Before we break out cans of discount wasp spray, I hope everyone takes a minute to differentiate between long-suffering, food-producing honey bees and the other nasty stinging things that swarm the summer skies (recent bee hysteria in an Indiana town inspired this article).
I have two qualifications for writing this ode to the honey bee. A.) I’ve thought beekeeping the coolest hobby on Earth since I browsed through my grandfather’s discarded farming catalogs at 11 and B.) a bee sting will put me in anaphylactic shock if untreated.
Combining those two, you can likely understand my interest in our friends, the honeybees.
1.) Over 30% of our food is connected to honey bees or their pollination. If they die, we die.
