getting back to the topic of the thread, I guess the best way to communicate why folks should care about bees & beekeeping is to tell why we care. aside from the pecuniary gains, of course. there's this, which touches so many nerves, it's hard to read

Again again again again again

As soon as I close my eyes
it happens once more
What a beekeeper once told me
about twenty five
beehives
that burnt down
This true-life story
This truly dead apiary

This is not a poem. The subject matter must crystallize in order to become a poem. I have waited, but it doesn’t crystallize, it just doesn’t and I can’t wait any more. This is not a poem. In a poem you look for hidden meanings, ulterior motives, symbols. But here there are none. This is not a poem.

this is a rake with tines of fire
that rakes the heather to cinders
this is a saw with teeth of fire
this is the gnawing through of the legs of the beehive
this is the honeycombs melting
this is the fact that honey does not extinguish fire
the fact that even honey catches fire
the fact that the bees sting the blazing air
they sting the air
and then they perish
This is ash butterflies floating in the air

Then a scout returns from afar
to dance for others the news
that somewhere he found undiscovered flowers

This is the fact that I do not know
how to dance for him to see
all that happened here
or how to answer him
when he asks
what is this all for?

Paul-Eerik Rummo

To understand somewhat better the symbolism of this poem, the reader must remember at least three facts: (a) apiculture is one of the peaceful pursuits of the Estonians, a basically agricultural people, (b) the visionary Estonian poet Juhan Liiv spoke at the end of the last century about Estonia as a beehive which all Estonians want to reach even through death, war, and exile, (c) Rummo himself says in a programmatic poem:

I stand like a beehive,
and whether I want or not,
I have to gather, to gather into myself
the blaze and wax of flowers

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