I spent my summer vacations at my grandma’s after my 6th-grade examinations. Grandma lives in a small village in Kerala in India. It was always fun to be at her place, spending my days playing, helping in the kitchen and feeding the cows. I rarely visited grandma every year as I lived far away from my paternal home. Grandma was happy to have my company yet must have been about anxious how she could keep me busy for a whole month with no modern toys to play with. On the other hand, I was mindful not to annoy her with my pranks and was on my best behaviour. The warm and humid weather kept me mostly outdoors in grandma’s colossal garden, playing with bare feet and hands in the soil. The hot weather and my careless playing around obviously gave me an eye condition quite common in the tropics called a “Stye”. It was big and painful, making my bubbly self quiet and sluggish. Grandma noticed and must have felt pity to see her little one in agony, but she wasn’t the kind who mellowed down when crisis struck. She had a solution to everything and offered me a dab of honey from a small glass bottle that she treasured in her wooden cupboard. After applying the honey dab every morning, the stye disappeared within 3 days, as if nothing had happened. The honey, to my surprise, cured my condition, and I became curious to know where this miraculous cure came from. Coincidently, my uncle took up an adventure in the coming week to harvest the stingless bee honey from its nest in the crack of a stone wall. These bees were tiny like mosquitoes, and when I saw them rushing out, I wanted to run in any direction. My uncle informed me these bees do not sting but only tickle. This reassured me a little, yet it took some courage to stand there. Within seconds, several bees flew over my face, and they tickled just as my uncle told me. I caught a few, and they seemed sticky. Maybe it was their way to tickle predators off! But I was fascinated by how nature gave us the gift of bees that produced honey with medicinal value. Little did I know then that this summer vacation would be my gateway to a lifelong vocation, a connection to bees and their importance to ecosystems.