I wrote this some years ago. Some here may like it.


A Beekeepers Prayer

Oh Lord, I ask you please,
Let fortune smile on our bees.
Don't rain on them and cause the muck,
That gets them mired .still on the truck.

Keep the fire ants at rest. Don't let one come out to play,
when they do the hot-dog test, at some border .on the way.

Small hive beetles? Keep them down.
Don't let them wolf my patties down.
Keep Varroa small in number. I know they're there.
Just let them slumber. (I may save a little hair.)

Let CCD just fade away. You did this once before, I know.
I've enough to do today. If you please, just let it go.

Keep the foulbrood from resistance. Don't let it change its' current guise.
I know you like to test persistence. I'll keep praying 'till it dies.

Don't spawn a tracheal mite recurrence.
 We're winning now with some assurance.
Were you just feeling mean that day?
 Seems cruel to take bee-breath away.

Chalkbrood, Stonebrood. Sacbrood too .
You sent my way to test my mettle.
Have I proved a warrior true?
Or is there more to settle?


Please get my bees to the almond trees; they wait out there with breath
abated.
Six-hundred-thousand-acres! Good bees/good nuts it's all related.
Let most find their way back home, for a pampered month or two.
I'll feed them up, we'll make new comb. We'll find new fields and start
anew.

I'm glad we had this little talk; I'm trying to protect your bees.
I walk a sometimes stony walk. That's why you find me on my knees.
One last thing I haste to mention. Thanks for the  ..Apis invention!
And at my grave, let it be said: "Here lies a 'keeper. dead."

Dick Marron     Jan. '09


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