Depending on where you live, you might look into building habitat for solitary mason bees. Here in Oregon, the honeybee is a late arrival and the mason bees take care of the majority of pollinating duty for native plant species. A local nursery sells dormant bees in spring that you let hatch out near plants that will be in flower early (in my yard it’s a humongous rosemary tree, it’s already in bloom right now) and you put in some bee houses or drill holes in a wooden trunk round for the bees to make their homes and lay eggs. After a while you’ll have the best pollinated flowers in the neighborhood without the worry of getting stung–mason bees are quite chill bugs.
Wasn’t George Washington a beekeeper?
So was Aristotle, and so is Morgan Freeman, Scarlett Johannson and Leo DiCaprio. “Edmund Hillary” is a weird gold standard for “most famous”
Assuming you’re in the US, keeping honeybees is actually a bit of a mixed bag as far as environmental benefits go. They’re not native, and, due to the facts that the hive size is huge compared to any native species, and that they can store food long term, they can actually outcompete the local species, which are largely in decline.
There’s also issues with unmanaged backyard colonies basically forming disease reservoirs which can then affect other colonies (both native and honeybees), so it’s not really something not to just play at. The whole pollinator loss situation is really complicated; getting a hive to to and do your bit to fix it is a bit like hearing about the decline of mammals and getting a free-range cat to try and help.
If you want to properly get into it, it’s a great hobby, but it does take some knowledge and time, and just bunging a hive in the yard and leaving them to it is really not recommended nowadays. If you’re looking at it from a ‘wanting to make the world a bit nicer’ direction, and you just want some bees to watch, trying to encourage native bees, maybe getting some mason bee hotels as SmartAleq suggested would be a better option.
Filbert- former (and hopefully future) unfamous beeraiser.
The mods might want us to spin off this topic to another thread, but meanwhile, here goes.
My beekeeping experience goes back to my high school days in the 1960’s, so please consider that anything I say is not current technology.
I kept up to 4 beehives in my suburban back yard near St. Louis as a hobby. When I went to college, my former chemistry teacher took over the maintenance of the hives for several years.
Laws and zoning regulations were a lot different then, and many suburban areas will prohibit such activities now. I was lucky to live in a development with lots about 1/8 acre in size and many gardens, and behind our neighborhood lots was an undeveloped forest and meadow of about 40 acres. Beyond that was open country farmland, pretty ideal for this. My immediate neighbors took an interest in my hobby, but didn’t participate or get close, and I made sure they were the recipients of honey. I doubt if any neighbors more than two even knew I kept bees as you couldn’t see the hives from the street.
I bought my first bee batch from Sears, and it was delivered live by the US Postman. I also bought the hive boxes and all equipment from the Sears farm catalog. The hives and frames were shipped disassembled in flatpacks, unpainted wood. Not hard for a teenager to put together, paint, and maintain. We had dogs and cats in the yard, and AFAIK, no one but me ever got stung. Our pets didn’t go close, but pretty much ignored the hives and the bees ignored them.
When the bees swarmed in the spring, I captured them and each swarm started a new hive. Since my queens always seemed to be laying, I never had to replace one.
After first slicing off the top wax caps of the combs with a large, heated knife, I used a hand-cranked extractor that whirled 2 frames at a time in a large tub, then I strained and bottled the honey in half-pint jars. The empty combs were put back in the hives for the bees to refill.
Does that give you an idea of the process? Yes, you can keep bees in the city, but be wary of laws and neighbors who might not appreciate your beneficial contribution to the regional ecology.
How old (or young) are you? Do you have any current association with local schools? I have heard these terms from several principals, teachers, and students over the past few years. Perhaps it’s a regional thing.
I’m a math teacher, and I’ve never heard “maths” used in the US.
Back to the topic of apiary terminology, I’m told that the process of collecting the honey is called “robbing”. With its usual meaning.
The only time I hear “robbing” used is when a weak hive is robbed by bees from healthy hives. A weak hive can become weak for a range of reasons, but if it can no longer defend itself it becomes a target.
Managing hive health is one of the continual duties of an apiarist. Checking for pests and disease, health of the queen, general happiness. Splitting large hives and merging weak ones. Requeening where needed. That and removing filled comb.
Fizz Ed for me.
I think “maths” is European usage. It makes more sense. Algebra, Geometry, Calculus…maths. And when you abbreviate things like “Oakland Athletics” it’s still plural: A’s, as they write it. So mathematics…maths.
ETA Thanks all for the insights about beekeeping. It may be more than I could handle.
A note: Much of this comic is very NSFW. but I feel compelled to share this particular strip.
As a former beekeeper, I always used the term “harvesting.”
Between that and bees robbing each other, beekeeping is starting to sound pretty metal (as the kids say).
And to answer the OP… since beekeeper is a much more common term than beeraiser, I think it’s more correct to say (some) people keep bees.
Definitely. 
I had seven hives at one point, and it just got to be too much… the equipment is pretty costly, inspecting hives is not fun (at least for me), and you have to deal with mites and diseases. It wasn’t for me.
Whichever term you settle on, please be sure to tell the bees. Any major change in their “owner’s” life must be told to the bees – especially the death of their keeper.
From Wikipedia:
Telling the bees is a traditional custom of many European countries in which bees would be told of important events in their keeper’s lives, such as births, marriages, or departures and returns in the household. If the custom was omitted or forgotten and the bees were not “put into mourning” then it was believed a penalty would be paid, such as the bees leaving their hive, stopping the production of honey, or dying.
Please don’t tell me you think of algebra or geometry as “a mathematic.”
“Mathematics” is not the plural of “mathematic.” “Mathematics” is singular, as are other areas of study ending in the suffix “-ics,” such as economics, physics, politics, or acoustics.
I’m in favor of “keep” over “raise”, but you might also want to consider some variation of “have”.
Although “I have bees” does sound like a medical condition.
Well, with his best-known accomplishment now some 70 years in the past, he probably still has better worldwide name recognition than all but Aristotle. (Who will care much about Ms. Johansson in 2090?)
And he was more serious about beekeeping than all those others combined (~1400 hives).
I highly doubt that. Just as a quick check, “Morgan Freeman” returns 16x the Google hits of “Edmund Hillary”. “Leonardo DiCaprio” is 50x. “Scarlett Johansson” returns 81x.
Let’s look at an equivalent actress (not a beekeeper!) contemporary with Hillary’s ascent: “Marilyn Monroe”, 1953 was her year - 56x more hits.
Celebrity isn’t quite that ephemeral for the biggest movie stars.
Wasn’t a point I was responding to, just the “most famous” part.