Out of the blue

Beekeeping crops up in the most surprising places:

It's a slight metaphor in Syriana, the geopolitical thriller starring George Clooney, when wold be suicide bombers are shown to be beekeeping (carelessly). No bees starred in the film, but -- you guessed it -- a sting did.

And in Norman Mailer's new “nonsensical”, The Castle in the Forest, there are 60-odd pages (with an emphasis on odd) on beekeeping describing what happened when part of a colony mysteriously died and the rest had to be gassed in order to save the hive. Possibly a metaphor for the gas chambers, even Mailer hints that the reader might want to skip the pages. Sounds absurdist.