A Different Kind of Princess.

       In September this year Linda and I went to Disneyland and had a wonderful time hanging out with children and grandchildren. I was very grateful to Beth and James for inviting us to come along and their patience in putting up with my snoring as we shared a hotel room. My wonderful little granddaughters (both Kangs and Tunnells) were pretty obsessed with all of the disney princesses and spent a lot of time collecting autographs and posing for pictures with their favorite princesses. While I enjoyed watching all of the little girls have their special moments, I didn't feel the need to pose with a princess myself.  I guess a Disney princess is not really my kind of princess.  The past two days I attended the Washington State Beekeeepers annual meeting in Federal Way, Washington. Among other wonderful "bee geek" delights I finally met my kind of princess...a honey princess.  I posed for the picture below to show my grand daughters that there are some princesses out there that can impress me.  Allison Adams hails from Plano, Texas and has been keeping bees since she was 13.  She currently works as an elementary and high school art teacher.  Even better, she also plays the penny whistle.  She showed pictures of her wearing a "bee beard" with a big princess smile.

   I had a great time listening to some very smart people summarize their recent honeybee research.  I listened to Gloria Hoffman from the USDA bee lab in Tucson, Dave Tarpy from the University of North Carolina, as well as the usual suspects from WSU and OSU.  The best part was that I got to talk to several of them after their formal presentations. It was a wonderful day to be a bee geek.