You Know You're a Beekeeper When.....

John's Beekeeping Notebook
You know you're a beekeeper when...
By John Caldeira, with contributions from many others.

The windshield of your vehicle has at least two yellow dots on it.

You have answers ready for questions about Africanized bees and the value of local honey in preventing allergies.

Year eagerly await the phone call from the post office asking you to please come pick up your bees.

You check out all the honey labels and prices at the supermarket.

You've gone through the supermarket checkout line buying nothing more than a big load of sugar, and maybe some Crisco.

You've estimated just how much money you spent to control mites.

You pick up matches at restaurants, even though you don't smoke.

Your friends and neighbors think you are the answer to every swarm and bees-in-the-wall problem.

You are keenly aware of the first and last freezes of each winter.

There is propolis on the steering wheel of your vehicle and the bottom of your boots.

There is a bucket of something in your garage that can only be good for smoker fuel.

You are called "the Bee Man," or "the Bee Lady" by a lot of people who don't know your name.

You know the bloom period of more local flowers than the state horticulturist.

You welcome a rainy weekend if it will stimulate nectar production.

You don't mind driving home with a few honey bees inside your vehicle.

Your family and friends know exactly what they're going to get for Christmas.

You don't mow the lawn because the bees are working the weeds.

You drive down a road and find yourself evaluating the roadside flowers for their honey-producing potential.

You pull over and check the bees on the wildflowers just to see if they are YOUR bees, AND -- you can tell the difference.

You come home smelling like a camp fire, and you haven't been camping.

You saw Ulee's Gold and didn't think there were enough shots of the bees.

You overhear your 9 year old daughter explaining to her friends how to tie a trucker's hitch.

The school principal calls to ask that you never again let your child take a drone tied with a thread to school for show and tell.

You never stop marveling at these wonderful creatures.

Excerpts from the above list were published in American Bee Journal (December, 1998), which prompted the following responses from readers:

You know you're married to a beekeeper when...

You spend at least one day a week on your hands and knees with a sharp knife scraping wax and propolis off your kitchen floor.

You've ever used bee boxes as furniture in your house, for coffee tables, chairs, night stands, and storage boxes.

You mow around mountains of bee equipment that never seems to make it to the barn.

You plan weddings, child birth, surgery and funerals around honey extracting time.

When buying a new truck, your spouse checks weight loads and measures the bed to see how many hives he can fit in it.

You get stung by the bee that was clinging to your husband's bee suit when you picked it up to wash it.