BEE-L as I know it goes back to the nineties here on the Internet.  Before that public bee discussions were on various dialups.  The world was much simpler then, and Adam's   sci.agriculture.beekeeping on USENET was the only other public *Internet* beekeeping venue I can recall.  Andy had his bulletin board and there were other dial ups as well.
 
After the BEE-L founder died, it looked as if BEE-L would die.  Although it was an university-level service on university iron, Aaron was a logical heir since he was the server guy at the time.  He was reluctant and felt unworthy but I convinced him to save the list from extinction, and once he took ownership, BEE-L became his passion.  

Aaron and I were always pals. I visited him often and I took various BEE-L roles over time.  We tried various things., including even a Best of Bee-L side list.  

Due to flooding by some attempting to dominate the list, trolls, plus  a few politically sensitive posts that got us blackballed by the very scientists the list was intended to serve, we eventually found that we had to moderate to list.  

Then one moderator went rogue.  Others had agendas. Eventually, it was just Aaron and me, and then I stepped aside.

I retired from active beekeeping but when Aaron was dying, he called me and asked me to take over the list.  I declined, and we tried to find someone or someones suitable to run the list, but couldn't.  Then Arron died suddenly without naming an heir.  Since I had a history of ownership and moderation, I was able to approach L-Soft and rescue the list -- and here we are.

I really don't know why I do this but don't see an alternative, and I do have a level-headed and knowledgeable sidekick as a backup in case I get called away.

LISTSERV seems happy to host us, albeit with the lite version, and although I have looked for anything approaching the features of LISTSERV, and even hosted other lists on other software, I think we can be very thankful that L-Soft takes such good care of us and for free.

I don't see anything to worry about but I am noticing that suddenly security is tightening everywhere on the Internet, so it is hard to say what changes may happen.

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