Cultivating gardens,planting flowers and not using harmful pesticides is one way of ensuring bees survive... pic by F Macha
The earliest memory I
have of bees is my mother yelling at me to lie flat on the ground in rural
Kilimanjaro. I must have been seven or
eight. Swarms of bees would noisily zoom past like tornadoes. At that time I
never associated bees and the sweet stuff they naturally produce.
The notion that bees are
vicious insects that bite was as common to us villagers as were stray dogs and
wild animals.
Ten years later (now a
teenager) I was writing stories and poems and one was about the fierceness of
bees. I was, by then, aware that bees
made honey and that honey was good for you. However, the idea that they were dangerous
could maim even kill, dominated social values.
