This is Dave's seventeenth year as a beekeeper. He took up beekeeping after a chance meeting at a summer fair, passing through a season of theory and practical classes held at Merrist Wood Agricultural College in Surrey. A member of the Guildford division of the Surrey BeeKeepers Association since 1993, in 1995 he published one of the earliest British beekeeping World Wide Web internet sites for the Division, an activity he later described in articles for the Beekeepers Quarterly and Beecraft. In 1998 he began to write Guildford Division's monthly newsletter, continuing until the end of 2001, and acted as Chairman in 2000 and 2001. With a degree in Social and Environmental Science it isn't surprising to find that his real interest is in the social biology of honey bees. He has toured Austrian and Swiss apiaries with the Devon Beekeepers (inspiring a fascination for bee-houses), visited Spanish and Canadian enthusiasts, and is a supporter of Bees for Development. Not the keenest of showmen, he never-the-less tried to keep the local standards up and won the division's Gadge Cup for Best Honey in Show for five consecutive years, and in 1999 was lucky enough to top the member's class at the National Honey Show. After moving to New Zealand in 2003 as a full-time beekeeper for a business managing over a thousand hives for Kiwifruit pollination and honey production, he is now employed by a kiwifruit business managing fruit harvest, packing, and export, and audits hives during the pollination period.