The Apiary

It seems that every neighborhood has little treasures that reveal themselves to you in ways and places that you never imagined. Just when I thought Trail 7 behind my house was the Known World, I found some monsters in the margins today when I was out exercising...

An apiary! I saw a few beehives tucked in among the bamboo trees and the banana plants. I guess keeping bees has always been a pleasant fantasy of mine...

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

The husband and wife team was hard at work cleaning up parts of the hive.

I asked them how they had gotten their start. School? Government training. Naw. "We just did it," the woman told me with a shrug.

It turned out that they had a lot more beehives than I originally thought.

Here she makes smoke as the husband checks the beehives.

[Taiwan]