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When Michele and I moved to Forest Hills, we fell in love with the area’s natural beauty and abundance of trees. We didn't just want to live here; we wanted to root ourselves in the landscape. Over the last few years, we’ve been converting our property into a permaculture food forest—a project that recently earned us a backyard habitat certification from the Audubon Society. I’ve always felt a deep connection to the outdoors through hiking and foraging, but as I looked around our local green spaces, I realized that nature here needs advocates. It needs work.

I decided it was my turn to step up and give back. I joined the Forest Hills Tree and Shrub Committee, thinking I’d be planting saplings and discussing canopy health. I had no idea it would lead to a grueling, seven-hour rescue mission that would test every ounce of my martial arts training.

The Doomed Colony

The crisis began on a freezing day in February. A utility crew doing power line maintenance cut down a massive, mature tree they weren't actually cleared to remove. Normally, that’s just a bureaucratic headache. But this specific tree was home to a wild honeybee colony. The chainsaw had sliced directly through the heart of their hive, exposing them to the brutal winter elements.

Bees keep the interior of their hive at a balmy 93–97° no matter the season. This precise climate is critical for the developing brood as even slight variations in temperature can cause deformities or death. Exposed to February’s wet, freezing weather meant that this hive was doomed without direct intervention.

Since I was already planning to start my own apiary in the spring, I volunteered to see if anything could be saved. Against all odds, when I checked the leftover stump, the bees were still clinging to life. I quickly built a Langstroth deep box, loaded it with frames of foundation, and secured it over the exposed stump to shield them. Throughout the rest of the winter and into the spring, I fed them a constant supply of 1:1 sugar syrup, knowing most of their honey stores had been destroyed.

They survived. But as the weather warmed, I knew I had to get them out of that broken stump and into a permanent home. I built a custom bee vacuum, formulated a plan, and waited for the right day.

Last Wednesday, the day arrived.

Finding Calm in the Chaos

I think I fell in love with beekeeping for the same reason I love Shaolin Kempo—there’s no endpoint to the learning. I can be the perpetual student with every experience being an opportunity to adapt, learn and improve. For example, during a point sparring match, you have to stay calm, regulate your breath, and be 100% focused on every move your opponent makes. You learn that you can’t muscle your way to victory, you have to plan, yield, redirect—and recover when the plan doesn’t work.

Opening a hive of 50,000 stinging insects actually has a lot in common with a sparring match. A certain level of fearlessness and hyper situational awareness is required—listen to the pitch of the bees when you open the hive, watch the guard bees at the entrance, and control any anxiety you feel. Check your ego, you’re not here to dominate the bees, but to be a facilitator of their natural rhythm and growth. Getting stung is just a reminder to work more mindfully…to listen better…to learn more.

I needed every bit of that mental discipline the moment I started up my chainsaw last Wednesday.

The first step in my plan had caused me much anxiety over the last four months: I had to carefully cut a section of the stump out to access the honeycomb. Normally, this wouldn’t be a worry at all—I grew up using chainsaws—but this particular tree, a black locust (one of the hardest of the hardwoods in North America) had been happily growing on a very steep ravine slope…and it had been raining the day before. Balance was precarious on the slippery slope, but after giving the bees a puff of smoke to announce my presence, I cut out a large square section of wood and let it tumble down the ravine.

I realized at this point that I had seriously miscalculated: this hive hadn't been there for a season; it had been there for years. The massive cavity was packed tight with towering sheets of wild honeycomb that stretched down to within inches of the interior base. It was a metropolis of thousands of bees. A typical commercial beekeeping hive box will house around 30,000 bees—the tree cavity was at least six times that capacity…and I had brought only two deep boxes to house the bees in. Staring at the sheer size of the task in front of me, my confidence began to wane. But, amidst all the buzzing chaos in both the log and in my head, Michele kept up the smoke to keep the bees calm and I got to work: vacuuming bees off the comb, cutting it to size, rubber banding the brood comb into my frames, and tossing the extra comb into a storage bin, all the while keeping an eye out for the queen.

As the morning wore on, the day turned sweltering hot. Inside my heavy bee suit, I was sweating so profusely that I had to temporarily stop and remove my glasses just so I could see. The bees let me know several times exactly how unhappy they were with my grand reconstruction project, stinging me right through my nitrile gloves.

Stay calm. Shake it off. Move more mindfully. Eventually, reality caught up with my tools. I ran out of rubber bands, and when the third and final battery for my bee vacuum died, I realized it was time to call it. It was not a perfect, textbook victory. I had failed to find the queen and I had only gotten maybe 80% of the bees safely moved into my box. Feeling defeated and exhausted, I closed up the hive box, left it next to the stump, and drove away, hoping the remaining colony would settle down and move inside. I had classes to teach at the dojo that evening, and I was in desperate need of a shower!

Stepping onto the mat that evening to teach, my body ached and my hands throbbed from the stings. But my mind was entirely clear. I realized then that the true value of being a martial artist isn’t about learning how to fight people. It’s about cultivating the stamina, the grit, and the profound respect for tradition and our students to show up when needed.

Once classes were over, I waited for sunset and returned to the stump in the dark. The woods were entirely quiet—except for a deep, resonant, victorious buzz coming from inside my hive box.

Success! The majority of the remaining bees had followed the colony inside.

I quickly plugged the entrance, strapped the hive together, closed the buckets of salvaged comb, and transported everything to my bee yard. I set the hive in position, opened the entrance, and hoped for the best.

It’s only been a few days, but the hive is incredibly active. They are flying, foraging, and building.

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I sat today in my apiary watching the bees flying in and out of their new home. I’ve been giving them shavings of beeswax to repair the damage I caused and letting them move the honey and bee bread from the old comb scraps into their new home. Upon reflection, it struck me how often we tell our students that the skills and lessons they learn in class will help them in the real world. This week, my martial arts training didn't just help me—it saved a wild colony of bees. To me, that is what being a martial artist is all about: having the strength to protect, the humility to adapt when things get messy, and the willingness to do the hard work for our communities both on and off the mat.

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