Community The Armenian - Armenian Reporter

B2
2-1/16” x 5-1/4”
Community
For each Bear and A Bunch you send, you will
The
share
Armenian
hope
Reporter | February 16, 2008
for all people facing cancer by supporting the American
Cancer Society’s lifesaving mission to eliminate the disease.
Hope for a world free of cancer starts with you.
this armenian life Arman the Beekeeper forced out of business
“No respect”
©2008, American Cancer Society, Inc.
©2008, American Cancer Society, Inc.
Send hope
by the bunch
during
Daffodil Days ®
.
1.800.ACS.2345
www.cancer.org
This space contributed as a public service.
This space contributed as a public service.
You can fight back against cancer by
supporting the American Cancer Society
Daffodil Days. For more information,
visit www.cancer.org/daffodils or call
1.800.ACS.2345.
4-1/4” x 2”
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$25, our volunteers will deliver a beautiful bunch of freshcut
daffodils to someone special, along with Bea R. Hope, a
special bear created by Boyds Collection, Ltd. exclusively
for the American Cancer Society, while supplies last.
4-1/4” x 7”
Send hope by the bunch during Daffodil Days
You can fight back against cancer by supporting the American Cancer
Society Daffodil Days. Visit www.cancer.org/daffodils to purchase
Daffodil Days products, brighten a patient’s day by making a Gift of
Hope donation, send an E-card or become a Daffodil Days volunteer.
1.800.ACS.2345
www.cancer.org/daffodils
4-1/4” x 3-1/2”
®
.
Send hope by the bunch
during Daffodil Days ®
“We had 2,800 colonies of bees at his arms in the air, trying to mimic unless provoked, and multiply 1.800.ACS.2345
by only one targeted by Bob the Dam
by Tamar Kevonian
one point,” Arman explains. “But I
got squeezed out,” he says, hinting
at sinister conspiracies. His story
their senseless terror. Arman soon
understood that their complaints
were not about the bees themselves
the thousands every www.cancer.org/daffodils
year when Keeper’s incessant campaign to
they split the existing colony and have them removed. He called the
swarm to form a new one with the city council, the fire department,
LOS ANGELES7 – Arman the
includes the usual challenges faced
by a business owner, along with
politics, violence, racism, land de-
but the waste generated by them.
“The poop is like a very small dot
that turns into powder,” he says,
queen bee.
Shrewd farmers and an
and every other official he could
find. The timing of his harassment
coincided with the fires in
Beekeeper is a gregarious, full-bodied
32-year-old man with an infecvelopment,
and old Armenian men.
“I would place my swarms all
rubbing his forefingers together to
indicate their intangibility.
old nemesis
the Azusa Canyon that year. “The
public works department called
tious sense of humor and impish over the foothills, up Angeles Crest, The homeowners started call- As Arman’s colony grew, he began and then the fire marshal,” Arman
twinkle in his eye that seems to say, from Los Angeles County up to San ing town meetings and filing com- to rent them out to farmers in Fres- says. “Apparently my bees were
“Life is a joke and I know the punch Bernardino County: Arcadia, Mont-
line.” He has been on a journey of clair, Altadena, Pomona,” Arman
self-discovery and settled into the explains. “Then they started buildplaints
with their city council memno. “Once I knocked on the door
bers. “I started getting calls from of this farm and this old man an-
[Mike] Antonovich’s office apoloThis
space swered,” contributed he recalls. as a public “‘Why service. do I need
swarming around the heliport and
the helicopter pilots were getting
scared,” he adds incredulously. “I
world of pest extermination for the ing houses up there and I started
last year. It is the latest in a string getting complaints.” City officials
of half a dozen career paths he has from Los Angeles County Public
explored in the past three years. His Works Department would call him
gizing but still asking me to remove
the bees,” he shrugs. Eventually the
city offered him a location deep in
Azusa Canyon, past the San Gabriel
your bees?’ he said. ‘All the farms
around are paying for them so I
get to use them for free.’ He knew
his stuff and he was Armenian. I
asked them. ‘How can this tiny,
one-ounce animal fight against
the wind generated by the blades?’
but it didn’t matter.”
stints have included running a lim- to relay homeowner grievances and Dam. It was a difficult location to couldn’t argue with him,” Arman That incident, and almost drivousine
service, towing, auto trans- ask him to speak to them.
access, requiring advance notice says with a chuckle.
ing off the side of the cliff on the
portation, retail sales in the ladies’ He would knock on the door of to the dam keeper before every During one such trip, as he was way back from the mountains on a
shoe industry, and mortgage brokering,
but pest control seems like a
these large, newly built homes and
announce with a smile, “Hi I’m the
visit. Bob the Dam Keeper did not
appreciate being inconvenienced
returning from Fresno, he decided
to stop in the mountains to drop off
dark night, finally persuaded him
to get out of honey producing. He
natural evolution from his original beekeeper,” and would be met with and constantly complained to his some of his bees. He called ahead sold his business and went on a
occupation of beekeeper and honey panic and demands for the imme- superiors, even though there were to inform Bob the Dam Keeper of search for a different calling, even-
producer. It is an odd occupation diate removal of his bee colonies.
for someone who abhors sweets. Arman rolls his eyes at this point,
other beekeepers with locations
in those mountains. “Apparently I
his plans and the time of his arrival.
“I was there loading my truck and I
tually settling on pest control. “I
used to always get calls from peo-
From the outset, Arman was showing his amazement at the was disturbing his peace,” Arman see these headlights coming down ple who had bees colonized in the
involved in the family honey busi- oblivious nature of the residents says with sarcasm.
the mountain,” he says. “Next thing walls of their house and I would
ness, which was started by his fa- of those million-dollar homes with The honeybee is a necessity not you know, it’s Bob the Dam Keeper go get them out,” Arman says, dether
in 1984 after emigrating here
from Armenia four years prior to
that. It was an usual occupation
but one they were very good at.
Although there were other similar
enterprises at the time, theirs was
their elaborate landscaping. He says
he tried to explain the impossibility
of the task, the bees’ harmlessness,
their necessity for the existence of
fruits, vegetables, and the flowers
in their yard, but to no avail.
just in the pollination of flowers with his gun drawn, so I pulled out scribing the foundation for his cur-
in our gardens, but also of fruits my gun.” After significant yelling rent business idea. “After a while I
in the orchards and vegetables and arguing, both men went their realized I could make a living from
in the fields. One-third of all the own way but the saga was just be- this. Now I don’t have to rip the
food we consume is a result of the ginning.
walls out to get them out alive; I
work done by this tiny pollinator. Although Arman’s hives were just . spray.” And so a new career
the only one to be owned by an Ar- “Get them out!” the homeowners Honeybees require a mere five not the only ones in the moun- was launched for the former beemenian.
would scream at him, as he waves miles to gather pollen, never sting tains, he seems to have been the keeper. f
You can fight back against cancer by supporting the American
Cancer Society Daffodil Days. Visit www.cancer.org/daffodils to
purchase Daffodil Days products, brighten a patient’s day by
making a Gift of Hope donation, send an E-card or become a
Daffodil Days volunteer.
4-1/4” x 5-1/4”
1.800.ACS.2345
www.cancer.org/daffodils
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