If you’ve ever searched through all the beekeeping gloves available for sale you’ll notice that all of them have some sort of arm sleeve attached to the glove part. You also may have noticed by now that our Apis Tactical Beekeeping Gloves do NOT have any sleeves attached. …why is that?
To answer the question of why our Apis Tactical Beekeeping Gloves do not have sleeves attached we first need to take an accurate look at why traditional beekeeping gloves all have sleeves in the first place. There are two main reasons for the sleeves:
- Protection of the forearms and elbows from bee stings.
- Tradition
Let’s focus on the first reason, protection. In certain regions, it is common for beekeepers to only wear a light shirt along with a tie-down separate veil and traditional gloves. Since the most often stung places tend to be the hands, face, and arms (usually in that order)… this provides enough protection for general light beekeeping duties. This set-up works well for working with docile bees in good weather when you are not removing honey. This is the one scenario where it makes the most sense to use gloves with attached sleeves because the beekeeper is not wearing a beekeeping suit or jacket.
What doesn’t make sense to me or my brother, the commercial beekeeper, …is wearing a beekeeping suit AND traditional beekeeping gloves with sleeves. That’s just putting sleeves over sleeves! It is way too warm! My brother and I haven’t worn sleeved gloves for years since he started wearing mechanical style gloves because they worked so much better. When I asked him what purpose the sleeves on beekeeping gloves served, he said he had no idea.
I’ve since asked around when I’m at national beekeeping events and the only answer I’ve ever received as to why the beekeeping glove sleeves were necessary was, “they stop bees from stinging your arms and elbows.” An interesting story related to this little factoid happened just recently. I had my brother order a specific new beekeeping jacket from some other company so he could evaluate it for me. He ended up getting stung a number of times in the arms and elbow area, which had never really happened to him before. Apparently, if you have a poor quality beekeeping suit or jacket, …getting stung in the arms and elbows is actually a real thing!
So the question, “to sleeve or not to sleeve” remains. We chose to produce our Apis Tactical Beekeeping gloves without sleeves because our goal is to make beekeeping more enjoyable. Going sleeveless (with regard to gloves) will result in much more comfort since keeping your arms cooler makes a HUGE difference in maintaining cooler body temps and how cool you will feel in a beekeeping suit or jacket. Add to that fact: a. most of the time you really shouldn’t even need sleeves to prevent stings to your arms, and b. in scenarios where bees are likely to sting, you should be wearing a beekeeping suit or jacket anyway. While we don’t want to disparage competitors’ products, if your suit or jacket is not able to prevent stings… is it really doing its job?
So what should you do if you like our gloves but find yourself needing sleeves? The good news is that it is easy and inexpensive to purchase ventilated beekeeping sleeves. A simple online search will produce several sleeve products for sale (they are sometimes called “gauntlets” or “cuffs”). An even better idea is to purchase Beekeeping Sleeves from Apis Tactical! If there are currently no sleeves in our catalog (depending on when you read this), just send us a note and I’ll be sure to get some to you.
Welcome to sleeveless beekeeping! We know you’ll never go back.
