Rob Hull shows off his new book, “The New Bees Newbie Manual for Being a Bee,” while visiting his hives.
Photo: Kat Szmit
By Kat Szmit
Ten years ago, Rob Hull of Springvale decided to become a beekeeper. Not long afterwards, he started drawing cartoons about his bees. Fast forward to this year and Hull has now published his sixth bee book, “The New Bees Newbie Manual for Being a Bee.”
Hull’s latest work is essentially a graphic novel that offers readers an in-depth look at what it means to be a bee.
“The idea is that it’s a manual for new bees to know how to do their jobs in the hive,” Hull said. “It goes through all the different types of bees and all of the jobs they have. It’s kind of edutainment.”
Hull said there are two beekeeping magazines in the U.S.; he has book reviews in each of them this month. And it all started with curiosity.
“It was just something I had in my mind for a while,” Hull said. “I do other things, too. I’ve done maple syruping, woodworking. It was just another thing to try and so I tried it.”
When Hull began his beekeeping adventures, he got involved with both the York County and Maine State Beekeepers Associations, helping them do a little fundraising.
Hull has five hives, though not all of them have bees. He suffered some losses last winter, but not from colony collapse disorder. Instead, Hull attributes his losses to a busy fall season that didn’t allow him enough time to properly interact with the bees.
“It’s really my fault that they didn’t make it, but it was a hard winter for a lot of people. There were a lot of colony losses last year.”
Hull said that colony collapse disorder was something beekeepers were talking about 10-15 years ago when no one was sure what was impacting hives.
“For the most part we know what causes it now,” Hull said. “Nutrition, disease, pesticides. It’s hard to keep hives alive. It didn’t used to be as hard 40-50 years ago. It’s gotten a lot harder because of pests, diseases, climate change, and lack of forage for the bees.”
While Hull was disappointed with the losses, he took it in stride, knowing it’s part of life as a beekeeper.
“You feel kind of disappointed. But I’m not a person who names their bees,” he said. “There are people who name the queens, name the hives. I’m not quite that sentimental about it.”
This year, Hull decided not to replace what was lost because he was focusing on bringing his latest book to life. His first bee drawings began a few months after he started his first hives. He and his son, then eight or nine, were doodling after dinner in the evenings.
“One evening I just started doodling a bee cartoon,” Hull said. “I realized I had a lot of ideas for bee cartoons. So, I started publishing them to social media.”
Hull has now created more than 700 bee comics (731 as of this writing), some of which have been put into a series of six books, including one in which a bee thinks she’s a superhero, called “Not All Superheroes Wear Capes.”
His newest book, Hull said, took him roughly 16 months to complete.
“It was taking me on average a couple weeks to do each page,” he said.
His hope, when people read his books, especially “The New Bees Newbie Manual for Being a Bee,” is that they come away with a better understanding of not only bees, but nature, as well.
“That there are other organisms that are impacted by the things that we do,” Hull said.
He also finds bees and beekeeping quite funny at times, which fuels his comics.
“Bees are hilarious. There are a lot of funny things about bees and keeping bees,” Hull said. “Bees crawling up your pantleg, hive tools disappearing, your smoker going out at the worst moment.”
When working with his hives, Hull wears a jacket. He used to use a veil, then had a rough experience pulling supers (where the honey is stored) off a hive to harvest honey. The bees found a way under the veil.
“I was stung eight times on the head,” Hull said. “I switched to a jacket after that because I really didn’t like getting stung in the head.”
Hull’s advice to those pondering their own beekeeping adventures is to take a class. https://yorkcountybeekeepers.mainebeekeepers.org/upcoming-class-schedule/
“Definitely take a class before you get your hive and make sure you understand what you’re doing,” he said. “You’ve got to make sure that you know what you’re doing before you start.”
He also cautions that not every year will be a banner year for honey.
“It can certainly pay for itself if you’re doing well and get a lot of honey, and have people to sell it to,” he said. “But no one’s really becoming a millionaire off bees.”
Hull said the multifaceted nature of beekeeping is what keeps him invested.
“Some people do it as a ‘save the bees’ mentality; some people do it as sort of a sideline way to make some money selling honey,” he said. “It’s just fun. I just enjoy doing it.”
You can find “The New Bees Newbie Manual for Being a Bee,” as well as comics and more on Rob Hull’s website, beeingapis.com
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