This one is from Futurama. Petunia is a minor recurring character who has, as of this writing, been seen only once as a Beekeeper, in a non-canon story in which she runs Petunia’s Self-Serve Bee Farm. Does she also run this place in canonical Futurama stories? Well, we don’t know. We simply can’t know that. It means that I don’t have to dock her any points for things she does in canonical appearances, since that is essentially a different character, but also it means I can’t award her any points for skills she displays or things she does in those canonical appearances. I can only infer things from this story alone.

Well, canonical stories or not, one of Petunia’s defining characteristics is that she’s an inveterate smoker (should I award a point because Beekeepers use smoke as a tool?). Also, while she wears a beekeeping mask, she doesn’t need the full suit so she’s either comfortable around the bees or just too numb to care if she’s stung. I do admit that she’s got an attitude problem. The very fact the place is “self-serve” is indicative of how little effort she wants to put into the project. But to counter that point, I’ve also got to talk about the bee farm itself. It seems to be going well enough. There’s plenty of hives, look at all the honey and combs and stuff. It’s even open late on Kwanzaa! The place is named after Petunia herself, so one assumes she gets the credit for the fact it seems to be running at least at a stable level. And there’s the big hive design on the roof and all the little hexagon combs on the signage. It’s good branding.

We’re told in this story that “there ain’t no beeswax in the whole world” and Petunia is able to recognize that the bees (apparently not just hers, but all of the bees on Earth, I guess) are “acting crazy” though she doesn’t seem to realize it is because of parasites. Also, she seems to have a fatalistic acceptance of this coming doom to the insects. But even while the bees are apparently so sick that they won’t make wax, we do see honey and combs for sale there. Somehow, in spite of her utter indifference, Petunia has kept the place running as the world’s bees (again, not just hers) are dying. I’d definitely give a better score if she actually bothered to do any one thing to help the bees, but alas, I can not.

Two Honeycomb out of Five. There are downsides (doesn’t seem to care), but there are upsides (good branding and apparent persistence) and they cancel each other out to reach the average beekeeper score.

The Bee-Man of Orn is a story written by Frank R. Stockton. It’s set in an ancient fantasy land called Orn and stars a Bee-Man. That all checks out so far, I suppose. Let’s look a little closer…

I’m going to start with a standard Beekeeper Review check on supernatural abilities: he’s got those. It is noted that even if the bees he lived with weren’t accustomed to him (though they are) it would be pointless for them to sting him because it would be like stinging a rock, since he’s so tough. It’s noted that he is able to locate wild bee hives with some instinctive knowledge that even he doesn’t understand. His bees are noted as being especially industrious and friendly. He’s shown to be able to undergo on a long and arduous journey while carrying a hive on his back, which provides honey for him to live off of (on smaller journeys he just lets the bees in his pocket produce the honey for him). And he’s brave enough that when he sees a baby in peril at the hands of a dragon, he will act to save that baby (using a hive as a projectile no less). It’s all very impressive stuff for a beekeeper, I’d say. But…

But does he actually KEEP the bees, or just hang around them?

The guy definitely lives with bees. That’s for certain. In fact, he lives in a hut the narration says is basically a hive, since every potential space for honeycombs is indeed taken up by honeycombs. He doesn’t need room for anything else, because he do anything else with it. He doesn’t seem to do much of anything. We never even see him caring for the bees or helping them in any way. He lives off their honey and uses their honeycombs when bartering for goods, but is he doing anything for them?

And when I say he doesn’t do much, I mean that he doesn’t seem to do ANYTHING else. One of the benefits of Beekeeping that I often extol is that it allows one time to do other things, like learning science or whatever. The Bee-Man doesn’t even seem to have any hobbies beyond wandering away from his own hives to find wild hives, ostensibly for fun.

But here’s the thing, his bees ARE thriving. And when, in the course of the story, the Bee-Man is de-aged back to infancy and given the chance to do his life over and maybe become something “better” he doesn’t become something else, he grows up to be the Bee-Man again. It’s like he “just knows” that this is what he’s supposed to be. As I mentioned, he’s able to find wild hives with supernatural ability that “just knows” where to go. I posit that he’s also unaware of the beneficial effect he has on the bees around him, even with minimal actual work. They get something from his very presence, something about his aura benefits the bees so that they are happy and healthy, and he “just knows” this is what he’s meant to be doing with his life.

Five Honeycomb out of Five. Even if it could be argued he’s closer to being a Four, he did it twice!

Ellen is a Beekeeper who appeared in an episode of Beavis and Butthead. We don’t know a lot about her. but she seems to be doing alright for herself. She’s got at least three hives, a regular table at a local farmer’s market complete with a sign saying “Ellen’s Honey”, and she sells jars of honey for fifty dollars. So there’s clearly some combination of the honey being really good and her customers being stupid. Either way, she’s found a reasonable amount of success at the job.

Obviously things go poorly from there. I can absolutely not penalize Ellen for saying something that steers Beavis and Butthead into doing incredibly stupid things. Every single person ever encountered by Beavis and Butthead has done the same. She takes no blame for what those idiots do. And when, as a result of their actions, Ellen’s home is filled with a nest’s worth of some of the most pissed-off wasps in history, I can’t really penalize her for being caught off guard and being unable to defend herself. She does, somewhat impressively, manage to jump through a kitchen window in her attempt to escape the wasps, though she unintentionally smashes through her own hives as a result. It’s not a great showing, but it isn’t her fault.

Two Honeycomb out of Five. Normal but successful Beekeeper, mild setback caused by idiots.

Gonna do one of those obscure easy ones today. Scott (no last name provided) is the narrator of a horror story called “The Queen of the Zombie Bees” by someone going by the handle Reene Writes. It’s a very short piece in the Creepypasta style, so we don’t get a lot of depth, but that will never stop me.

Scott is a Beekeeper and genuinely seems to love bees. It doesn’t seem like he is an apiarist professionally, he’s only got one hive I guess, but he enjoys it and respects them as animals. This causes problems between Scott and his neighbour, Miss Simpson, who hates bees and wants him to get rid of the hive. That status quo is broken when Simpson tries to get rid of Scott’s bees herself and she winds up possessed by the queen, who puppets Simpson’s corpse around and uses it as a hive for a colony of big fat bees making a strange blood honey. In spite of being described as nearly lifeless, these bees seem to be having success, they even manage to create another hive (presumably also “ruled” by the queen in Simpson’s body, I guess?) outside of Simpson’s house.

Scott sees that second hive and that’s what gets his attention. In spite of the animosity between him and Simpson, he suits up and goes over to investigate and try to help, though it is too late. He discovers the weird “zombie bees” and that the queen is puppeting Simpson around, the understandably flees and calls the cops. The zombie bees and their corpse-riding queen are suddenly nowhere to be found.

It’s like this, though: how did the bees do this? Is this level of supernatural talent in the bees a result of Scott being very good at beekeeping? It could be. In any case, the bees never did this to Scott. Maybe they respected him too much, but saw Simpson as a threat? It could very well be that if they had not been met with the hatred of Miss Simpson, their powers would have manifested in some less-icky way. Whatever the case, if they did care for Scott, it seems to have ended with this strange transformation, given that when he discovers what happened to Simpson, they attack him with pretty vicious intent.

Two Honeycomb out of Five. Any potential supernatural bonus points he gets are lost because, you know, he didn’t keep his bees. That’s a big part of it. But one thing I can’t take from him: the events of the story are said to happen the same day he narrates it, but that doesn’t stop him from opening with bad bee jokes.

Woody Boyd from Cheers is a bartender, but also a Beekeeper! It’s always a good sign when a Beekeeper is famous enough that he has his own Wikipedia page, so let’s see how Woody does.

Woody’s shtick on the show is that he is the good-natured farmboy from Hanover, Indiana who comes to the big city (in this case Boston) and works at the bar. His most common joke is that he’s slow or naive. The keeping of bees only came up in one episode (Season Seven, Episode Three, “Executive Sweet”, an episode that does not merit its own Wikipedia page). Surely, if it only came up once, it can’t be that big a facet of the character can it? Well, let’s see. In that episode Woody inherits 4000 Buckfast bees from his uncle, saying “When I was a kid, you couldn’t keep me away from my uncle Fergie’s hives.” That resulted in the people around town giving young Woody the nickname “Woody the Beekeeper” which certainly seems like enough to get him on the board for my purposes.

With uncle Fergie retired, Woody eagerly takes these bees and keeps them in the bar’s office until he finishes his shift. This is a sitcom, so of course the bees manage to get loose, but using the proper gear and equipment and only getting stung a couple times, Woody gathers them up and takes them home. That’s the last thing we know for sure.

Does Woody keep up his apiarist ways? Well, there’s no canonical proof, but I think so. Bartending is Woody’s preferred occupation. It’s where he’s meant to be. He was never going to leave the bar. The show ends with Woody elected as a city councilman, but we know from his appearance on Frasier that he went back to Cheers when that was over (which is not a surprise given that once, when talking about reincarnation, he said he’d like to come back in his next life as the President of France, because he thought that would be good for the bar). But one of my oft-cited benefits of keeping bees is that it can be done while still pursuing other occupations. We know that Woody did other kinds of farming while he lived in the city, he’s shown successfully growing a large pumpkin, so given the lack of evidence otherwise and how excited he was to receive them, I think I can rule that Woody probably continued to be a Beekeeper.

With that settled, how does Woody rate for the things that PDR uses to rate a Beekeeper? Well, he has positives and negatives. The guy is so sweet it seems like he might be immune to Beekeeper Rage. He does talk once about the need to bottle up feelings, but given how often he actually does let those feelings out I don’t think he really lives by it. That’s just one of several wrong-headed old-fashioned ideas that were instilled in him back in Hanover. Perhaps that upbringing is also the root of one of his biggest character flaws: when things are going very well for Woody (such as when he was first acclimating to his wife’s wealthy lifestyle, or even just when winning a lot of money via gambling) he can be rude. When it comes down to it though, Woody is too nice for the anger or the rudeness to stick. If he realizes that he is lashing out or mistreating anyone he will generally back down and try to fix things because he feels bad about it. He just likes people too much.

Some might think he should be docked for being dumb, but not me. And anyway, Woody’s intellect comes out in other ways. In fact, back in Hanover he was occasionally teased for being a “brainiac” in spite of being held back in school more than once. He’s able to do things like memorize the serial numbers on his money in case he needs to prove that it is his and he’s proven more than once to be good at gambling on sports and playing poker, though it seems more instinct than anything. Also, he can sleep standing up.

Still, Woody doesn’t have any paranormal abilities (though Hanover is once cited as UFO capital of the world) and he’s no good in a fight and seems to be more susceptible than the average person to hypnosis. I can’t rate him any higher than:

Three Honeycomb out of Five.

I admit that I’d love to be able to give him a point for being an ubiquitous part of popular culture, similar to how Friar Tuck got a bonus for being legendary, but Woody doesn’t quite clear that bar. Cheers is still remembered as a classic sitcom, sure, but I can’t deny that its not the zeitgeist-dominating juggernaut it once was. Maybe someday the kids will learn about Cheers and it will be popular again. Then Woody can show up on the Frasier reboot and it will focus intently on his beekeeping. Until then, this is it.