Buzz Buzz

Is it wrong to get an emotional high from a beekeeper's meeting? Is that totally off the charts for a desirable social situation?

First of all, on my way to the meeting, walking under the lights strung about Lake Merritt in Oakland, I thought, anyone would have to crazy to want to keep bees. I mean, you must need to have a requisite level of very slight insanity to want to actively stick your hands into a swarm of stinging insects.

But beekeepers have a sense of humor. In a nerdy kind of way. They'll say things like "bee" this and "bee" that. We met in a room filled with taxidermy. One man gave a presentation on swarm removal, and he had a box of natural comb that he had removed from a tree. The woman next to me knitted up a storm.

It seems to me the type of person who keeps bees probably has other tendencies as well. Among them, running and knitting. This woman did both. She also lives in Alameda.

The other highlight of my evening was that I scored a bucket. That's another thing that makes me inordinately excited. I go out, eat food at a meeting, and come home with a free bucket. But, as I explained to the woman, who drove me home (to whom I did not need to make any excuses), it's exciting to have something like a bucket when you don't have one and you normally take them for granted. Plus, I learned from art never to throw a jar away. You don't know how it might come in handy. Then again, maybe I learned that from my grandmother.