About eight years ago I first considered moving from Los Angeles to northern Indiana, from the city to the country. I'm a city boy, born and bred, and I still love the city, but I thought to be fair to my children they should experience both ways of living. So we loaded up the truck and we moved to a mildly rural place called Dunlap, located halfway between Elkhart and Goshen, Indiana.

I say mildly rural because the Concord Mall is only a mile and a half north of us, but we're surrounded by cornfields and the stars shine brightly by night.

One of the things I promised myself was that when I moved to the country I would keep bees. I'm not sure why. I can take or leave honey. I can't abide bugs. But there seemed something very domestic about keeping bees, and I liked the sound of it.

The …