Modified by Caitlin Shetterly

Author:Caitlin Shetterly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-09-19T15:20:08+00:00

chapter 13

Morning came quickly, cold and rainy. Walter was waiting for me in the lobby and was dressed in faded designer jeans, a collared shirt, and an army-green Bavarian jacket (a traditional and handsome style of jacket made of boiled wool, with no collar and shiny buttons that march in a line up the front). His friend Karl Reiner, also a beekeeper, was pulled up outside in his minivan. Walter and I hustled through the rain and piled in. Soon we were on our way to the convention, which was held at the low, gray campus of a Catholic university called Université Catholique de Louvain. The three of us unfolded out of the minivan into the pouring rain and made our way inside.

Over three floors, vendors from all over Europe had fanned out and were setting up long tables of honey jars that varied by region, flower pollination, and time of year they were collected. They ranged in color from the lightest amber to the darkest molasses. As I went from table to table sampling the different honeys on little spoons, I was amazed by the range of flavors and different levels of viscosity. The most sublime honey I tasted that day was a coriander honey from Hungary—it was almost peppery on the tongue, with a lemony cilantro aftertaste followed by an intense hit of sweetness. (I am still, to this day, kicking myself for not purchasing it immediately. Thinking it was still early, I told myself I’d go back. By the time I did, it was all sold out. So I settled, instead, for an herbaceous chamomile honey.)

Tables were filled with everything from bee hobbyist paraphernalia—bee-covered mugs and dishes (I bought a sweet white bumblebee-covered mug and a matching eggcup for Marsy), bee stuffed animals, bee-emblazoned flags, signs, buttons, books, and curiosities—to more serious beekeeping necessities such as bee boxes, big stainless-steel honey extractors, clothes, hats, gloves, smokers, queen-rearing kits, and jars. I felt a little like Alice; I’d fallen into an alternate universe.

Overwhelmed by the sheer volume of bee products (many of which I had no reference point for), and a tiny bit of convention fatigue that started to waft over me like a fog, I tagged along, following Walter here and there, standing back and listening as he said hello to people he knew from past conventions. As he made conversation about his thoughts on, for instance, “flower power,” a concept he’s developing to replace corn biodiesel with diesel made from “bee-friendly” flowers grown in rotation as cover crops by farmers, I found myself chatting on the periphery of his conversations; for a time I sat with a silver-haired Irish man sporting a gray suit.

As Walter and I traveled through his day, a picture started to come together for me: Walter was a kind of “green knight”; in every interaction, whether his subject was bees, biodiesel, what he called the “maizification” (or cornification) of our planet, or food, he was consistently interested in moving his environmental agenda

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