This might not take the form of the sterotypical “anxiety”, but it’s a thing. You will, especially in your first few years, close up the hive and immediately start panicking. Why didn’t I see the queen? What if there were queen cells that I missed? I thought I saw a bee with DWV… Are my bees dying?
You will have an immediate urge, as soon as the hive is closed, to open the hive back up and have another look. This urge will build over the next few days, until you just can’t help yourself but to open the hive.
The bees have been doing this. When the dinosaurs looked up into the sky at the second sun and subsequently farted ash, the bees were still doing what they do now. Think of a colony like a sourdough starter. Every day you split your sourdough starter, and throw some of it away, and then raise a new starter from the remnants. The same sourdough starter you have 5 years later is from the same colony of yeast that started the whole process - the yeast have just been replaced over and over again. Likewise, your bees are just the result of millions of years of splitting colonies, year after year.
They got this far because, contrary to what your anxiety is telling you, they largely look after themselves.
If they swarm, you still have a colony. If the queen dies, you still have a colony. If you lose all your flying bees because you moved the hive, you still have a colony. And whilst there are times where a beekeeper will be responsible for ensuring that a colony survives rather than dies, those feature only occasionally in the beekeeping calendar. You might find that maybe once or thrice a year, your decisions are the difference between life and death for the colony.
The reason for your anxiety is reason itself. Your brain is a rather fancy biological computer who’s job is to spit out answers to very abstract problems. Sometimes the answers it spits out are ridiculous, but because it comes from our brain, we assume it’s right. It’s not always right.
The way we feel is a result of the computer searching for answers. Similar to when you ask chatGPT how long your toes are, it won’t give you a straight answer - it can’t - so it instead gives you a load of waffle that sounds like an answer, but it’s really not. Likewise, when you dont have the logic, understanding, or smarts to see a problem in the hive and to truly understand what it is you are seeing, your brain starts searching for answers.
The answer it spits out at you is a combination of things:
I’m going to put you in a state of stress because I know the bees matter to you; for me to provide you with an answer, I need more information. Thus, I will turn up the stress throttle until you go back into the hive and give me more information.
Your brain is lying to you, but not knowingly. You will go back into the hive, and answer the burning question of “where’s my queen”, or “did I see queen cells”, and once you find the answer to the burning question, your brain will hit the e-stop and reply with an answer:
I have turned down the stress throttle because I have all the information I need to give you an answer. The answer is: I don’t have a fucking clue. Thanks, byeeee 👋
If you find yourself getting anxious, it’s likely because you don’t have the beekeeping knowledge to reason through the problem.
A mentors job is to fill the reason gap, at least temporarily. A mentor is a temporary crutch for you to lean on whilst you get on your feet. You can use them for advice, for rubber-ducking , or for second opinions. The best way to use a mentor is to come up with a plan, and run the plan past your mentor. They (should) will give you honest feedback, and send you searching off into other reading to find better ideas or sign it off and say “give it a go!”.
Having someone experienced stand behind you confidently saying “See, you’ve got this!” is immensely supportive through the first few years, and also extremely helpful for navigating the very vague and ambiguous problems of beekeeping.
One of our mantras here at r/beekeeping: There’s rarely a time in beekeeping where the problem cannot be made infinitely worse simply by opening the lid.
So go sit down, have a cup of tea, and worry about it next week. In the meantime, go and talk to your mentor; read a book; watch some YouTube videos; or reach out to the subreddit for advice, we’re here to help and you can get lots of different opinions about your problem that you can use as basis for your further reading.