I live in suburbia near Chicago and we have two beehives in our back yard. We've had them long enough so that we can harvest the honey and sell it/use it. It's pretty cool. I'm super comfortable around honeybees now. The only time I was close to getting stung was after I helped extract the honey from the honeycomb. You can mow the lawn an inch away from the entrance of their hive and they won't bother you.

Bumblebees give me the ***** though, been stung a ridiculous amount of times by those lil' *******