From a beekeeping point, I find myself aligned with Ray's basic beekeeping philosophy. Beekeeping is fun. I enjoy having honey and tending to the bees, and I try to learn as much as I can about them, but beekeeping in not a passion to me as it is to so many of you. Outside of God, home and country, my life long passions have been engineering and shooting. I am driven to explore new techniques and fads in both of these fields. When I am too passionate about anything it creates highs and lows with my psyche. I don't want another passion of that magnitude, so I keep bees by the old tried and true methods and listen to the old players like Apis, Riverbee, Lborou, Perry,Yankee and many others whose names do not come to my immediate attention. To me, that is "common sense."
To many of the folks on this forum, beekeeping is a burning passion that consumes many hours of their mind on a daily basis. That's not me. I love bees and all of nature's creations. I am a naturalist. I spend a lot of time and money restoring my ranch land toward it's natural state of 150 years ago.
On another matter, it appears that the term "you people" offends many people. It certainly is not the best choice of words, and it not a phrase that I consciously use. I say consciously, because I have reread some of my writing and thought, "did I really write that?" This is one of those things to me that begs of "let him who has not sinned cast the first stone." Political correctness and multiculturalism have determined that such terms MAY be offensive to someone. I give the writer the benefit of the doubt, unless the writer is a constant offender. If you wish to refer to me, as "you people from Texas" that's fine with me.
