I spent many a subsequent weekend at "The Farm Gym" helping John transform it from an alpaca or deer farmlet into something more suitable for grazing and working with the horses that his girlfriend Karen had grown up with. It was quiet, away from noisy neighbors, and they had enough space to do pretty much whatever they wanted.
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| Credit: xkcd - https://xkcd.com/148/ |
But here I am, many years from that life, married, with four boys, 2 dogs and a couple of goldfish - still living on the North Shore in suburban Auckland.
There's not a great deal of 'life-styling' one can do when trying to stay on the right side of the local council, the neighbors, and of course 'she who will be obeyed' - thus I had settled for a small corner of our property in which I could grow some vegetables.
The keeping of bees, therefore, seemed about as likely to pass the WAF* test as the idea of keeping a couple of chickens, or indeed moving out of suburbia to an actual lifestyle block... until the next-door neighbor popped his head over the fence and offered my beloved a small sample of comb honey from his hive.
Not only was the taste pretty damn good, but also the realisation dawned upon the family that there had been a hive of bees just across the fence for almost a year, and none of us had been stung to death in scenes reminiscent of those terrible late 70's - early 80's animal armageddon films (like The Swarm) - things were falling into place!
This was the chance to make a bid (again) for a hive. I'd discussed such a thing a few years ago after returning from a conference where a colleague of mine had regaled us with tales of bountiful extractions and imminent brewing of mead. I was shut down then, but this time, I found myself on the positive side of the WAF ledger and approval to proceed was granted!
So now I have the outlines of a new hobby, time to start filling in some of the details...
*WAF is a universal measurement which all husbands are taught about when we are conscripted into being more useful humans then perhaps we were BEFORE we got married. The acronym stands simply for "Wife Approval Factor". A dutiful husband should at all times seek to keep the ratio of WAF on the positive side of the scale, especially as we have a tendency to do and say stupid things which can erode months of WAF stockpiling in a single blurted sentence or action.
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