"Grunff" wrote in message
...
Mary Fisher wrote:

Oh, beekeeping isn't a hobby. It's a terminal disease.

? Do go on...

If the beekeeping bug gets hold of you it's very difficult to tear yourself
away. There's so much to learn and so many delightful experiences and
excitements. That's probably true of very many activities but I do think
that beekeeping is rather special among all the others. And I've done all
sorts of things in my life!

I've been to lots of funerals of very old people - last Monday I went to a
91 year old's. I don't know if he still had bees because he'd moved to the
north a few weeks ago but he would still have called himself a beekeeper and
still took part in activities. He first had bees in his teens and won a
prize at a National Honey Show at the Crystal Palace in the 1920s. Most
beekeepers don't just give up, it seems to have a hold on them. I've given
up actually having bees but I still read the bee press, attend beekeeping
events and use the products of my hives (honey and wax don't spoil if cared
for properly). Honeybees have given me very many friends, the only
travelling abroad I've done has been bee-related - speaking, judging etc -
and I can go almost anywhere in the world and be put up by a beekeeper. It's
been the core of our activities for the last almost thirty years and I
expect it to be the same when I die.

There's something so mysterious about honey bees that it's impossible to
tear yourself away from them, permanently. And when you understand how much
Man depends on bees, especially for pollination, they can't be ignored. The
relationship, through millenia, between honeybees and Man is very deep.

Not a satisfactory answer I'm afraid, some things can't adequately be
expressed in words.

Mary