For novice beekeepers, the fear of being stung can be the biggest mental hurdle to overcome. Until their bodies grow accustomed to venom through repeated exposure, fledglings must often deal with pulsating welts and fiery itching at the site of stings. However, aside from physical annoyance and perhaps an unsettling anticipation of more pain, there are few weighty consequences to those first few stings—unless, of course, one is in a prison, where I found myself last summer, training offenders at the Cedar Creek Corrections Center to keep bees as part of the Sustainable Prisons Project (The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA). While examining a brood frame in a newly installed colony, one of my students was stung above his right eye. Given that his was not the first sting sustained in our course, neither my seven students nor I thought much of the incident at the time. I left that evening brainstorming the next day’s activities and cataloging the materials I would need to pack, unaware that my student’s gift from a defensive worker was swelling markedly and had transformed from a physical headache to a political one. Beehives are not yet a common sight in prisons, and prior to their arrival in two Washington State facilities, swollen faces were almost always the result of another offender’s angry fist, elbow or knee. That July night, my student’s Quasimodo-like appearance was assumed to have a similar explanation, and it took discussions between him, several staff members, an administrator, and another student to finally convince the collective administration that a sting was the truth rather than a creative excuse to shirk the punishment of solitary confinement. The following morning, the Sting Log was born. This was nothing more than a bound notebook containing signed and dated descriptions of every sting; entries were added to corroborate stories that beekeeping lumps had not come from less wholesome activities. Although simple and quick to maintain, the book provided an invaluable convenience for my students in their daily co-existence with prison staff. The Sting Log incident was among several unforeseen challenges I encountered while teaching beekeeping in prison (e.g., signing out one set of equipment at a time from a double locked box was another); however, it was the familiar elements of beekeeping that proved to be the clearest testament to our cherished pastime. Bees, in all their fascinating glory, were still bees behind prison bars. Despite living where no bee box had gone before, my students installed nucs, searched for queens, boiled syrup, controlled swarms, set up observation hives, extracted honey, and made lip balms. Among the hives and gardens, their thoughtful questions fueled in-depth discussions on insect anatomy, colony pests, disease diagnosis, and pollination ecology. The use of beesuits was abandoned faster than I anticipated, falling victim to the macho competition inherent in many prison activities; once one offender removed his suit after seeing me work without one, the rest basically had to follow. As the administration grew to trust my students, the educational opportunities for them quickly surpassed my initial expectations for what could occur in a prison. I was able to bring in a microscope and tools to dissect giant grasshoppers and allow students to practice tracheal mite dissections. Despite little formal scientific training, the students devised a way to transfer colonies from Langstroth hives to top-bars and took weekly data on colony growth and comb use after the switch. Although I would love to describe more details of my experience with prison beekeeping, I have the even greater privilege to introduce a remarkable graduate of the program. Daniel, or “Travatte” as I was required to address him at the facility, was the first beekeeping trainee at Cedar Creek Corrections Center. His successful early work with Vicki Briggs, a counselor at the facility, was a major inspiration for expanding the program to include other offenders. Daniel’s fervor for all things Apis led him to become the consummate beekeeper at Cedar Creek. I’ll never forget his excitement after receiving Laidlaw and Page’s Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding, followed by his accurate recitation of its contents a mere 24 hours later. He translated those personal studies into a fruitful attempt to graft eggs into homemade queen cups. Daniel was an active collaborator in my teaching and he repeatedly supplemented my lessons with pertinent anecdotes. His rigorous, unprompted course notes recorded a daily summary of our activities and the status of each hive, and his colorful pamphlets promoted the program to visiting families and administrators. Daniel has since been released from Cedar Creek and I wish him the best of luck in his new life on the outside. The following piece is further evidence of Daniel’s boundless intellect and passion for honey bees. Before I leave you to read Daniel’s wonderful work, I want to emphasize one last point about the prison program. In Daniel’s piece, you will see that I am repeatedly referred to as “the biologist” and might assume that academic training is necessary to run such programs. However, that is not the case. The seeds for the prison beekeeping programs were planted by two visionary staff members, whose imagination and diligent efforts prior to my arrival paved the road for these courses. Vicki Briggs was a full-time counselor at Cedar Creek; she volunteered her precious time to introduce Daniel and a few others to the few hives on the grounds. Doug Raines was serving as the Environmental Officer at Stafford Creek Corrections Center when he first brought a few colonies past the fences to share with offenders. The expansion of the Sustainable Prisons Project allowed him to devote large blocks of his time to co-teaching alongside me. Doug was my mentor as I navigated the prison environment and he greatly facilitated the teaching process by generating offender interest and organizing materials. In fact, Doug brought his own hot knife and extractor into the facility for our honey harvest lessons! Both Vicki and Doug were able to begin hobbyist operations inside prisons with little more than prior beekeeping knowledge and a connection to the prison system. I urge anyone interested in expanding this idea to contact your local prison administrators and discuss the prospect of volunteering. Our program proved immensely rewarding for all of those involved, including me, and might be a good fit at other similar institutions. Program costs can be offset by donating equipment or building it onsite. Many prisons have woodshops on the grounds, where hive materials can be rapidly and inexpensively built. Indeed, almost all of the equipment used in the Washington programs, including sturdy Langstroth and top-bar hives, was built inside the prisons by offenders. I welcome any contact from curious and ambitious readers and could speak to my contacts at the Washington programs about connections to other facilities across the country. I can be reached by email at shapke@wsu.edu. Our work was supported by the Washington State Department of Corrections as part of the larger Sustainable Prisons Project at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. More information on that project and its extraordinary founder, Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, can be found at www.sustainableprisons.org.