Calendars - Part 51

Naked Beekeeper

In 2017, George Lodge was a 21-year-old medical student in London and an amateur beekeeper.  He visited Kemba Island off the coast of Tanzania, Africa, where he met Khamis, a local part-time beekeeper who showed him around.  George was fascinated with beekeeping methods in Tanzania.  He wanted to return the favor and show Khamis how it was done in England, but Khamis could not afford the trip.

George jokingly came up with the idea of making a naked beekeeping calendar to raise money for Khamis to visit, and then he thought, why not?  He raised over £2000 in calendar pre-sales and was able to pay for Khamis to come and visit England in 2018.  Then he got to work posing for the naked calendar, which came out for 2019.  Above, George with his calendar and two calendar buyers.

Here are some photos that George posted on Instagram of him posing for the calendar cover photo with a skep on his head.  A skep is a woven straw beehive that was used in the old days before modern hive boxes with removable frames.

George posed naked at Bermondsey Street Bees, above, located on a rooftop in London, where George works part-time tending the beehives.  This became the March photo in the calendar.

I cropped the March photo for a closer view of George and the bees.

He also posed at his family home in Winchester, where he and his mother keep bees.

Although the frontal views are carefully concealed, as in most British naked calendars, you can see quite an impressive bush here.  This became the June photo.

This was the August photo.  Beekeepers use smoke to calm the bees.  Actually, it doesn't calm them, but it interferes with their ability to send chemical alarm signals, so if one bee is alarmed, the whole hive won't get alarmed.  George says smoke stresses the bees, so he uses it as little as possible.  With un-stressed bees, George was not stung once during the naked photo shoots for the calendar.

After the success of the 2019 calendar, George knew people would want another naked beekeeping calendar for 2020.  Here's a page from it.

We close with a short excerpt from a news video about George and his naked calendar, showing George working at the rooftop beehives in London.