The Beekeeper

15 August 2024

This was originally from an old book I am no longer publishing, from 2014. I made changes for clarity.

I was talking with a beekeeper recently. In the course of his business, he helps people who let things get overgrown. The bees take up residence in all kinds of things. For instance, inside couches left at the edge of the property. When people let things get overgrown, it's because they don't want to or can't face reality. In some ideal world, a person could leave their property overgrown, but in San Diego County, where we live, this creates a fire risk. The local government can assess that a property is dangerous and give a deadline: clear out the fire risks or have your property seized.

If the owners have bees on their property, nobody will want to clear the brush for them. Nobody wants to get stung, although beekeepers tolerate it. So they would have to call in the beekeeper first. Time passes. They still don't want to deal with their issue. So maybe they have a month left to clear their land, or else they'll lose their whole property. Also, they don't have much money -- this is a complicating factor.

So my friend the beekeeper makes a deal with them. They can pay him in installments, with the balance due in 6 months. He takes a risk: if they lose their property, they won't have money to pay him, and they'll move and be hard to track down.

In the particular case we talked about, the following is what happened: They agreed to his offer (installments, the balance due in 6 months), he removed the bees, and they succeeded in bringing the property into compliance. But time passed, and he didn't have his money. So he wrote a letter saying "You've got two months left to pay my bill. If you don't, I'm going to bring the bees back." (He keeps the bees he collects on his own property.) Within a week he was paid in full.

He said that he does this to wake people up. He says he's a nice guy. (I agree with that assessment.) He says people need to get a wakeup call from someone nice. In contrast, other people would refuse to help them, leaving them with their money and their problem. He makes them pay the price, holds them accountable, but he doesn't want to destroy them.

He said that in another similar case, there was a woman who was paying him back $35 a week, with money orders that cost more than a dollar. From this, he inferred that she didn't even have a bank account, otherwise she would have written a check. So with half the balance paid, he wrote her a letter: "Your good will so far, in paying what you have paid, and the promise of more good deeds to be done by you in the future, is your repayment." That is, he forgave the rest of her debt.