It is not often in life that one has the good fortune to come across an unsung hero.
Dai Thomas was such a man. The epitome of that quiet, unassuming beekeeper, entirely in tune with his bees, always respecting their endeavours and treating them gently and patiently.
He was my mentor in beekeeping and I will always treasure not only his technical expertise but equally importantly his teaching in terms of taking your time, looking for what the bees will tell you in a colony and going about inspections in a quiet and methodical manner.
He was also one of the few folk I know, and not only in beekeeping that didn’t consider knowledge as a possession, to be guarded and kept to oneself.
He was free with all of those little nuggets of information, gleaned over decades of beekeeping and shared without a second thought.
In the hustle and bustle of modern life, we are sometimes apt to forget that beekeeping is a hobby, to be enjoyed, to be savoured and one that gives us fortunate few the opportunity to get closer to nature than most other people.
I’m not sure we will ever see the likes of Dai again. We can only strive to be as good a beekeeper as he was, to be as kind and thoughtful towards the natural world in general and bees in particular as he was and to ensure that his legacy lives on in all of us whenever we put on a beesuit.
– Jeremy