[member=132794]Scarlet.Dragon[/member] why not concentrate on native bees - bumble bees and solitary bees, as well as other flying pollinators such as hover flies? There are many, many different types of hoverflies - they don't sting, they don't buzz but they do look a little bit like wasps and flies, some even look like bees. I had a small phobia about bumble bees when I found a very angry one caught in my baby's clothes when I brought them in from the line (that baby is now 48!). It was buzzing like mad and struggling to extricate itself. A few years after this I realised my fear was rather silly, so I set out to quell it. By then it had spread to honey bees, even tv pictures of them moving in the hive. I knew I couldn't go the whole hog and start a hive, and anyway, knowing it takes a bee's whole lifetime to make something like a teaspoon of honey, I did not want to steal their honey. So now I concentrate on wild bees, and I find them absolutely fascinating. First thing was to discover that if a BBee flew straight at me, it wasn't attacking, it was just going about its business, and I was in the way. A beeline really is a beeline, whether a human is blocking it or not. I wouldn't go so far as to lift a bee in my hand, but I would always rescue one in trouble, by other means (jam jar). I got to like wasps by watching one way back in my allottment days, as it quartered the lettuce patch, picked off a caterpillar and staggered off to fly back with it to its nest as food for the young - what a useful insect!
So you don't have to brave a honey bee hive, just love our native flying insects