Honey

Like any other reasonable person, I really like honey. But a lot of people will probably disagree with me when I say that there are only two applications for honey: one is to spread it on English muffins so that it sinks into the little holes and the second is to add it to Earl Grey tea with milk when you’re feeling a bit sick or want a delicious evening treat. I really can’t think of anything else I would do with honey. 

But what I can think of is an atrocious article that appeared in the Gazette several years ago that was meant to highlight Grand Forks’ most prolific bee keepers, interchangeably referred to in the article as both the Huxters and the Huxleys. The article focused on the Huxterly’s breading of bees. Presumably the author—who, by the way, once wrote an entire article using only baseball metaphors—meant breeding, but the term “breading” was used throughout the article, leading any seasoned English major to assume that the article was actually about two rival bee keeper camps in Grand Forks who sabotaged the other’s stock by breading their bees. Like a chicken breast. That article was truly terrible, like most other pieces in the Gazette, but what isn’t terrible is Huxterly honey, which as far as I can recall, is the only honey I have ever had in my life. I store it in a blue cheese dressing jar (disgusting) because it comes to us in unmanageable plastic buckets.

 I don’t have much else to say about the topic. I guess I could add that I think vegans who don’t eat honey are ridiculous and that we used to have bee hives on our property and one time the bees swarmed in a massive clump and sat on a tree for several days until they were moved because bees do that. I might also add that while Lil Kim has consistently used the moniker “Queen Bee,” I don’t think she has adequately made use of honey references, which I think would fit nicely with her sex-heavy lyrics. 

None is less tolerable than the self-righteous vegan
Who considers consuming animal products a social disease.
But honey is nature’s greatest gift to all man,
And by not supporting the keepers, they’re really only hurting the bees.
As they wax-poetic about all the wrongs and the rights,
They might as well be infesting these gentle insects with a plague of mites.