Fornicators! Disgusting!

Have you got video?

Following my blow-up the other night, the bee guys called the gardeners and the gardeners got in touch with me. They were totally supportive of booting the bee guys out since their fecklessness had made itself known to them also. (The bee guys were using the gardeners’ barn space to store equipment, without asking. They weren’t the least bit communicative. Worst of all, except for one tiny taste last summer, none of us has received a bit of honey from those hives… and you’d think they’d share a little. Wouldn’t you?) I’ve told the gardeners that if they run into bee keepers who would be responsive to talking with us about where to locate hives and would let us know when they’re around so we don’t let the dogs out when the bees are stirred up, then I’d be happy to have hives on the land.

Thus endeth this chapter in the exciting life of Farmer Frank. Ask me about the Bobcat ruts on my west lawn.

Just because I’m curious, what is your relationship with the CSA? Are you a share-holder or are you the farmer? Is the land yours? Did it take some kind of a vote to allow the beekeepers on the land?

Reckon you hit the nail on the head there, Frank. Anger’s a funny old thing. I’m as mild mannered as they come, but once in a while something’ll get to me and I’ll over-react, and then simmer down and think “where on earth did *that* come from?” Wish I knew the answer to that one…

Perhaps you have an old friend, and you see him or her being bitten by some insignificant agent of the greater anonymous trespassers, who are ‘tending’ the honey of Social Security (say. Have you or an elder friend been audited lately?). Your promise, your vow, your labour, your goodwill are all now backfiring on you or working against you, and, hence, the arthritic knee jerk reaction.

Or something like that. Is this industrial beekeeping? Or is it all fair trade honey? Or is it industrial honey pawned as free trade honey?

Yeah…the anger thing. I seem to be the target - like the beekeeper - of much misplaced anger. It’s one of the strange and difficult lessons one needs learn - when faced with these little outbursts.

Think of it this way: the beekeepers are either assholes who are laughing at your anger, decent sorts who are now saying, gee that guy is having a bad month, let’s do the decent thing and leave him alone, or the lesson learners - either they now get it (this very american private property thing, knock and let me know) or they don’t (let’s squat elsewhere)

When we lived in the country we had hunters who would knock on our door to let us know they’d be firing off their guns - a mile away, not on our property, just doing the decent thing, letting us know. Then there were the city hunters, piling out of their camaros in full battle fatigues firing uzis at the clay deer on the lawns of farmhouses.

City beekeepers?

Yes, the bee stung nose.