I Meet The Most Interesting People While Beekeeping

I spent the day today working with Mike Singleton in the Queen rearing yard. We had a busy day and really only had contact with each other except for one customer from Morganton NC. Of course, Mike knows everyone in Canton and while at lunch at the Black Bear Cafe, Mike had a steady stream of friends come by the table. If you ever are in Canton, and need lunch, go to the Black Bear Cafe and get the grilled chicken salad. It is delicious and very reasonably priced, not to mention all you want to eat.

Sometime after lunch, we got some queen cells to install in queenless hives. The last batch were to go into hives at his yard in Crusoe NC. Mike has a mating yard there that borders a mobile home park owned by his mother. We circled down the drive into the mobile home park to turn into the mating yard, and when we rounded the curve we were sort of stunned by what we saw. It was completely unexpected and at least slightly over the top, even for a "country redneck trailer park". There was a Ford Taurus with the hood up and someone was bent over the fender with their hands in the engine compartment and working on the vehicle! Oh, that does not sound unusual? Well that someone was about a 45 year old lady! Well even that was not all that unusual I guess, except she was wearing a very small orange bikini!

I looked over at Mike, and said, "you know, you don't see that everyday"! Mike slowly but deliberately responded, "No, you don't". We pulled into the mating yard, (FOR BEES!) and parked in the edge near where the mechanic work was being done. I must admit, it was hard not to look, because it was one of those things that well, YOU KNOW YOU ARE GONNA LOOK! This sight would have made ANYONE look male or female! LOL! Well, as we were feeling ashamed for glancing at this spectacle, Mike made small talk, by asking if she wanted to help work some bees. She raised up, and smiled with a cigarette bouncing around in her lips while her eyes squinted at the sting of the hot smoke that was rising up into them. She then pulled a greasy hand up and grasped the cigarette with some very greasy but manicured nails. This is precisely when I noticed the view we got while rounding the curve in the trailer park drive was not all that was over the top. To make it descrete, Mike and I missed nothing due to not eating lunch at Hooters! Free of the smoking stick of slow death, she resonded that she did not quite think she was dressed for beekeeping today. No kidding, I thought, and not really quite dressed for working under the hood of her car in the driveway of her trailer park. By this time I so DESPERATELY wanted to take my cell phone out and grab a photo of this spectacle for proof we actually witnessed it! I resisted the urge but I considered it while she proceeded to respond to my observation she was a brave woman for attempting repair on her car. She responded that she had paid attention as a girl while she watched her dad work on their vehicle at home. Then she learned more from her EX-HUSBAND about car repair. I wondered if they somehow inspired the uniform of the day by the way they dressed to work on the car. I sure hoped not anyway.

At this point, I realized she had just given me far more information about her personal life than I really cared to know and so Mike and I smiled and went about placing queen cells into the queenless hives he had pre-marked. We were installing queen cells, but we were still laughing about what we had witnessed. Mike had to go back to the truck to get something and then received a phone call. At this point, I thought what the heck, so I started walking back towards the truck pretending to look up a phone number as I turned on my cell phone camera to clandestinly obtain proof that we actually saw what I am describing. As I walked closer, I was going to snap the photo then raise up my cell phone as if I were answering a call. Honest, I have never done anything like that before, but you really had to see this to understand! The phone did not capture the photo, and I did not want to be too obvious. As I turned direction to meet Mike at another hive, she finished up her job and went into the house. She promptly returned with a sun dress on then jumped into the newly repaired car and drove off.

Mike and I then discussed how this would apply to the, "you might be a redneck if..." lines. and agreed it may fit better in a PRICELESS commercial. At any rate, we laughed all the rest of the evening and it made our day! We really did hate the fact we had no evidence of the spectical, but hopefully my description here will give you an idea of what beekeeping is like on a day in the beeyard with Cal and Mike!