I co-authored a paper on the history of beekeeping in Hawaii Lorna Arita-Tsutsumi, an entomologist at the University of Hawai'i-Hilo.

I was an assistant to a beekeeper at a kibbutz I lived on near Afula, Israel, in 1973. Years later, I came across Sue Hubell's A Book of Bees: and How to Keep Them at Oakland Public Library. I highly recommend it if you are thinking about keeping bees. Sue was a college librarian who left academia to find a more fulfilling life as a beekeeper in the Southern United States.

When I arrived in Hilo, I obtained a few hives, put some with farmer friends on the Hamakua Coast who were growing a variety of tropical fruits. I figured I'd become a beekeeper if university tenure wasn't in my future.

Unfortunately, I got tenure.