I’ve wanted honey bees out at the farm for months.
To have honey bees is… sexy. Sexy in that politically correct kind of way… as in it’s cool to like honey bees and want honey bees and protect honey bees because we’ve heard that they are on the brink of collapse and/or pesticide poisoning or some other awful anthropogenically sourced horror, their demise heralding possibly the end to all that we know of as pollinated fruits and vegetables.
We humans like to be saviors.
Like a lot of ‘newsy worth’ information today, this isn’t what research says… for one thing, we brought honey bees to the America’s in the early 1600’s because we liked the honey. This whole pollination thing was well taken care of by our homeboy pollinators, solitary bees and wasps and flies, that by the way, don’t make a drop of anything sweet and rarely if ever sting while living mostly solitary lives underground. As it turns out they are the ones in danger. This is NOT to say that I’m not sympathetic to the honey bee plight nor does it say this is the reason I wanted them. It’s not and it isn’t.
I wanted them because they are positively fascinating. Just like ants, but way more…sexy in a non biting, non irritating, I won’t come to your picnic.. oh wait. Yeah they will. Let’s face it. Its the you-had-me-at-honey thing.
Now the really awful truth is that I have never been a huge fan of honey. Preferring my sugars in more darkly granulated form I’m pretty much going to always opt for the sweetness of fake brown sugar any and every day. Honey has a … sort of natural, good for you, kind of taste that doesn’t quite satisfy that part of me that wants bad for you things… But, it pays to be flexible and open-minded, even if one has to be shown the miraculous before proper appreciation can occur.
Things like honey bee colonies can do that. The bees that my brother gave me two years ago for my birthday made the best honey I have ever tasted this summer. Despite changes in their environment like, I don’t have a clue what they are foraging for in Waller county since everybody is growing grass for cows and they’ve had to fight off damn small hive beetles, that are spreading across the globe from sub Sahara Africa at a most alarming rate, my bees did their little miraculous, unique thing. Truly. Take a look…
Oh, and I sure do love the men God has put in my life…
