Bee Syndicate S1 E7 Talking to My Neighbors and War Stories.

Bee Syndicate S1 E7 Talking to My Neighbors and War Stories.

So I decided to screw ’em (the township) and get bees now what? Time to talk to the neighbors I guess. I've lived on my street for most of my life and know most of my neighbors very well. and it's important to be open with your neighbors about this type of thing. Its not worth making enemies over keeping bees in your back yard. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. Some of you neighbors may have concerns about this new hobby and might have questions about how things work or have concerns about what impact your backyard activities might have on theirs and you owe it to them to take the time to lay any fears to rest and answer any questions they might have. Bees are very social creatures and we should be too. After all you don't want someone with misplaced fears about honey bees sneaking into your backyard in the middle of the night with a can of Raid.

When I talked to my first immediate neighbor seemed pretty excited and asked me to keep him posted about classes and events i'm attending leading up to my getting bees. Honestly I think that once i make it trough a year or two that he will get some bees of his own and will have me help get him started. That is fine with me he's a great neighbor and any opportunity I can take to help him out I am going to take. I didn't expect to get any push back from him when I told him that I had decided to get bees because we had sort of talked about it previously in a very hypothetical way and based on that conversation I expected him to be excited about me getting the bees.

The neighbor on the other side of me is a 92 year old WW2 veteran and I didn't expect to get much push back from him because he is still a bad ass and at one point lived on a farm and up until just a few years ago had a fairly large garden in his backyard. I fully expected him to tell me a long war story about how bees helped him win the war.

~~ War Story Flash Back ~~

We had been walking through rural occupied France and had been fighting the hedgerows as much as the Nazis. after a long tiresome day of marching we came along a farm house of a Farmer his wife and two daughters. when he stumbled across us in one of his fields he was very excited to see us. Happy to see that the Allies were at last in France. None of us spoke hardly any French but we didn't need a translator to see how excited he was to see us. He motioned to his house and the prospect of a warm meal and even possibly a bed seemed like a good idea to the four of us so we followed him. After introducing us to his family the best he could do to the language barrier his wife served us a hot meal It was the first one any of us had had in weeks. It was to this day one of the best meals I have ever had.

The next morning I awoke to a fist pounding on the front door and the sound of screaming in German. Again I didn't need a translator to know this court want happy. I crawled to the window and could see two jeeps parked down at the road and several infantrymen in the field in front of the house. I crawled back from the window and grabbed my carbine I could see our new friends huddled in the back corner a room across the hall Eugene across the hall had also grabbed his rifle and move toward the door of his room and looked down the stairs toward the front door. I signaled to jimmy our machine gunner though the iron rod floor vent that let let me look down into the living room Jimmy signaled to me that he could see two Germans on the porch. I signaled for him to get ready and then i signaled to Eugene to move to the window and take aim. The Angry Nazi continued to yell and pounded on the door. I slowly moved back toward the window and took aim through the curtain at one of the guys out in what was basically a massive front yard. I yelled “Now” and Jimmy took out the two on the porch and Eugene and I managed to take out one out the guys out front. The three remaining Germans obviously caught off guard took cover behind the first things they could find. They didn't seem to notice that the first thing they found happened to be some of the farmers bee hives. The bees didn't like it when they began firing back at the house so close to their hives and they went immediately into defense mode and promptly flushed them out of cover and we picked them off. After taking stock of ourselves and our hosts we put our gear on and went out to check the Germans and the jeeps for intel. On our way back up from the road our farmer friend had opened one of the hives near one of the Germans we had dispatched he took out a frame of honey. The bees didn't seem to care that we were there we ate the honey right off the frame. It was the sweetest thing I ever tasted.

~~ End War Story ~~

My Neighbor proceeded to tell me that he thought that having bees was a good Idea and that it was good to have more pollinators for the flowers and garden.s He made the point that bees are already in our environment it wasn't like I was introducing something foreign and new.

So two down two to go. I have to admit that the next two sets of neighbors have me a little nervous. Don't get me wrong they are very nice people, but they are newer to the street, and I don't know them that well. and they have children. People are protective of there kids and I worry that if one of the kids gets stung by anything whether it's even a bee or not that it would be perceived as my fault. hopefully they won't have to much of an issue with me wanting to get some bees. If they do I will try to put their fears to bed. If that doesn't work I do have some backup plans but hopefully it won't come to that. Now I just need to work up the courage to talk to them. I don't know why I'm so nervous about talking to them. I guess I'm just worried that they will be vehemently opposed to the Idea. I will have to let you guys know how it goes.