It appeals to me, to be outside working the bees and watching them.

– Ruth Eastman

An experience of the environment is something people look for on the weekend on their mountain bike or doing extreme kayaking or whatever. I just realized, for myself, that I need to experience the environment every day. So coming to the garden is how I decided to make that fit into my life.

– Julie Finley

Somebody said to me one time, “You do massage, why in the world would you do woodworking? What if you cut off your finger or hand or something?” To me, doing massage, doing woodworking, and when I stop and think about it, working with the bees, I’m working with my hands. I’m physically involved as well as emotionally involved. It makes total sense to me that I’m engrossed in all three of those things.

– Ruth Eastman

Half the time I go in there, I don’t know what they’re doing. I don’t know if I’m reading them right. But I know they know what they’re doing. It’s very clear.

– Suzanne Connolly Howes

It’s like church in there isn’t it? I mean, it’s sacred in there. I guess, for me, in a box of bees, you don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t have to understand everything that’s going on. Everything they do eventually makes sense even if I don’t understand it at the time. All of that to me is feminine.

– Julie Finley

It seems like I should be able to have friendlier bees, but sometimes they’re not.

– Ruth Eastman

A friend once said it takes a year or two for people to decide whether or not to stick with beekeeping. For some people it’s too much work. Other people get hooked. I’m definitely hooked.

– Patricia Butler

I don’t sell my honey. I give it to my friends and family and the people who love it are the ones who get the most. I love giving away honey to people who really appreciate it.

– Suzanne Connolly Howes

Oh, jeez, look at all this honey!

– Julie Finley

It’s like entering a different world.

– Ruth Eastman

The most intriguing thing about bees for me is the way they communicate with one another. The way they build their comb, the hexagonal shape, it’s fascinating how well they work together. It’s a really determined, direct way of living.

– Mery Molenaar

It’s just wonderful to see them! When I take the cover off the hive I’m just fascinated to watch them go about their jobs, working so hard. They know exactly what to do.

– Marge McLellan

It’s a slow speed. You don’t answer the phone. You don’t do anything else while you’re with them. You just get lost, I mean hours… I can be with those bees for three or four hours, come in and realize I missed lunch, it’s three hours later, but I don’t care!

– Ruth Eastman

Some of the hardest lessons, the best lessons, have come from making dumb mistakes.

– Patricia Butler

I didn’t know anything about bees and I was scared about getting stung because as a kid I had kicked a yellow jacket nest and I had gotten probably a hundred stings on my body. I was actually really nervous about getting in and working them the first time because I didn’t know what they would do. I wore two pairs of pants, a long turtleneck, another shirt and then the suit and I died because I was really hot!

But I didn’t get stung. And I got fascinated looking at them.

– Suzanne Connolly Howes

My dad was a beekeeper. He had been a beekeeper way before I was born and still kept bees as I was growing up. I remember bees in the backyard because I remember being stung once. I put a bouquet of flowers in my pocket and got stung. It was pretty painful but it always stuck with me.

– Ruth Eastman

It’s wonderful to see . . . life!

– Mery Molenaar

I’ve always been interested in bees as pollinators, but when we lived in the city I didn’t think I had to worry that much about them. When we moved out here it was my intention to plant fruit trees. So in the back of my mind I thought it would be important to keep bees.

– Patricia Butler