Hi all
I remember when Marilyn M. died and how it was all over the news. I asked my parents why and they said it's August, a slow time for news stories. According to a biographer "the circulation rate of most newspapers expanded that month." It must be one of those months, and the subject is honey bees (again). Even the New Yorker has joined in with a piece titled "Is Beekeeping Wrong?" (August 21, 2023).

excerpts
>  Natural beekeepers liken much conventional beekeeping to industrial agriculture—permeated by chemicals and the delusion of human control. They dwell on the differences between the lives of wild, or free-living, bees and those which are kept in apiaries.

> Another natural beekeeper, who abstains from taking honey altogether, referenced “When Harry Met Sally” to explain his position: “There was this line, ‘Sex always gets in the way of friendship.’ I think honey always gets in the way of us appreciating bees.”

> “If I go to a hive and I put my hand on the hive . . . I can actually feel their presence, and that balance and that skill and that beauty that only nature can provide,” Jonathan Powell, of Britain’s Natural Beekeeping Trust. “And yet if I think of a bee flying up to the window of my house, putting their antennae on my house, I’m frankly embarrassed by the way I live, and how clumsy and how stupid I am.”

> John visits his apiary most days, to watch and listen to his bees. “There is communication going on,” he said. “And it’s a two-way communication, if you allow it to be.”

> Patterson was sympathetic to the ideas of natural beekeepers, although he suspected that many of them were misguided novices. “ ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be lovely?’ You know.”

PLB

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