Smoke doesn’t make bees nicer. It keeps the alarm from spreading. Learn to calm the alarm in you.

Smoke interrupts the signal that tells a colony to defend itself, so the bees are not soothed so much as stopped from passing panic around. Spreading alarm is the actual problem, in a hive, in a room of people and inside one person. Something that halts the spread does more good than something that argues with the fear. Interruption is often the most practical kind of calm.

Notice what interrupts your own alarm before it multiplies. Cold water, a walk outside, naming the thing out loud, one slow task with your hands. Keep two of those ready this week so you are not choosing while panicking.