Bees make honey.

I like honey. It’s sweet and comes from bees. I rely on beekeepers to gather my honey because if I did the collecting, I’d probably get stung.

I know Maine has a fairly large beekeeping community. You’ll see places as you travel across the state that have the hives and other telltale signs of beekeeping; like Brown’s Bee Farm, in North Yarmouth.

North Yarmouth is a sleepy little town, tucked in-between Yarmouth and Pownal, and butting up against Cumberland. This has been my biking territory for much of the past summer, although I don’t usually travel down Greely Road where Brown’s Bee Farm is located. It’s also where a fatal shooting took place on Sunday.

On Sunday afternoon, a “troubled” local fisherman, Merrill Kimball, according to news reports, pulled a gun and shot another man to death. The deceased individual, Leon Kelley, was from Georgetown and was the son-in-law to the man who owned Brown’s Bee Farm, 94-year-old, Stan Brown.

I found this interesting tidbit in the Bangor Daily News story detailing the incident.

The 93-year-old beekeeper [George Brown] said he believes Kimball regularly carried a firearm, but said Kelley did not. Brown said Kimball had in the past gone into his store when it was closed to “take tools, bee supplies or anything else he could sell.” He described his business partner’s husband, a lobsterman, as “troubled.”

The article also mentioned that a Larry Peiffer, identified as a master beekeeper and serving on the Maine State Beekeepers Association’s board of directors was surprised by the shooting.

Shootings in small Maine towns are fortunately rare. Like Peiffer, most of us are surprised when they happen.

Not knowing all the details, this last little bit of information stood out to me.

Again, Peiffer. “It’s a shock to me that such a thing would take place, and I don’t know what would have warranted such a thing,” he said.

One thing that might have “warranted such a thing” is a troubled person, regularly packing heat, getting pissed off enough to pull out his gun and put three bullets in another man’s chest, allegedly. A hammer could have been used, or a blunt object. Guns make killing much more efficient, however.

Guns kill people.

Oddly, the alleged shooter is free, after police let him go.

A strange news story, indeed.

[I wrote this blog post during last night’s Celtics’ game. Apparently, there’s been no updates on the story that all three local news channels led with, yesterday. In fact, no one was covering this and there’s been no updates on the story since about 9 hours ago. Local news in Maine is atrocious.—jb]