Saving the Hives

Gendy Alimurung's cover story about the Backwards Beekeepers, a local group devoted to raising (and saving) beehives organically, had readers, well, buzzing (“Bee Fever,” June 14).

David Osborne of Los Feliz writes, “Great to see the 'Bee Fever' article. We had a recent infestation, which included having some lost souls finding their way into our bedroom. Try sleeping as bees dive-bomb you! (Did you know they also drop honey and wax as they do it?) We called the Backwards Beekeepers, and Walker and Kirk took away two garbage bins of bees from our house — and seemed to have fun making holes in the stucco to make sure we were clear. It was an experience, I can tell you.

“Everyone seems to have a bee story, and the worst we heard was from the contractor who fixed the stucco, whose Rottweiler had been stung to death by a swarm. Not nice. The best thing was the honey Walker gave us from the bees in our house. Hopefully it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience!”

Lidia writes, “Thank you for a great article. I hope that backwards beekeeping will become the norm!“

“This is cool,” vegandawg23 agrees. “More people need to do this and cut out the scumbag middlemen. A beekeepers 'rescue' in Orange County wanted to put their hives on my yard to harvest my nectar from my flowers and only give me 3 percent of the honey and sell the rest to dim bulbs for $10 a pound. I'm learning all I can on my own and will harvest my own honey soon enough.”

Chain Restaurant Blues

Besha Rodell's review of Outback Steakhouse drew national attention last week, but some readers didn't like Rodell's salty take (“Baby Got Outback“). Guppie_612 incredulously quotes Rodell: “Asking someone for 'shrimp on the barbie' was maybe one of the hardest things I've ever done?” He adds, “Wow, I envy your life!“

Pence.Mike says, “Congratulations, Besha Rodell, for writing a stupid, obvious restaurant critique that panders to the tastes of your core audience. Good journalism.”

Louispfreely writes, “Olive Garden is not real Italian food. P.F. Chang's is not real Chinese food. El Torito is not real Mexican food. Congratulations on writing a story that pretty much everyone could write. Do you think you're special because you're Australian?“

But Olivertwisted defends the idea. “It can be constructive to eat at places like Outback just to inform yourself of how much better the good restaurants really are. It puts life into perspective.”

Correction

Our article about music videos at the L.A. Film Festival, “Music Videos for the Sake of Art, Not YouTube Views,” named the wrong person as director of the Cloud Nothings video “No Future, No Past.” It was actually directed by John Ryan Manning. We regret the error.

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