Marin Bee Company

I get excited about the funniest things these days; a couple of weeks ago it was finding the first asparagus at the farmers' market, last week it was eating it picked from a friends backyard. This week? This week I happened upon a truck load of bees.

The cute guy was putting gas in the car. I was staring off towards the vacant building next door. There were a few people in the parking lot walking with arms outstretched, stepping carefully; gingerly describes it best, each carrying a wooden box. It was strange. They watched the box in their hands as they walked, from the back of a truck towards a car across the lot, as if the box might spill and then they deposited their box in the trunk.

And I knew. They. Had. Bees.

I held back from running but I was at the truck before a dollars worth of gas clicked off on the pump. It was stacked end to end with boxes of bees. "I brought sixty boxes this time," the man in charge answered a woman at the back of the truck.

She had an English accent and saw my hesitation as I got close. "They're quite gentle," she offered. She stepped forward, put her finger on top of a box until a couple loose bees crawled on her. We both watched them, smiling. I thanked her and got closer.

One car left, bees secured in its trunk, another arrived and the English woman smoothed a blanket in her van. Her box was held outward across the parking lot too, all of us watching until it was deposited as gingerly as the others.

The next man in line looked like a casual Friday banker. "I have three daughters," he told me. "We never get stung and the bees pollinate the garden." He took away a box for each girl.

Then there was a man with an empty box beneath his arm. He traded it for a full one, held with two hands, arms outstretched. "I raise pastured chickens in Sebastopol," he told the cute guy who had by now joined me. He invited us to the farm, "the next time you're up that way," he said. He deposited his box of bees on the floor of the front seat of his Honda, his dog watching from the back. We all shook hands and left too.

And another car pulled into the lot.

Next year, I promised. New year I'll be ready for some bees too.