Spring and Bees

Judith has prompted me to get into beekeeping once again. This could be, literally, a sore subject because I have a slight allergy to bee stings. But we'll see.

When we lived in Indiana 30 years ago I had several colonies of bees. I got into beekeeping by accident: I bid $5 at a neighbor's auction and ended up with several hundred dollars of beekeeping equipment. No sooner did people hear that I had bee equipment than they began calling me with news of swarms that they wanted me to remove. This, in turn, led a local Ag Inspector -- who was also an avid beekeeper -- to start calling me to go on "bee adventures" with him. Each Saturday he had a new adventure involving bees, and they generally consumed the entire weekend. On one such adventure, we captured a colony that was living in an old tree. In another adventure, bees had taken over a house, and we were asked to remove them. After a single summer of such adventures, I had more bee colonies than I knew what to do with. Judith started calling herself a "Bee Widow".

Eventually we left the farm and moved -- without the bees -- down to Indianapolis. I didn't bother to tell the bees where we were moving. I figured they could take care of themselves. And they did okay for a number of years, finally dieing out about four years later.

So now we're going to start beekeeping again. I'm wondering what kind of mischief I'll be in before the summer is out. Will Judith once again don the striped headscarf of the Bee Widow?