Emily Polk in Emergence:
I have loved bees my entire life, though my love for beekeepers started when I was writing a story for the Boston Globe about the dangers of mites to bee colonies in North America. I drove out to Hudson, a conservative town in rural New Hampshire, to meet leaders of the New Hampshire Beekeepers Association. I arrived just in time to watch a couple of senior bearded men in flannel shirts and Carhartt pants transport crates of bees into new hives. I was completely entranced by their delicacy and elegance. They seemed to be dancing. I wrote of one of the beekeepers, “He moves in a graceful rhythm … shaking the three-pound crate of bees into the hive, careful not to crush the queen, careful to make sure she has enough bees to tend to her, careful not to disturb or alarm them as he tenderly puts the frames back into the hive. And he does not get stung.” I was not expecting to find old men dancing with the grace of ballerinas under pine trees with a tenderness for the bees I wouldn’t have been able to imagine had I not witnessed it myself. This moment marked the beginning of my interest in what bees could teach us.
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