You've Got Mail

I spent the day Saturday teaching/demonstration at a beekeeping workshop. I participate in this event every year and every year I am pleased to go home at the end of the day to find several email messages from people that attended my sessions. Some are messages of thanks; some are questions that the students thought of on their way home. I spend the rest of the evening replying to all the messages.

One really wonderful thing happened several years ago. There was an elderly woman with a European accent teaching and demonstration at this workshop. She was of the really old school philosophy, using methods that she had learned from her grand father back in the 1940s. This woman only taught at this workshop once and she made a big impression on me.

So here I was demonstrating techniques I have learned on my own and from many teachers I’ve had in the past. I mention that I learned some really cool things from a woman that demonstrated at the workshop several years ago. After I mentioned a few cool techniques I heard a voice in the back saying, “That was me.”

I looked and I saw her beautiful blue eyes and immediately knew who she was. “Helga!” I said. She acknowledged that it was in deed her. I introduced Helga to the crowd I was teaching and fortunately I remembered a good deal about her background. She seemed impressed and honored. I told the students that they should find Helga during the breaks and chat with her because she is the most experienced person I know with the natural ways of beekeeping. Everything I’ve ever heard her say is thoughtful and good natural practice.

During a break later that morning I saw Helga with a crowd of people gathered around her. Helga was a star again. She seemed pleased that one of her former students was still preaching the gospel according to Helga. I was pleased to see her again and pleased that reflections of her nearly 70 years of experience will now be present in the minds of the newest generation of people entering the field.