When I was a kid and lived in Illinois I went to a school called My School. During recess time all the boys would go and try to catch sweat bees. If you're not familiar with them they are basically painless when they sting you so don't get overly protective as a reaction to hearing about young children catching bees with their bare hands. Anywho, we'd go out into the field for play time and there'd be thousands of bees buzzzzing around our toddler high knees. The thing was to catch them and just look at them. Maybe put them in some jars or a box.
After doing this for what seemed like months butt was probably mere days word got around that some of the kids were getting *&$#ed up after getting stung by the bees so we created an alternate version of the game where we just stomped around and crushed them with our feet. We could get more of them that way. There was so many you could easily crush one hundred of them before recess was over. It was a boyish joy.
It couldn't have been a week after this trend caught on that we had a guest speaker come to our school. The guests turned out to be a couple of beekeepers (a man or woman I'm not sure as they were under large hats and wearing lots of tan) and with them they brought a giant honeycomb. This thing was cool. It was like one of those blackboards that you can flip over that's on a stand butt this thing was made of glass about an inch or two thick so that we could see the hive and honeycomb inside. I tell you it was amazing. I think they probably told us about the importance of bees and their role in nature, I don't remember. By far the most memorable part of this day for everybody was that we got to try honey for the first time. Straight from the very bees we were watching. They gave us buttermilk biscuits and let us put as much honey on them as we wanted. Our parents must have been horrified, hopped up kids on mother nature's kindest just in time to be picked up from school. I bet I had 6 or 7 of those biscuits. The honey was money. I hadn't tasted anything that good in my whole life before and possibly since. I'm not going to describe honey, you should know. I'm just saying that day lives with me. It's one of my earliest impressions that I can recall. I must have been 4 years old. Eating honey covered biscuits while watching bees do their work, close up with no fear of being stung.
The next day we went out for recess and the game of stomping on bees was underway. I can remember stopping as the other boys kept running off, hopping on innocent bees into the field. I thought to myself how if we ever got them all there wouldn't be any honey for us to put on our biscuits. I knew right then it was up to me. I had a cause. I HAD TO SAVE THE BEES.
I ran around to every single kid on the playground the entire recess break and explained to them that we had to stop killing the bees so that we could have plenty of honey. This must have been what the teachers intended by bringing the beekeepers in as guest speakers. I suppose as kids we weren't as reactionary and more trusting because everybody did stop. It was something that we never did again even though initially it was so much fun.
From that day on I've always stuck up for the little guys and underdogs of the world and always took notice of how seemingly inconsequential actions can have devastating impacts on the future.
We didn't have anymore biscuits with honey on them butt we learned a lesson that day. A very simple lesson. Never tell a kid he can have as much honey as he wants.
Here's a recent article about bees, beekeeping and honey from NPR.org
And here's a video about the life cycle of bees.
I might as well throw in some Mariah Carey while I'm at it. I'm not afraid to admit I like her. She's got an amazing set of lungs.
This is the most famous scene from the movie Wicker Man that came out in 2006 starring Nicolas Cage. I don't know why this movie didn't get much buzz. Be forewarned, this may hurt your eyes to watch.
Frak it. I like skateboarding and I'm on a roll with honey bees so here's an interesting skateboard video where people are taking an unusual/artistic view of skateboarding. It doesn't always have to be switch lazer flips down multiple flights of steps.
