My neighbour Hans allows a friend to maintain a set of bee hives on his land. They are tucked away in a far corner and are a perfect goal when out for a walk. It is pleasant to 'visit the bees', especially in the winter when they are snug in their wrapped up hives -- on a sunny day I can hear them buzzing inside their houses when I put an ear against a wall. Their emergence in the spring is a special time -- these hives seem to be doing fairly well, maybe because there is minimal use of agri-chemicals in our area.
Hans rails against them because they can clog up his sugar-water feeders for his beloved hummingbirds, but he likes to receive his 'rent' of honey when it is harvested.
I wanted for several years to keep a hive or two of bees but finally decided against it because of the responsibility -- I was afraid of the difficulties involved in keeping them disease-free.
I grew up with bees and have always had affection for them. We had a nest of feral honeybees in the east wall of our family house in Chippawa. The only time I was ever stung in the twenty-four years I lived there was the time I managed to step on one. We let them live there because we believed it was in some way lucky. The people we bought the house from in the '50's made my parents promise that we would keep the bees as they were because to destroy them would bring misfortune. Sadly, when my family sold the house in the '90's, the hive, by then much diminished, was destroyed by the new owners. Not sure how their luck, or lack of it, went.
Avaaz recently had an on-line petition for a campaign to eliminate agi-toxins known to harm bees. I was happy to sign it.
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