Joe Kearney
speaker
57 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 13 Jul
Joe Kearney’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
There are so many things that can kill you, it's a wonder we ever get out of our beds at all.
I was recently sitting and enjoying the sunshine when a domestic honeybee drifted to rest on my wrist.
She shuffled about amongst the hairs of my arm, her abdomen bobbing and the pollen bags on her back legs packed to overflowing.
I wondered what was the weight of this creature, so slight she barely registered on my skin.
Was she the weight of a banknote or a feather?
Her proboscis and antenna checked me out.
Was she as curious about me as I was of her?
I never moved a muscle all the time she rested.
I knew sooner rather than later she would resume the journey back to her hive.
I was but a brief distraction.
We think of the things that can kill us, cars, bullets, disease, old age, but you never associate something as lightweight, as valuable, as perfectly evolved as the domestic honeybee in that category of danger.
Yet that small creature had the capability, had she chosen to do so, to end my life.
I once had four beautiful hives at the bottom of my garden.
They faced into the hedge, thus forcing the departing and returning creatures to assume a high flight path and not trouble the neighbours.
For years I enjoyed the industrious company of my bees.
Many are the hours I spent observing their comings and goings from my seat beneath an ash tree.
There's great comfort in watching others at work.
One time it was a feature of building site hoardings to incorporate inspection openings so as to accommodate the curious gaze of less industrious onlookers.
My four hives housed approximately one quarter of a million working bees in high summer.
I say approximately for who can tell.
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