Plain Talk Beekeeping
Some Beekeeping Thoughts and Snapshots
Just a short time ago, as did you, I started another new year. What is it about a new year’s beginning? Maybe it’s just me, but I’m always reflective, optimistic — even sappy as the new year begins. Normally, I boldly predict major upcoming changes in my bee life that will — finally — make me the beekeeper I have always wanted to be. Ever increasingly, I am older and older. For all of you younger beekeepers — chin up! Becoming an aging beekeeper is not as bad as you may fear.
Back in the early ‘70s, my wife earned her degree in business education. Time passed and things changed. She retired many years later as an instructor for the Cisco networking and computer program. What she did at the end of her career essentially had nothing in common with what she was originally trained to do. Typewriters, keypunch machines, shorthand and adding machines — that technology was all gone and, in some cases, she helped eliminate these antiquated programs and the related hardware.
In 1963, our Chevrolet Biscayne was not worth repairing with 86,000 miles on it. It had a two-speed transmission, an AM radio, and a heater. I am nostalgic about my first car – a 1959 VW Beetle with a 39 hp engine. It had no gas gauge; I would put the jack handle in the tank to determine how much fuel remained. Its maximum, flat-road speed was 53 mph. If given a choice, would most of you select a 1958 vehicle or one of today’s greatly improved automobiles? While cars are the same as cars of past generations, they are markedly different.
My early years were spent watching our black-and-white TV that would, for the most part, pick up three stations — if the outside antenna were properly adjusted. “Howdy Doody,” “Pinky Lee,” and “Gunsmoke” were some of my TV staples. Now I have the TV system that most of you have that gives me access to hundreds of channels and automatically records the selected ones I can’t watch at the moment. I have watched more TV in the past year than I watched in the previous five. While I am not much of a TV watcher, I love the new technology and have absolutely no interest in going back.
As you know from previous articles, I am a woodworker. If you want to truly bore my grandchildren, try to give them an old-fashioned wooden toy that doesn’t have an interactive computer chip and a cartoonish vocabulary that rivals that of the average adult. Even I prefer today’s modern toys to the wooden train that actually required kids to have an imagination. (I still have my Erector Set, Lionel train, and my Daisy Eagle BB gun, but those toys would be inappropriate for today’s kids — too dangerous.)
As a young teenager, I could buy rifle cartridges, fireworks, and cigarettes (I have never smoked, but I could have if I wanted to). I could ride — legally — on the tailgate of my granddad’s 1952 Dodge pickup as he drove down the road. If I fell off, it would be my fault — not my granddad’s, but the truck was normally only traveling about 25 mph.
So how do any of these ramblings relate to beekeeping? I stumbled into beekeeping about 55 years ago. While there are those among you who have been keeping bees much longer, fifty-five years is still a long time. Yes, beekeeping is the same today, but in some ways it is remarkably different. Major supply companies are gone, but new companies have replaced them.
My earliest beekeeping interests were commercially oriented. For a few years, I nurtured the idea that one day I would be a commercial beekeeper. I interviewed with Mr. M.C. Berry, Jr. …
