12-20 IAN Bee School

 I have an all new academic pursuit for any of you who are intellectually inclined. Bee school. I have a good friend who keeps tons of beehives in his backyard. Every year, he ends up harvesting an awful lot of honey which he then distributes to is pals… among whom, I am included. I have been sufficiently wowed by the taste of honey that I wondered if there are any schools where you can learn to raise bees. So I picked up the phone and called, in my mind, the most knowledgeable guy in Idaho when it comes to bees. Bill Ahaus is the former secretary-treasurer of the Idaho Honey Industry Association and he had a definite opinion about bee school. “We tried to attract some hobbyists, we had a guy come from Astoria, Oregon and he taught a bee school and we hoped that guys would show up and one of our members at a business meeting went out to the restroom and while he was away he stopped at the room where the bee school was going on and then he came back and he said that there were 37 people over there. They are fun and each meeting they try to have some form of demonstration or experience or discussion or speaker and then they have 4 or 5 honey extractors that they have purchased over the years that they share among the members when it is time to harvest the honey.