Interviewed by Tom Mangan

Wayne Thume, country squire, beekeeper, Beetle driver

His Web site is here. Pictures illustrating his answers are here.

You mentioned you built your own home. What's the most important advice for anyone else who has the same idea in their heads?

When you're building a house of your own, it's easy to get overwhelmed by all the work involved. I drew my own blueprints and Dad and I built the house, but I had to arrange for an electrician, a plumber, someone to put in the septic system, someone to dig the well, etc. Also, I had to get the house financed by a private lender because banks didn 't want to loan money to someone who wasn't a building contractor. I was 26 at the time and felt pretty overwhelmed by the whole project.

Having said that, it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I learned so much, and not just about carpentry. Dad really helped me keep focused on the task at hand and not what had to be done weeks later. He also taught me the value of building a good foundation. He was always meticulous in his measurements.

One day we were measuring a straightness of a 26-foot wall, and after many minor adjustments he said, "Well, it's a 64th of an inch off, but I think that's OK." I thought he was being a little too picky until I realized that errors build upon each other as you add floors on.

There were always unexpected obstacles, but we dealt with them all and I have a great house to prove it. I remember the day we were supposed to put the rafters up on the roof. We had ordered truss rafters and had hired a crane to set them in place. I had extra help for that day, but it had snowed so hard the night before, the crane couldn't get down my driveway. After shoveling the snow out of the house, we ended up carrying the rafters to the second floor ourselves and then setting them in place. A couple days later Dad and I were chipping ice off the roof so we wouldn't slip while trying to get the rest of the plywood sheathing nailed on. While hammering nails on the rooftop with a cold December wind blowing through me, I questioned the wisdom of deciding to build a house in the winter.

Building a house can really bring a family together. I have a great picture of my mother, father, and sister all smiling through a window opening of a wall we had just put up on the second floor. My family helped me through the whole building process. My grandfather (who had a bad knee at the time) helped with the first floor and made me a beautiful set of steps down to the basement. Mom kept us supplied in food, hammered nails, vacuumed, painted, and did whatever else she could to help. My sister and brother-in-law helped a lot too, (as did other friends), and we had the house finished on the outside in less than 3 months. That's not bad considering I only took 2 weeks off from work and did the rest on nights and weekends. Some people have family heirlooms in their home; my home is a family heirloom.

For anyone thinking about building his or her own home, I say go for it. Not many of us have jobs where we can always see something accomplished at the end of the day (I can't). Building a home is an incredibly difficult challenge, but you end up with a remarkable sense of accomplishment (oh yeah, and a house).

Which part of the job did you end up wishing you'd hired a professional to do?

That's a good point. In fact I did hire a professional to do the insulation and drywall work. Insulation is not that hard to do, but the people I hired installed it cheaper than it would have been for me to buy the insulation and do it myself. As far as wallboard goes, you really should get a professional. Drywall is heavy and awkward and your back will thank you if you get someone else to do it. You need to check around and make sure you get someone good, though. Make sure they glue and screw the drywall to the walls, otherwise the nails could pop as the house settles.

I had some difficulty working with heights. I remember when Dad and I were putting up the siding. He was on a ladder and I was standing on a board on top of 3 levels of scaffolding. My legs were shaking so bad you could hear the scaffolding rattle. Dad said you get used to it after awhile but I never reached that point. I've no regrets about doing it, but it is something to consider if you are overly afraid of heights.

How much money did you save over what you'd have paid to have your home built by someone else?

I didn't save as much as some people might think. I saved between 10 and 20 thousand dollars. I spent a little extra in some areas getting better lumber and material. Dad and I picked through a lot of 2x4's before we found enough that were straight enough to give us straight walls.

Something that surprised me was that the lumber and other building materials only amounted to about 25% of the entire cost of the house. The rest of the money went towards things like:

• heating and air conditioning (11%)
• plumbing (10%)
• electric (11%)
• kitchen cabinets (5%)
• well (5.9%)
• septic (2.7%)
• block foundation with full basement (7.6%)
• insulation and drywall (5.6%)
• floor coverings (6%)
• miscellaneous (10.2%)

You mentioned that a job change forced you to into a long commute to work in Washington, D.C. What are the most valuable commuter survival skills you've acquired?

Funny you should mention that. I am in the process of bolting a large antenna on the top of my car and installing a special radio transmitter inside. Once complete, I will be able to transmit subliminal messages to all the commuters who are weaving back and forth on the highway while talking on portable phones. I will subliminally convince them to pack up and move to Alaska (apologies to those living in Alaska). This will eliminate at least a third of the population, leaving the highways much less congested for the rest of us.

Actually I drive three hours a day and I think that's crazy, so I shouldn't be picking on people with portable phones. If that wasn't bad enough, the road I take is a major corridor for people heading to the ocean resorts, so trying to get home on Fridays in the summer can be challenging. Last week there were 2 major accidents and then at least 200 birds decided to kamikaze into the highway, which backed up traffic several miles (they're still trying to figure out what caused that).

Sitting 3 hours in a car and then 8 more at work is a physical and mental drain. To counter that, I work out at lunch 3 days a week at Ballys and do some yoga at home. I listen to educational or entertaining audiocassettes in the car. Since I'm going all the way to the nation's capital every day, I try to take advantage of that. There are lots of great museums, gardens, parks, and restaurants in DC. To me it's foolish not to take advantage of all the city has to offer while I'm there. So far, Bill hasn't invited me to dine with him at the White House but I'm sure once he reads this interview, he'll be sending me an invitation; I think the long commute is driving me crazy (no pun intended).

The new and old Volkswagen Beetle are completely different cars, but they're both fun. My first car was an old 1972 Beetle and I had so many adventures in it. A guy from high school, Richard, had a Super Beetle and we became friends. We were always getting taunted about our slow cars. One day Dad made a giant wind up key and attached it to a plunger, which he stuck on the back of Richard's car. While Richard and I were throwing a football out back, another friend drove Richard's car by us, stalled it, got out and wound up the key, and then got back in the car and drove away. Richard and I once had a drag race to see who had the fastest car. My car was fastest, but 82 mph isn't much to boast about.

One time Richard and I drove my Volkswagen 12 hours to Huntington, West Virginia, in the summer with the heat cable broke and hot air blasted us the whole time. On the way home the side mirror fell off and the mysterious thumping noise turned out to be my seatbelt hanging out the door and hitting the road.

A couple years later another friend, Chris, and I drove my VW 20 hours to Florida. We took turns driving and I remember waking up suddenly to find her skidding across wet roads in Fort Lauderdale. We drove the bug to the Gulf coast and then went the other direction to end up driving on the beach at Daytona. It was cramped and miserable driving, but we both had a lot of fun. On the way back the car started hesitating and that was the beginning of the end for the Bug.

My new Volkswagen Beetle has air conditioning, a defroster that works, an engine in the front, power windows, power doorlocks, 6 speakers, and many other extras. It's much larger and it looks good and drives well. Despite all that, I don't think I'm going to have as much fun with it as I did with my old Volkswagen. Of course my long commute has done a lot to take all the fun out of driving these days. It's a great car though and people are always asking me about it.

What do you think city slickers could learn from people who prefer the country?

A person can gain much by spending more time outside. It can really help you unwind after a stressful day. I have a little stream by my house and many days I'll sit on a bench I have by the stream and just drink a beer and listen to the water rush by.

The sounds in the country are great: frogs in the spring, locusts in the summer, crickets in the fall, and Canada geese in the winter. Soon my honeybees will be buzzing around, which is a soothing sound (unless they're mad). Living so close to the Chesapeake Bay allows me to see a large variety of wildlife. It's also a bit of a battle if you try and have a garden, since the animals seem to enjoy fresh vegetables as much as you do. Frankly, my list of things I enjoy about the country is far too long to condense into a few paragraphs. Trust me, I wouldn't be driving 160+ miles/day to and from work, if I didn't REALLY enjoy where I was living.

One point I'd like to make is that enjoying the great outdoors can be done in the city too. You may not get all the wildlife but there are a wealth of parks in D.C.

About 2 miles from where I work is the National Arboretum, a 446 acre area with beautiful trees, plant collections, ponds, and landscaping. It's all free to the public and you would think it would be mobbed, but there are hardly any people there. I've taken some people from work there and they either didn't know it existed, or had never been there. I've spent many lunches there enjoying the scenery and walking on the trails.

I see a lot of people (both in the city and the country) who seem to be in a constant race with life. Sometimes you don't have a choice and have to rush, but when the crisis is over many people can't seem to slow back down. Last week when I was working out. I saw a guy running fast on a treadmill. Sweat was pouring off him. Then his portable phone rang and he took the call while still running, even though he hardly had breath enough to talk into the phone. You'd think he would have either let the phone ring or stopped running to take the call. That's when you need to just stop, go outside for some fresh air, and take a break.

Give us a quick tour of the risks and reward of keeping honeybees.

As a child I once had a very allergic reaction to a bee sting and had to be taken to the hospital, so I was a tad nervous (and crazy) when I decided start my own colony of bees. I had all the protective gear but that 's not always enough.

I ordered a 3 pound colony of bees through the mail, which is about 12,000 honey bees. There is one queen and it comes in a separate container. Once the queen is put in the hive, you literally have to invert the box and shake the rest of the bees into the hive. Most go in the box but there are still a couple thousand left flying all around you. That's when I found out that one of my pant legs was exposed and there were bees crawling up my leg. Believe it or not, I was able to brush the bees off and cover the hive without getting a single bee sting. I've since been stung several times, but thankfully I've not had any more allergic reactions.

The rewards of beekeeping are many. Because people have been keeping bees and gathering honey for centuries, the honeybee is one the most studied insects in the world. People have found uses for almost everything a bee produces. Mead (honey wine) dates back hundreds of years and pre-dates beer and, of course, there are hundreds of uses for honey. Bees also gather resin from other trees to seal their hives with. This substance called propolis has been sold as an herbal supplement. The queen bee is fed a special diet of Royal Jelly, which is also harvested and sold as a supplement.

The list goes on. The wax honeycomb bees produce has multiple uses. The bees use the cells in the honeycomb to raise larvae, to store pollen, and to store honey. The wax is used for candles and furniture polish. Bee pollen is sold as an herbal supplement that supposedly gives you energy and prevents allergies. The venom from bee stings is harvested for serums for people who are allergic to bee stings. There are even recipes for eating bees themselves (although I've never tried any). And let's not forget the important roll of the honeybee in pollinating crops.

Here are some various off the wall facts about bees:

• In medieval times, the bride's family was supposed to supply the couple with mead (honey wine) for a lunar month after the marriage. This is where the term honeymoon came from.
• If bees were paid $4.25/hour, it would cost over $76,000 for a pound of honey.
• Honey is used on wounds and burns to help heal them (it is high in antioxidants).
• Honey and chocolate is supposed to be an aphrodisiac (from Playboy magazine).

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