewhere to live, so the idea of catching a swarm is really simple. You probably have seen this before. The beekeepers come up with a box under the swarm and they will shake or brush the bees in the box and then take it away, and that's it. Easy‑peasy.
And now, back in the bee yard, I had five minutes. I have this beautiful swarm in front of me. I have two choices. I forgot to mention, if you just leave the swarm alone, usually, they will leave in a couple of days as soon as they find a place to live. So my two choices are I can leave it alone and move on with my day, or I can catch the swarm, then move on with my day.
Of course, guess what do I choose? But I only have five minutes. I don't have my bee suit with me. It's going to take time to find the bee suit and the tools to do this safely.
I'll be fine. I'll be fine. I've caught swarms many, many times. And I've seen people catching swarms without bee suits and they're fine. So I will be fine.
So I grabbed a new box. It's a wooden box about the size of a small carry‑on suitcase. And I walk up to this door and it's just right above my head. At this point, a small ladder would have been helpful to set my box on, but I don't have one. So I decided to use my shoulder.
So I hold the box on my right shoulder and I position myself under the swarm. I grab the branch with my left hand, and I say, “Okay, now I'm just going to…”
So I count to three in my head. I say, “One, two, three.” And as I shook the bees, the box starts to slide off my shoulder. The next thing I know, the big cluster of bees fall on my head.
In case you're wondering how it feels to have a cluster or swarm falling on your head, imagine someone dumped a big bowl of Cheerios on your head. And every one of these Cheerios have tiny, tickly heads that they all start running up as soon as they touch your skin. That's how it feels like.
So I panic. I panic for a second. And then I quickly remind myself, “Well, the swarms are gentle. I'll be fine. They won't hurt me.” Until then I feel a zap under my arm. A poor bee has gotten squeezed between my body and the arm that was holding the box as I was trying to balance myself.
And even though honeybees are the most friendly and lovely creatures, when she's threatened with danger, she will release defense pheromones to communicate with her sisters about the situation, right? And another fun fact for you, a defense pheromone of honeybees smell like a sweet banana.
So the next second, I feel my face getting hit with a banana cream pie, and a very, very painful one.
So I was trying to balance myself, and it's like, oh, my God. I dropped everything. It's so painful. And I started running toward the building, and the cloud of bees just following me into the building. They just would not leave me alone.
So I ran under the sink and I turned on the faucet. I stick my head under there to wash the bees off. And I grabbed a ruler nearby to scrape them off my arms. It was chaos.
Finally, the buzzes calmed down. I look at the mirror and I counted, from what I can see, about 100 stings. I couldn't see the back of my head so I imagine there's probably another hundred more.
So I take out my phone and look at it. And I look at the time. “Oh, I'm really behind schedule.”
And I have the phone in my hand so I say, “Oh, okay, maybe I should call someone. I can call my husband to tell him I'm going to be late. Maybe I can call the ambulance just to be safe. But then I can't teach my class. Who's going to teach my class? I want to see the kids.”
So I call my beekeeping friend, Dale. And the reason I called Dale is because in the event that I end up in the emergency room, he would be the best person who can explain to the doctor what happened to me.
So I called and then Dale picked up the phone. I said, “Hey, Dale, I just broke the record number of stingers today.”
“What?”
Another thing that you didn't know about beekeepers, we like to brag about how many stings we get. It's like the battle and the stories, like it's all cool to make it look like really cool beekeeping.
So I talked to Dale for a bit. After that, I hung up the phone. I found the bee suit and went back out and put everything away, and I left.
I tried very hard to remember what I did for the rest of the day. I seriously can't remember. All I remember is in the next morning when I woke up, my face swelled up and it hurt to just talk and eat. But at that point, I'm extremely, extremely thankful that after 10 years of beekeeping, my body actually has desensitized to bee stings and bee venoms, so I can stand here and tell you about what happened that day.
But still, even to this day, I think about that moment often, especially when I'm competing with myself to be on time and especially when I'm thinking, “It's okay. Let's skip this step. I'll be fine.” That's when I will remind myself to take a deep breath, slow down and reassess my priorities.
I did it on time.