The Secret Life of Dan’s Bees.
Sunday evening up at Dan and Ann’s was book club - this month’s book was The Secret Life of Bees. The book itself was o.k. - good stuff about black-white southern culture in the 60’s, good characters, lots of little aphorism gems, and fabulous stuff on bees and bee hiving (bee homes, not hairdos). But the ending was formulaic and somewhat trite. Movie script here we come.
But, the highlight of the evening was receiving a real life lesson in bee keeping from Dan. Dan is a beekeeper - in the summer only. Keeping the bees alive through an Alaskan winter is a “zero sum” game and it’s a real challenge to get the bees through the winter without a massive die-off. So at the beginning of August, the bees are humanely killed. But, setting that downer aside, the whole bee keeping thing is fascinating. It was fun listening to Dan talk about bee behaviors mentioned in the book and his similar experiences. Bees are definitely all about being calm - they don’t like nervous bee keepers and if they don’t like you, well you’re stung dead meat. We learned all about the queen - everything revolves around the queen. Swarming behaviour is the result of the queen moving and the bees swarm around her where ever she lands.
The evening was total fun. And we finished it off with a vertical tasting of Dan’s honey: 2005, 2006, and 2007. The 2005 honey was very dark in color and had strong tastes of clover and mint. The 2006 honey was much simpler and had a smooth but rich honey flavor. The 2007 was my favorite - complex and rich with multiple distinguishably different honey overtones. Dan doesn’t do anything to affect the flavor of the honey - the flavor has everything to do with the flowers that bloom during June and July. For example 2005 was an extremely warm summer and the clover bloom was huge. Hence the strong clover flavor. The past two summers have been much wetter so the blooms have been more subtle - cold weather flowers.
What fun! If I didn’t have to commit mass bee-a-cide, I could actually get excited about becoming a bee keeper. Well, there’s also the stinging. Even if you’re a toughie and dress appropriately - bee mist net, carhart pants, etc., you still get stung. Evidently the bees search out and find soft seams. Dan’s carhart pants are very thick with no soft seams - except for in one area - the important family jewels zone. Dan has experienced more than one sting in that delicate area. ouch…
Here’s Dan with one of his [empty] supers (bee hive):
Hello. I am 
Okay, he kills them off every August. Where do next year’s bees come from?
A sting in the hoo-ha sounds pretty brutal.
I also read this book and thought it was just ok. I am fighting my way through The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. People made it sound like the best thing since sliced bread, but I don’t think it’s all that fabulous. However, I’be made the commitment to read the darn thing; I rarely put a book down without finishing it.