I only know about eating the stuff. I buy honey from a place that's on the edge of a rainforest. The honey flavors are fantastic. It contains that manuka honey that has supposed health benefits, but also contains a lot of natural flavors from the forest. Our cheap supermarket stuff is from hives in grass fields.

Theres a place near me that sells local honey. There's a hundred hives just off the main road. All summer long my windshield gets plastered with yellow blobs of bee against which I've learned NOT to turn on the wipers.

Honey grown in a wild, uncultivated area has the best all-around antigen (anti-allergy) composition. Hives bordering clover fields has the best flavor (IMO). Honey does not spoil.

My father kept bees on the farm I grew up on and I helped him a little. There really isn't that much to do, so I didn't give much help. Mostly carrying hives and boxes and things, but I got to see how to do things. Bee keeping can be very simple and is pretty intuitive. My father picked it up by watching a friend of his who kept hives on our property and just following him around. Where we live the biggest challenge is keeping them alive through winter. Finally we figured out we needed to feed them in the winter, so my dad would make sugar water for them by dissolving sugar in boiling water and setting it just outside the hive on sunny days. They would fly even on winter days if it was warm enough and the would bring the sugar water back into hive and survive off it all winter long. As long as they got enough to eat the cold didn't affect them.

You don't need to plant fancy wild flowers or prairie grasses. The only effect on the honey is that lighter flowers like alfalfa or clover makes a lighter, clearer honey. Our bees were in the deep woods and pollinated basswoods and box elders and goldenrod. Our honey was quite dark and thick. Some like the lighter honey better, but this summer at the local farmer's market the honey vendor had marked up the darker basswood honey like we use to get.

Bees don't need a lot of work. They're pretty docile too. If you have coveralls it only takes a puff of smoke to pacify them. We never even bothered with the smoke after we got used to handling the bees. My dad had a mask and helmet and an old welders outfit. After a while the bees got used to him and he didn't even use his outfit most of the time. He just moved slowly and deliberately and they pretty much left him alone.

Get the basic setup and a couple of hives of bees and just set them out. Start in the spring and just follow them a little over the summer. Don't bug them too much and they should be fine.

So in-between macerating the nether regions I notice I'm breathing hard.

Call the GF:

Stop making sandwiches so you can pick me up on the way to urgent care, I said.

I'm not on my way to urgent care, she said.

You are now!, I said.

Meanwhile the crotchitch migrated to the scalp area.

After a longish few minutes of scratching, puffing and hearing the sound of my heart inside my head, I call the GF back:

Hello?

Are you coming?

Yes, why?

Oh, just curious, I said.

I asked relatively calmly if she could put just a tiny little more pressure on the accelerator.

Then like a LED she comes up with an idea:

EMERGENCY!

You have no idea. My wife is a Master Gardener...seed catalogs arrive in January and February by the truckload. She gives lectures locally, she judges at three county fairs. She is insane.

Look, you can see her garden from space:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1517775117.jpg

We are planting native grasses and flowers because...it really doesn't matter: the bee thing means no cows or goats or...

Paul, sir.

I do have difficulty finding the words exemplary enough to describe what you share with us.

I appreciate that. My wife is the best thing that ever happened to me other than my parents...now get back to the GF who seems to have ignored your plea for help. :D

OK.

In that coy, sexually-charged attitude we all have heard about she asks:

If you're so god-damned sick why didn't you drive yourself?

Well, it's mostly because I need somebody to call the shots if I become totally incapacitated.

Then the tears. Hers.

The shots of adrenaline and the IV insertion went well.

Somebody had already said something about a shocky patient in ER.

So I'm thinking I'm where I need to be under the circumstances. Let it play out. RELAX!

My heart rate zoomed which is apparently something to keep an eye on. V-fib. Maybe A-fib. Didn't seem to matter which at that point.

Then the diaphoresis just stopped. From drenching sweat to clammy coolness.

Deep breaths, no itch.

It seemed like somebody dialed down the pressure.

On the way home we stopped at Ace Hardware for bug ****.

Back in the car the GF tells me the doc told her there was nothing more they could do if the reaction were to continue.

If you're observant you can follow ground bees back to their subterranian homes wherupon you can unleash the dogs of hell and annihilate the innocent and beneficial critters.

You cross this perimeter, you die. That's what I tell myself, anyway.

Ground bees (hornets, wasps-everybody calls them different things, depending) and me can not and will not C0ÈX1$T.

I've wanted to get into bee keeping for years. Never had time. Great info from MRM. We planted an area of wild grasses and wildflowers about 15 years ago with an eye to providing pollen for bees. I thought the wildflower meadow would be low maintenance - no mowing etc. Not quite so. Invasive, non-native species took over about every 5 years. I tried burning it off every fall or spring for a while and then just plowed it up and started over. Never got around to getting the bees.

I ment to say this earlier.
Net-flick has a show called rotten, it's the first show and it's about Bee's. Please go check it out. I haven't followed this but they have others.