As warm weather offers a brief (hopefully no so brief) reprieve from this hostile coldness that seem to be making “global warming” into a tempting joke, I find my mind turned once again to beekeeping. I saw one of my honeybees crawling around an a small snow drift and it reminded me that these little insects are soon to be getting to a very busy time of year them, busy for me as well at times. They have spent the majority of winter clustered in a tight ball, the bees on the outside beating their small wings to produce heat, much like shivering, for the body of bees on the inside. In the middle of the ball of bees there is the queen, being warmed and protected by her many cohorts, lucky insect.
During all of the warm months bees will protect their hive homes like their lives depend on it, and they do, however, as the bees huddle together conserving energy in the winter mice and pests often take this chance to destroy the hives food supply as well as the bees themselves. The bees, which would normally fatally sting the invading mice, are in a trance, of sorts, trying to stay warm. For this reason I strongly dislike mice. I once again think of becoming a “full time” beekeeper, there is money in it and I could find a good market for it, however, it is a big and risky step that I can not convince myself to take.
My doctor made a comment when I was last in his office; he said that beekeepers demonstrate how allergies work, he stated that the more often beekeepers are stung the more allergic they become. He stated this as an illustration and as a fact, though, as I was polite enough not to mention, it is erroneous to the fullest extent. As beekeepers are continually stung they develop a resistant to the venom that bees excrete, they eventually have very little to no reaction whatsoever. It is much like people that continually take pain medication; soon they must take very large doses for them to have any pain relieving effect at all. It is the same with babies and children that grow up in a completely sterile and clean environment, they are always more likely to develop allergies later in life because their bodies never got used to common allergens and the like when they were young children.