We have been away this weekend, close to where we used to live before we moved to the south-west. Quite horrifying to find that what was a sleepy little town when we lived nearby has become what appears to be a massive housing estate. However, the reason for the visit was to attend a birthday party for the wife of a university friend. For the first time in perhaps twelve or so years I met their daughter who was one of the bridesmaids when my wife and I married. At the time of the wedding she was only four years old. The last time we met was when she was about thirteen or fourteen. We threw a large party and she came with her parents, drove the tractor around one of the fields pulling a trailer full of lots of the younger children and, most relevantly to this story, took part when I grabbed a frame of honey that I’d not yet extracted and let the children break it open and taste the honey.
We were chatting at the end of the evening when her boyfriend wandered over and she said to him “You know I’ve always talked about keeping bees? This is the person who started it” and recounted the story.
Right now they live in a flat in the centre of the town so it’s not immediately practical, but it’s lovely to think that sharing a frame of honey more than ten years ago with a group of children is still remembered and planted a seed that I feel sure will end up with another beekeeper joining the ranks in the none-too-distant future.