Looking for a new hobby?

Have you considered beekeeping?

Once again, the Times has a piece, "The Beekeeper Next Door," which cannot be improved upon by any number of wisecracks (my emphasis):

Mike Barrett (above) does not have much of a yard at his two-story row house in Astoria, Queens. But that fact has not kept him from his new hobby of beekeeping — he put the hive on his roof.

“I was surprised how much I really care about the bees,” said Mr. Barrett, 49, a systems administrator for New York University, in reflecting on his inaugural season as a beekeeper. “You start to think about the ways to make their lives better.”
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“Everyone who teaches a beekeeping course is finding themselves popular all of a sudden,” said James Fischer, 53, an instructor at New York City Beekeeping.

Like Mr. Barrett from Queens and other new beekeepers, Max Wong (above) is developing a close relationship with her bees, and she wants to ensure that others can enjoy the hobby as much as she does.

“It’s like having 35,000 pets,” she said.