Sneaking out of church
When I was a little guy (but not real little), during winter months I would quietly leave the church service and take the back stairway to the dark, warm boiler room in the basement. There the custodian would be sitting near a large, dark, coal-heating boiler that hissed, thumped, and clanked. As I remember, the fire door was always open and the hot, yellow and blue fire could be seen inside the boiler belly.
I can’t say that the custodian was particularly glad to see me. No doubt, I interrupted his nap, but he was always congenial. We never discussed anything of note. The air was quiet and warm. Faintly, I could hear the passing of the various church service elements in the upstairs distance; therefore, I could tell when it was time to leave the boiler room. In a strange way, the scene was placid and quiet. My visits seemed suitable for church.
A prominent feature of boilers was a water-filled sight-glass that was attached to the boiler above the fire door. As the hot unit hissed and huffed, the water in the glass would dance up and down. The big heater provided steam for the radiators throughout the church. So far as I could tell, the water moving in the sight-glass was about the only moving part on the boiler.
Oddly, all these years later, I see beekeeping interest and commitment to be a lot like the dancing water in that boiler sight-glass. The hot boiler could represent the beekeeping industry. At times our industry is very hot while other times it may be cooler. Sometimes bee-related interest and activity are up, and then sometimes they go down. Sometimes the players and the programs change —what was once important wanes and something new waxes. It’s the natural scheme of things.
It seems that it was just a few years ago
It seems that it was just a few years ago that my dad, my two brothers, and I were all hot for beekeeping. Years earlier during the late 1960s, Dad’s brother — our uncle — got into beekeeping. The story goes that another beekeeper in Micanopy, Florida gave my uncle a hive. He got the fever. Most of you know what that feels like. After hearing his stories and seeing his love and commitment to this quirky craft, we all followed along. Then we, too, became infected with beekeeping passion. Our furnace was hot and our water gauge was bouncing high.
Each of the four of us had a beekeeping component that was our thing. Dad had a bit of an equipment business, but he particularly had a brisk local honey market going. Honey-starved customers would respond to the “honey for sale” sign in the front yard, ring the doorbell, and want to know if the honey was raw.
One of my brothers got into the pollination rental business and provided colonies for commercial watermelons. Another brother moved to Tennessee and became a beekeeper there. For a while, my Tennessee brother was an officer in several clubs and heavily involved in the Nashville-area beekeeping scene. I pursued beekeeping academically and committed my life’s energy to the craft. All the men in my immediate family oozed beekeeping …
