Sculpin

I’ve had an awesome day. This morning I chatted briefly with Paul Sorey, the artist who’s putting in an enormous, delicious metal sculpture just off Lake City Way. You may know his work from his sculpture, Salmon Waves, at the Ballard Locks. (Did you know that it has LEDs that generate images of swimming fish? I didn’t. Time for me to head down to the Locks.)

And tonight I wandered down to the Picardo P-Patch to see for myself whether there were really honeybee hives down there. I’d gotten some bad directions to them, so couldn’t picture where they might be. The guy I asked about them just happened to be Picardo’s Bee Guy. (There is also a Bee Lady who has two hives of her own.) Andrew the Bee Guy offered to show me the hives and let me take a look at them. On Saturday I’ll meet up with him when he works on the hive; he’ll bring an extra bee suit for me. Hooray!

I was interested in bees for years, but the local regulations about keeping bees on one’s property were difficult for me to work with, especially when I was a renter. But here might be an opportunity within walking distance for me to learn from experienced beekeepers and eventually keep some bees. And even if I don’t wind up taking that opportunity, Saturday should be fun and interesting.

By the way, “bee fever” usually refers to beekeepers’ obsessive enthusiasm, but it turns out that beehives can run a fever. And Japanese native honeybees can attack an invading hornet by surrounding it in a tight cluster and raising the temperature in the cluster until the hornet dies.

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