Today is my birthday, and my wonderful husband Dennis is helping me begin a dream I've had for a long time--beekeeping. My birthday gift is honeybees, and all their gear. Of course, we won't actually begin until late Spring. I spent a good hour on the telephone a couple of weekends ago with a local bee producer, who's given us contact information for a Santa Fe based beekepers club and from whom we'll be getting our setup.

Do you know that you purchase bees by the pound? She said about three pounds (I think that's like 10,000 bees) and a queen to start.

This bee producer seems quite fond of her bees. In fact, she stated exactly that. She told me she thinks that my experience with horses and having the kind of understanding I have of them will be a plus in learning how to handle bees. Well, I hope so. I can use all the help I can get with this brand new endeavor. I guess she's talking about the level of sensitivity you have when you spend a lot of time with animals. It was funny as she was talking about her interactions with bees, I'd tell her a story about my interactions with horses, and it seemed that even though we were talking about two entirely different species, we were both approaching our thoughts from a similar place.

I've been reading bee books lately, learning about bee behavior. It's fascinating.

Dennis planting 26 fruit trees this year kind of cemented the idea of beekeeping in my mind. At this point, it's a practicality. But I first began entertaining the idea of bees from this scene from Fried Green Tomatoes, one of my favorite films.

Can I become a bee charmer? A bee whisperer? We'll see.