8. Cupping bees by Stephen Galbreath

Each year, on David's birthday (November 11) I send a card to David's mother Anne. This year I was tramping in the Orongorongos with some friends and didn't realise until it was too late that I'd be far from a postbox.

 

I often find myself fondly reminiscing about the many adventures I shared with David. For some reason, as we were tramping out of the Orongorongo Valley, I remembered that David and I used to cup bees in our hands off the flowering gum trees. We would see how long we could shake them about before freeing them back into the open.

I think we stopped that experiment fairly promptly after we were stung…!