The Bee Man Delivers at Roanoke College

Howland Blackiston (right) chats with  a veteran beekeeper after his talk.

The house was full for the bee talk.

Howland Blackiston talked about bees to the delight of a packed auditorium on the campus of Roanoke College last night. Howland is a fascinating guy, a hotshot Madison Avenue marketing guy with a ton of Fortune 500 clients and a Carhart-wearing beekeeper on a couple of prime Connecticut acres.

He gives a great talk and his audience was so impressive in size last night that he took a few seconds to record a video of it for his wife back home. "She said, 'What if nobody comes?'" he said. "This will reassure her."

Howland Blackiston.

Howland has written two popular books on beekeeping and setting up in hives (one of them going into its third edition this month).

One of the interesting developments from Howland's talk was that a student group was formed to look more closely at beekeeping, lobby for endangered bees and perhaps even set up some hives. My guess is that if you're interested in joining, you can get in touch with somebody in the biology or public information departments (Leslie Taylor, ltaylor@roanoke.edu) at the college.

I did a story on Howland for the Roanoke College website a couple of weeks ago (here) and found him to be a fascinating man with a good story. His talk was equal to the man. Here's some of what it looked like.