Another Reason to Keep Bees

A friend's daughter made this display for her career day entry. Can you tell her Mom keeps bees??

Another Reason to Keep Bees

"A-pi-a-rist."

Would you please use that in a sentence? That was my first thought when I saw the word, as one would ask if one were in a spelling contest. Not that "apiarist" doesn't make sense since Apis is Latin for bees. If you've been in beekeeping for any time, you've come across a number of reasons why people have bees, and a variety of terms used to refer to people who chose to regularly be around bees.

For example, there are the traditional bee"keepers," the ones who are held to a higher standard than the bee"havers," who place a hive on the back 40 and let the bees fend for themselves. You can start a small war between two beekeepers about whether their beekeeping practices fall into which one of these categories on how they manage hive pests.

Now there's the "apiarist," described in vocabulary.com:

"Apiarist is a fancy word for a beekeeper. An apiarist enjoys working with an unusual kind of pet, the honeybee. Because bees and other pollinators are so important to a healthy environment scientists encourage “bee-spotting” to improve fruits and vegetables."

So to my beekeeping colleagues, here is proof that there are indeed four reasons people keep bees:

1. For pollination;

2. For honey and other products out of the hive;

3. For more bees and, for the reason I periodically give, 

4. As pets!

And that now makes me an apiarist as well as the crazy bee lady. 

Charlotte