I’m one of those Star Trek fans who doesn’t think the United Federation of Planets is a perfect utopia (you can often recognize us by noting that we think Deep Space Nine the best show). It is a governmental system with a lot of flaws. But I’ll say this: it sure seem pretty darn close. So much so that, were I a human born into that society, I sure wouldn’t leave. And yet we see humans on Star Trek all the time who seem to prefer to leave the relative paradise of the Federation to just go elsewhere.

A lot of the time these unaffiliated humans seem to just be scoundrels who want to go to places where they can scheme and profit. Maybe they just feel like the “rules” in the Federation don’t give them room for that. We’ve seen that kind of personality exist within the Federation (Richard Bashir comes to mind), but if that’s how you get your jollies, certainly leaving the Federation may be your only choice. And then I suppose there’s some amount of people who have a kind of wanderlust, but also an aversion to structure that makes them avoid Starfleet or any of the other various scientific organizations the Federation has to offer. Certainly I, PDR, would never feel at home in Starfleet, so I can understand that much. But you know what I don’t understand? The people who live on Tasha Yar’s homeworld. Sure, they ones born there are presumably caught up in it through no fault of their own, but surely the adults are trying to leave, right? Get out of there, people! There are whole worlds for humans that are paradise, just around the corner. Surely the Federation would take in such refugees the way they did Tasha, right?

Anyway, it says something about the Federation that humans are willing to leave it, but I’m not sure what right now. All I know is that I started this as a post about Bolians and it changed to this as I started writing, so my next Trek post will have to be the one about Bolians.

Meliou is a beekeeping company that appeared in an episode of a show called Bulletproof. It’s a show about cops or spies or something, but that is barely important to this review beyond the fact that Meliou, the company, is owned by members of the Markides Crime Family, who are probably the villains of the show.

Based in Cyprus and founded in 1954, Meliou is a thriving business that, in addition to making honey, makes olive oil and wine and soap and who knows what else. They have hives by the dozens. Possibly hundreds of employees. In fact, it’s so successful that the members of the crime family are not the ones being reviewed here today. They ain’t Beekeepers, they just own the company. Aside from the fact that the criminals use false hives as a place to keep weapons, this is just an unconnected enterprise. I could probably argue that some of the cartel’s muscle may have day jobs here, so maybe there are combat-ready Beekeepers, but we don’t know that. Seems like normal folks.

Three Honeycombs out of Five. We’re told the company is good for the island, and I assume that by the time the show ends the cartel is no longer in charge. I usually rate “standard successful beekeepers” at Two, but this does seem to be a bigger scale than usual. This isn’t someone with a successful hive in their back yard, it’s an international company. If the individuals who do actually make up the Beekeepers here happen to be screwups, we don’t get to see that, so I am giving them the benefit of the doubt.