Last August I fell in love with the idea of bees. I’ll admit that I had no concept of what that meant, but I will stand firmly behind my belief that it was not a yuppy whim. For whatever reason and propelled by God-knows-what, I instantly became determined to become a beekeeper.

Being totally naive and gullible as to my commitment, I turned to the internet, that mind boggling oasis where no question goes unanswered. Googling the word “bees” opened doors, windows and even portholes into a world I only superficially knew existed.

I began with pictures. There were thousands of magnified, colored photos that captured honeybees hovering like angels in mid flight, tiptoeing like tutued ballerinas across rainbow colored blossoms, waggling their furry little caramel colored behinds like gyrating Tahitian dancers.

I sat mesmerized as the delicate insects artistically displayed before me, captured my heart and my imagination. And I think the inherent beauty was, as with watching a stallion bullet across an empty plain,that these honeybees were not smiling for the camera or maintaining an artificial pose, they were simply doing, like wild horses, what comes naturally.

Though sometimes I believe that a smile crosses our lips and we know not why, that day I did. I was just beginning a love affair with my future mail-order brides.

T of T ###2   WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF SMILING FOR NO REASON..THERE IS.