01/30/10

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My Story

“Honey bees are superb teachers when trying to instill an environmental awareness and conservation ethic in young people. In learning about the importance of honey bee pollination, they realize how living things depend on other living things and that, while a few insects are pests, many are essential to our survival. Honey bees teach young people to be patient and gentle. Hastiness and carelessness have painful consequences, a lesson honey bees can teach you at a young age if you keep them. Honey bees are superb teachers.”   Dr.  Marion Ellis

I attended Santa Fe Trail Elementary School until we moved to Mountain Home, Arkansas during the latter half of 5th grade. My dad's side of the family is from down south in Arkansas. Eight months later, we moved back to Overland Park, Kansas except not into the same house on W 72nd Terrace as it was still rented out.

In the early 1970's, our 6th grade science class at Overland Park Elementary took a field trip to the Agriculture Hall of Fame Museum in Bonner Springs, Kansas. An obscure box with glass sides caught my attention. This box was a glass observation bee hive. Live honey bees could bee seen with several frames of comb. This hive was connected to the wall with a plastic tube leading to the outside. I was fascinated.

Another classmate and I got an idea.  We wanted to make a glass hive of our own.  Our science teacher, Mrs. Kern, encouraged us.  She told us that we should find all the books that we could find on honey bees over the summer. She told us to read those books. This field trip was in late spring and the school season was only a few weeks from ending. Evidently she had an influence on me.

After school ended, I spent what were then my care-free days catching honey bees in glass jars. The little honey bees were were landing on clover blossoms collecting nectar in the school field.  I was only 10 years of age-nearly eleven.  I tried to catch as many individual bees as I could in a 1 gallon cider jug. We moved back to our old house on 72nd Terrace and I went to the school behind the house.

I got stung a few times and learned to handle the bees by their wings. The stings hurt. Some seemed more painful than others.  I developed my skill at catching honey bees. I also got used to getting stung.   <My plans of making a small hive did not work.  I also had the problem of not having a queen bee. I really enjoyed this new fascination and I had fun playing with the bees that I caught. This is how my history with honey bees begins.  There was more I needed to learn.

Soon after....

In 7^th grade at Milburn Junior High, I learned that I could order packaged honey bees and the equipment through the Montgomery Ward Farm Catalog.  I didn't have much money, so I got a job. I delivered papers for The Kansas City Star. I got my first hive in 1973. In September of 1977, the same 100-year flood that swept through the Plaza, a shopping district in Kansas City, Missouri, had gone through our residential back-yard in Overland Park, KS and flooded my 3 hives that I had at the time.  One washed away against the back-yard fence; the other two were carried out of the rising waters by me and my brother and survived.

The flood of 1977 also led me to my second job.  As a volunteer I helped clean up the supply room for a Plaza hotel coffee shop, The Pam-Pam, where my mother also worked.  When I turned 16, I applied for a position, weekends only, at the Alameda Plaza in the coffee shop. After high school, I became a full-time college student. Philip Pistilli, the President of the Alameda Plaza & Raphael hotels, pulled me out of the coffee shop to work as a bellman at the Front Desk on my 18th birthday. I worked there until after I graduated from the University of Kansas in Lawrence. 

By 1980, I was up to 3 hives again.  Almost all of the honey I that year, I had sold to Chef Jesse Barbosa at Alameda Plaza Hotel.  Selling the honey to the hotel was a lesson in capitalism.  I was able to make some hobby income.  I'll always be in-debted to Mr. Pistilli and the hotel family of people that I worked with for advancing me and giving me an opportunity. The hotel work was fun. My experience there and the many people I met, helped me work my way through many years of college and allowed me to graduate debt-free.

In 1986, I graduated from KU with a major in Liberal Arts.  My concentration was in German as I had been and exchange student to Ellerau and Hamburg, Germany during high school at Shawnee Mission North. I also gained my German family and have extensive history with them and the several friends of the family in Hamburg that I met as result of my visit(s).

Bees are my other passion. Although a member of the local beekeeping association since 1985, I now serve a couple of non-profit, educational bee organizations. It's been an adventure. I've gotten to know other people here at home and around the country who are passionate about bees, too. Educators, mead-makers, researchers, soap-makers, candle-makers, book writers, market customers-from all walks of life.

What turn my life would have taken, had I not been on that fateful field trip in 6th grade. It continues to be a fascinating adventure. Check out some of my other pages to see what beekeeping has been for me.

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