Author: Jeremy

My father was born in an age when the lack of a formal education was not necessarily an obstacle to personal success.  He left school in Devon, England, aged 16, and  retired some 45 years later, not only responsible for the maintenance of the national roads of an entire country but well respected by his peers, all of them degreed engineers.   No doubt, four years of building roads and bridges to allow the British forces to retreat before, and then advance after, the Japanese forces in Burma, was a vital part of his education. 

He spent week-long trips inspecting roads and visiting road crews, and over school holidays I would often accompany him.  My favorite memory is lying in the back of the station wagon parked at the Birchenough Bridge Hotel, alongside the Savi River, under a tree interlaced  with nests of masked weaver birds, watching for shooting stars in the vivid African night sky.  The masked weaver is a fascinating creature.  The males, for example,  build nests at the very ends of the branches of thorned acacia trees so as to make them inaccessible to snakes in particular.  The nest are architectural marvels, each consisting of several rooms, all but one of which are decoys.  When he is finished – some 12 to 14 hours of work in all – his partner inspects it.  Should it not meet her approval she rips it apart and he promptly builds another … until such time as she is satisfied. 

Another memory, less pleasant but probably more important, was when we were driving between road camps and my father decided to offer  some simple mental math problems involving speed and distance.  A typical example might be, if we are driving at 60 mph, how long will it take us to travel 30 miles?   I couldn’t do it. The more I tried, the more he explained, and the more frustrated I became.  Emotion superseded any ability on my part to think rationally . He could not understand why it was so difficult. The reason?  I did not understand that miles per hour meant how many miles one traveled in one hour.  It was a non-understanding of the word per.  It was a simple as that.

That was some 70 years ago, and I have not forgotten it. 

Ironically, when I was driving the 1400 miles to university twice a year, the speedometer in my car didn’t work (a broken cable, I discovered eventually.)  Thus I spent considerable time using the mile posts and a wrist watch  to calculate my speed, by which time I understood only too well what per meant! 

The point is, especially as that time of year approaches when bee classes start, we should never assume that what is obvious to us is equally obvious to those new to the craft. Beekeeping, like most things, has its own language, and there are terms  that we take for granted – larvae, pupae, comb, propolis, foundation, frames, EFB, AFB, varroa mites – which may be new to many in the class.  Some will ask; others will keep quiet and hope they can figure it out from the context.  It doesn’t help when some terms are mispronounced; for example, the first instructor I had pronounced honey bee comb as cone. 

Sometimes it doesn’t matter.  For example, I have absolutely no idea what http, or jpeg, or hrl, stand for, nor do I need to know.  If I was in a computer 101 class it might be entirely different but, as it stands, I can use my computer without having to know how to code or what the abbreviations mean.  In the same way one can drive a car without understanding how the engine works, or realize the implications of the law without having been to law school.  I recall vividly teaching European history to a group of 16 year olds in 1970.  One of the students, sitting in the back, right hand desk,  put up his hand and asked what the difference was between domestic and foreign policy.  I was stunned – these were terms we had been using all year – and essentially I did not answer, assuming he was pulling my leg.  Now I know better, and am ashamed of my callous response.

Beekeeping does not fall into the computer, vehicle and legal categories.  The essence of the beekeeping class is graduating from simply watching honey bees to being able to understand their behavior and thus to intervene appropriately and for their benefit.  It is this comprehension of which language is so important a part.  A pertinent example might be Keith Delaplane’s latest book, Honey Bee Social Evolution, not only because of his superb use of language but also because his explanations of the evolutionary processes that have led to current bee behavior enlarge my understanding of what I see in the hives and thus impact my interventions, if any.

A technique for an instructor is to acknowledge at the very outset that he/she might inadvertently use terms that are part of the beekeeping experience but which are unknown to the class.  In such an event it is important for class members to speak out; it will not only allow for clarification for the students but will provide valuable insight for the instructor as to their level of comprehension. 

The Birchenough Bridge, taken from the hotel.

This is the fourth and final episode in a series focusing on the brain on the honey bee

Honey bees are insects and have been so since their appearance in their present form some 30 million years ago.  In the mid 19th  century  Johannes Mehring, who was the first to produce wax foundation using a metal roller, equated a bee colony with a vertebrate animal.  The queen and drones, for example, represent the female and male genital organs, while the workers represent those organs necessary for maintenance and digestion. In Germany this led to the term bien, whereby a colony was seen as a single living organism in which the whole was greater than any of the parts.  It was an American biologist, William Wheeler, who, in 1911, coined the term superorganism. 

Of late it has become popular to compare a honey bee colony not just with vertebrates but with mammals in particular.  For example, both have very low rates of reproduction (recognizing that a colony reproduces itself annually as a swarm;) mammalian milk is compared to royal jelly as a source of nourishment, brood comb is equivalent to the uterus of a mammal, both have body temperatures of between 96 and 98 degrees F, and both have developed a high capacity for learning. 

The reason for these characteristics, as described by Jurgen Tautz in The Buzz About Bees : Biology of a Superorganism,  is that by freeing themselves from the dictates of the environment, whether it be the weather or fluctuating sources of energy and nourishment, organisms can afford to have fewer progeny who are stable in numbers, well prepared for their environment and carefully protected.

This process is carefully controlled (homeostasis) by a complex system of constant feedback loops.   Ask a member of the public who is the brains behind this, and the response invariably is ‘the queen.’  This misconception dates back 400 years when Charles Butler named her as such – hardly surprising in that it was the decade following the first Elizabethan era where one strong woman, supposedly a virgin, had ruled a burgeoning empire without much competition.  We know today, of course, that the queen bee does not rule; rather she is a superb ovipositor who is the servant of the worker bees. The one exception might be her release of the queen substance which is distribute by trophallaxis to all the bees in the hive, which prevents the ovaries of the bees from developing and gives the queen reproductive dominance. 

It seems to me that the question is not what part of a superorganism constitutes the brain; the superorganism itself is the brain. 

There are many definitions of the term brain.  The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, for example, defines it as “The primary center for the regulation and control of bodily activities, receiving and interpreting sensory impulses, and transmitting information to the muscles and body organs. It is also the seat of consciousness, thought, memory, and emotion.”  We have previously acknowledged, to repeat Randy Oliver from last month’s column, that honey

bees do not have  a developed capacity for deep analysis and thinking, much less human concepts of morality, but, to  paraphrase both Keith Delaplane and Tom Seeley, in both the superorganism and our own brains there are multiple evidence collecting units – call them bees or call them neurons – applying information and choosing among alternatives.  

Consider that worker bees of every age seem to know what has to be done, when to do it and where it is to be done. Colonies are not hierarchies; rather each bee behaves as though she herself has come to a decision.  The result is small, local changes in the colony which in turn act as stimulators for other bees to adjust to the new situation and make their own decisions.  Micro decisions by the individuals result in macro-behaviors for the colony, such as swarming (especially nest selection) and comb building.  Another example is what Keith Delaplane describes as progressive provisioning – nurse bees control the quantity of food given to larvae, as well as the ratio of its constituents, which together dictate a larva’s metabolic fate toward queen-like or worker-like development. 

It is a bottom up, or emergent, process, rather than top down, and is termed either collective intelligence or the hive mind.  

This is not to deny the astonishing ability of individual bees to learn and to remember in both the short and long terms – they are not mere automatons.   They can recognize and remember colors, patterns and scents. They can count, add and subtract, combine concepts they have learned, understand abstract concepts, and convert angles on a dark dance floor from gravity to the sun in relation to the horizon.   After all, whether in a hive or in a floral landscape that is constantly changing, they have to be adaptable problem solvers.

“Demonstrating how nature has converged upon similar answers for similar problems,” writes Keith Delplane in Honey Bee Social Evolution, “even across such phylogenetically distant animals as honey bees and humans, is one of the most exciting ways entomology, and the superorganism concept, is informing all of biology today.  It’s a beautiful example of the unitive quality of all nature.”

Workers, drones and their queen are members of a team that is committed to the survival of a colony over the seasonal rhythms of the year.  This community of individuals solves problems by working-sharing and communicative exchanges that single individuals could not achieve on their own. Is this the ultimate message of the bees? As long as all care for one another, each will themselves be cared for?  A society in which the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would would want them to do unto you – is a lived reality? Honey bees not only bring us joy; they also give us hope by providing a living example of cooperation in action in a world that is increasingly fractured though ever-increasing egotism, greed, self-interest and loneliness.

Paul Cézanne always knew he wanted to be an artist.  At his father’s urgings, he entered law  school in his home town of Aix-en-Provence in the south of France, but after two years, aged 22, he withdrew and went to Paris to pursue his artistic dreams. Rejected by the École des Beaux-Arts, he returned home to work as a clerk in his father’s bank. 

He returned to Paris the next year, was rejected yet again by the École, and his paintings were turned down every year by the Salon de Paris until 1882, when he was 43 years of age.  None of his work was put on display until he was 56, when he had his first one man show. Two years later, 1897, a piece was bought by a museum in Berlin, and in 1899, when he was 60 years old, his work finally started to sell.  He died seven years later. 

A year after his death a retrospective of his work was mounted in Paris and he was recognized as one of the founders of modern art. “Cézanne is the father of  us all,” Matisse and Picasso declared.  

Cézanne’s art, misunderstood and discredited by the public during most of his life, challenged all the conventional values of painting in the 19th century because of his insistence on personal expression and on the integrity of the painting itself, regardless of subject matter.

This story is told by David Brooks in a recent article in The Atlantic in which he seeks to understand those who make their mark later in life, whether it be Copernicus, Morgan Freeman, Isak Dinesen, Julia Childs, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, Alfred Hitchcock, Colonel Sanders and a host of others. Space does not allow elaboration of each one; suffice to say that Churchill was mistrusted as a political rebel and outlier until 1940, when he became Prime Minister at the age of 66, Juliet Childs enrolled in a French cooking school aged 37, and Colonel Sanders invented the recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken aged 62.

Society today is structured to promote and reward early bloomers. By the age of 18 most of us have been pigeon-holed by grades and SAT scores, some zoom to prestigious academic launching plans and some, such as  Bill Gates, Marl Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, Michael Jordan and Lebron James, take other routes.

But there are also successful late bloomers; indeed the average age at which Nobel Prize winners made their crucial discoveries is 44, which means that approximately half of them did so well into the second act of their lives.  In essence, they focus not on the finished product so much as on the process of learning itself.  They see their lives as a process of trial and error so that the quality of their work peaks as they age. 

In Late Bloomers, Rich Karlgaard teases out the traits that distinguish early from late bloomers. Most of our schools and work places, for example,  are based on extrinsic motivation  – work hard and you will be rewarded with good grades, higher salaries and performance bonuses.  Early bloomers are good at meeting external standards, at following other people’s methods and at pursing goals determined by others.  Late bloomers, by comparison, are bad at being what has been called ‘excellent sheep.’  They often feel unfulfilled at school or work and can be contrary if not rebellious.  Winston Churchill  reflected that “Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.”

Our culture encourages people to specialize early – concentrate on one thing and get really good, really fast. Late bloomers, by comparison, need a variety of experiences even if it means frequently changing jobs and developing a reputation for inconsistency or unreliability.  But this is when they are developing what has been labeled ‘diverse curiosity,’ the benefits of which become evident once he or she draws on the breadth of their knowledge to put discordant ideas together in new ways.

Late bloomers teach themselves – they enjoy the cognitive process (Leonardo da Vinci is the poster child) and being too old for the traditional educational system, nor wanting the restrictions built into it, they become fascinated and absorbed by the pleasures of concentrated, voluntary efforts in which they are free to plot their own course and to change their minds and their objectives without recrimination.   And to this they bring their life experience, otherwise called wisdom, in particular the ability to see things from multiple points of view and to sustain the tension that often exists between them. 

Finally, late bloomers never cross the finish line and relax. Age does not diminish their curiosity; “They are seeking.  They are striving.  They are in it with all their heart,” to cite David Brooks.

Honey bees clearly are not late bloomers!   Each bee follows a genetically driven master plan that determines their development and their role in the bigger society,   Similarly, in the African society with which I grew up, the social norm was ‘to keep down with the Jones’s.”  As one tribal elder said to me, “If one blade of grass grows higher than the others, we cut it down.” With significant credibility given to the power of spiritual forces, the credo was each individual is born with a talent with which to serve society, but to exceed that is a sign of a malevolent force.   Initially this presented a significant challenge for European-trained teachers in some African countries.  I recall a District Commissioner describing the traditional belief that tribal people accumulate knowledge as they age, that they do so at the same rate, hence the significant respect given to elders who, because of their age, were also the most knowledgable.  Recognizing differences in students, or trying to stimulate them through grades, initially proved counter-cultural and unsuccessful.  

And a thousand years of western civilization was not much different.  From the fall of Rome to the Renaissance was a millennia of remarkable conformity.  The life of the common man in 500 AD was little different to that of his successors one thousand years later. The purpose of art, for example, was to glorify God, and works consisted almost entirely either of moral pieces warning of the dangers of sin, or of depictions of biblical figures and events invariably set in contemporary times. For me, this is why Leonardo’s Mona Lisa is so revolutionary  For the first time in a millennium, a major artist had painted a woman in her natural beauty and enchantment, without traditional Christian artifacts.  It was a celebration of humanity set in the harshness of  the natural world.  And in terms of late bloomers, the exact date  of the painting is unknown, but Leonardo seems to have started work on the Mona Lisa when he was in his early 50’s, and continued work on it or various editing of it, until he was in his mid 60’s.  Late bloomers are seldom fully satisfied “”They are seeking.  They are striving.”

None of this is to denigrate those (and there are many) who focus on one issue, for example keeping honey bees, and find satisfaction in a particular method that works well for them without any need to deviate from that.   One of my uncles was a spitfire pilot in the Second World War,  after which he returned to the town and house in which he grew up, never learned to drive a car, and spent his vacations working on his allotment or fishing in the river Exe.  When I first met him, in 1980, he impressed immediately with what is often described as ‘serenity’; he was deeply content and wanted for nothing … and I was a little envious.   

Looking back at my career, I changed schools every seven or eight years whereas many of my colleagues remained (and maybe still are) at the same school for all of their teaching career.  Two things are clear in retrospect.  First, that after seven years I felt I had gained, and offered, all I could from that particular system and needed a change if I was to remain vital.  Secondly, the wide variety of extra-curricular activities that I organized, ranging from evening clubs like Toastmasters or a History Society to three week bike tours in Europe, were not so much stimulating the students, as I thought, but were providing me with the challenges, the inspiration and the fulfillment that I needed.  

As a beekeeper, I am restless, always seeking  stimulation, and enjoying the process a much as the product.  Which brings me to my hypotheses – that many beekeepers are late bloomers whose life experiences have brought them to this hobby.   They are extrinsically motivated, set their own standards, take responsibility for their own enlightenment, enjoy the learning process and the feelings of accomplishment that come with it, and are surprised by the unexpected exposure to a variety of associated issues such as plants and pollination, chemicals in agriculture and their impact on animal life, the amazing society that is the world of a honey bee hive with its relevance to our own community, whether local or national, and indeed, the local impacts and challenges of a changing environment. 

Perhaps it is the constant provocation and challenge provoked by such questions that cause some to stay involved, with the comfortable realization that every answer leads to yet more questions. 

In February I took our dog, Seamus, to the vet for his annual check up.  Ever since the covid pandemic  there has been a sign at the end of each parking space asking owners to call and announce their arrival, and then to wait for a return call summoning them inside.  For safety reasons there was to be no loitering in the waiting area.  What struck me was the assumption by the office staff that everyone carries a cell phone; certainly there was no explanation of what to do in the absence of such a device.  

When did this assumption start?  In 1989, four years before the end of the apartheid regime,  I spent part of a sabbatical teaching in Soweto, the large township south of Johannesburg.  Indeed the word Soweto stands for SOuth WEst TOwnship.) I quickly learned that I could not ask the students (the equivalent of 10th graders ranging in age from 13 to 22) to do homework because most lived in so-called ‘match box’ houses with neither electricity nor indoor plumbing; the idea of students working at home in the evening was not feasible.  

Similarly, when I first taught in the US, in 1991, we could not assume that all students had access to a home computer, nor a few years later that all had access to broadband.  In the space of two years I had transitioned from no electricity at all to questioning broadband access, even if in different geographical locations.  

Sadly,  assumptions can deputize as handcuffs.    In parts of Asia for example, young elephants are trained by attaching a short chain to one of their forelegs, which is then tied to a stake that is driven into the ground.  After about year,  the stake alone is put in the ground and the elephants assume that they are constrained by a now-imaginary chain length. 

 It seems to me that we, as beekeepers, are often fettered by chains that exist only in our minds. 

Two examples.  Journal articles seem to assume that it is necessary to feed sugar syrup in the fall, and again in the late winter.  As I understand it, feeding sugar was developed in post-war Canada, when sugar was cheap and honey expensive.  The motivation was solely economic – remove and sell all of the honey and replace it with white sugar. Curiously the effects on the health of the bees were and are seldom questioned.  An advertisement for HiveAlive in the August issue of Bee Culture states that “The ideal  carbohydrate for bees is their own honey …” and confirms that not only is the nutritional profile of sugar not as good as honey but it lacks the antibacterial and antifungal properties naturally found in honey.   It should be no surprise that research in labs such as that of Dr. Gene Robinson has shown that bees fed sugar syrup in the autumn  might emerge from the winter in greater numbers but they are smaller in size, lighter in weight and, critically, their immune system has been compromised.    Are we unwittingly creating a hive environment that favors the mites in that the bees are less well equipped to defend themselves?

The ad mentioned above is promoting the use of additives to the sugar syrup.  That is a band aid compared to leaving more honey on the hives for the bees.  And if one does need to feed , why not use honey itself, either still capped in the frame or in the same manner as one would normally feed sugar syrup?  

To  take this a step further.  After a presentation by Dr. Dave Tarpy at EAS in 2022 on queen losses, the issue arose of the quality of royal jelly.   How does the jelly from nurse bees who are fed sugar syrup differ from those who are  living off their own honey, and how does this impact the larvae of not only queens but  worker and drone brood?  Is this an underling reason for declining queen quality and longevity?  If I understood Dr. Tarpy correctly, this has not as yet been researched but might be examinable in the work done recently by a post-grad student in his laboratory. 

The second example involves screened bottom boards., which were introduced in the 1980’s as a first response to the varroa invasion, on the grounds that the mites would drop off incoming bees, fall through the screen, and be unable to regain access to the colony. We know now, from the work of Dr. Sammy Ramsay in particular, that mites do not fall of incoming bees unless there are so many mites on the bee already that their normal places of attachment are not available and the mites are therefore exposed.   As one researcher revealed,  if one sees a mite on the back of a bee, there are probably 8 mites already securely attached under the abdomen but not visible. 

Besides changing the ventilation flow in a hive (I have yet to come across a feral hive with a screened bottom,) and writing in the same issue of Bee Culture cited above (August, 2023,) Tina Sebestyen points out that a screened bottom board increases mite reproduction because it lowers the humidity,  and mites do better at the lower range of humidity which the bees maintain in the hive.  

Hive Mind, an article by Sam Knight in the Aug 28, 2023, issue of The New Yorker, cites Dr. Tom Seeley : “As I see it, most of the problems of honey bee health are rooted in the standard practices of beekeeping, which are used by nearly all beekeepers … In the United States, beekeepers are taught only what we might call the industrial form of beekeeping.  And that’s where I would say, ‘No, there is a choice here between how you want to relate to an organism who life, in a way, you have under your control.” 

Thus I am perturbed when writers mention without qualification the use of sugar syrup and screened bottom boards. These two in combination increase the odds in favor of the mites and make a difficult position even worse for the bees.   Like the elephants’ chain, there is minimal connection to  reality but the illusion is kept alive in many introductory bee classes and in articles in reputable bee journals. 

In a tribute to the late T.J.Carr, published in the ABJ of May, 2024,  Amy  Owen cites him as saying that “The best part of beekeeping is the people you meet.”

Consider two scenarios.  In the first, eyes are clouded by smoke and a veil, ears are awash with the complex sounds produced by thousands of little bodies in action, nostrils flood with complex odors and pheromones, and limbs and neck wrestle with boxes and frames glued together by propolis, not to mention the sheer weight of a super of honey. 

In the second,  eyes are blinded  by a blend of floodlights and blurry bodywork,  eardrums are drenched in the whirring noise of 1,000 mechanical horses, nostrils are stained with the stench of burning brake ducts, and limbs and neck wrestle relentlessly with immense gravitational force.

The first is obvious; the second describes a  Formula 1 car driver at full throttle,  an  intense sensory experience during which a driver can suffer motion sickness, light-headedness, vision glitches, and  can lose up to 6 pounds in two hours of split- making decision making behind the  wheel.  Both experiences are physically draining and emotionally; both are intense in their own particular ways. 

Unlike many beekeepers, a F1 driver never races alone.  He or she is constantly  accompanied by the guidance of a softly-spoken ally at the other end of the team radio system, aiming to maximize the team’s final outcome. 

That voice belongs to the race engineer.

Weather changes, tyre wear, gear shift advice and details about rivals’ tactics – such are the technical information passed from the race engineer to the driver. But most important are the human-centered skills by which the engineer quells the driver’s concerns and emotions so that both  are free to operate entirely in the present, to the point that their faith and trust in each other develops into one the most intimate relationships in professional sport. 

There is almost always at least one generation between a driver and his race engineer; they often come from completely different parts of the world and do not share a first language. A big effort to understand each other’s backgrounds, personalities and motivations is key to building a successful relationship.  Usually this mutuality  develops in a series of meetings in a non-professional environment in which each shares the normal things in life  – hobbies, family, education – so as to better understand each other’s lives, values and culture, and thus develop  elevated levels of empathy and emotional intelligence.  After all, drivers literally put their lives in the hands of their race engineers whenever they take to the track.  

Yet they don’t always have the luxury of a full winter of interaction and preparation. When now-triple world champion Max Verstappen was first promoted to the Red Bull team mid-season in 2016, race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase had only a few days notice to mould an 18-year-old who combined  supreme talent with a blunt disposition.   Their relationship was an immediate success (the fact that Lambiase had experience working with multiple drivers before Max was a critical factor) and  Verstappen became the youngest race winner in Formula 1 history, finishing first on his debut at the Spanish Grand Prix. 

The role of the race engineer is one of mentor, with high stakes in times of incredible pressure, all under public scrutiny.   The stakes of mentoring are not normally so high, nor the scrutiny so public.  The five year old granddaughter of a friend, for example, spent five days at home with her teacher-to-be before she started her first year at a local Montessori school, such was the school’s recognition that understanding “each other’s backgrounds, personalities and motivations is key to building a successful relationship.”  In the Montessori system, because the teacher had class advance together, that relationship stretched over eight years. 

Over some 42 years in the classroom I learned that time spent developing relationships was never wasted.  With experience and confidence, I spent the first week getting to know the students a little better, and encouraging them to get to know me.   My colleagues often felt that a busy curriculum did not allow them such a luxury; in my experience, the quality of the learning that followed more than compensated for the loss of formal teaching time.   Curiously it is something that teachers of younger grades do really well, yet decreases as students age, even though the latter are dealing desperately with issues of identity and are searching, even if unconsciously, for some kind of mentorship. 

Clearly there are different ways of mentoring a new beekeeper.  Some may choose consciously to develop a relationship early in the process, perhaps by initiating an e-mail conversation enquiring as to how the mentee became interested in managing honey bees, what his or her objectives are, are there any other related hobbies or interests, is there a spouse or children who might be interested, what is he or she most fearful of and most excited about? Others may recognize and celebrate the relationship as it develops, or even suggest a different mentor if one feels that the absence of affinity is hindering the learning process.  In the words of the 13th century Persian poet, Rumi, “The amount of light in a room depends on the number of windows.” 

And clearly one can survive without such a relationship – neither the instructor of the first bee class I took nor my first mentor would list either communication or empathy among their strong suits – yet I survived, partly because I had both passion and persistence and took responsibility for my own learning.  I have also been a mentor to a few beekeepers in which we  developed a relationship that went beyond the how’s and to’s of bee management; it became a mutually beneficial interaction, despite the generation gap, and I got as much out of it as I was able to offer. 

Besides our name, our personal story is the most individual thing we possess.  Both symbolize our uniqueness and our humanity, and we are more open and vulnerable to those who recognize this, whether by listening or by asking the right questions. In the words of one successful race engineer : “Increasingly you realize that it is the human side where most of the competitive edges come from in Formula 1. You realize it is all about the people.”  And as expressed by another engineer, “In Formula 1, as in all our lives, the magic of the most special relationships will always remain unique.”

In the July, 2024, issue of Bee Culture, Diane Wellons describes how bees and beekeepers helped her though several years of major health challenges.  “Each season presents a new circle of friends to mix with the old circle,” she writes, “and my circle just keeps growing. There is a richness of heart to this hobby, this association, that I did not anticipate.” 

Surely T.J. Carr would have agreed.