So,

  A few years ago I decided to try my hand at a new hobby.  In my quest to establish a self sufficient life (just in case) I decided that we needed some kind of sugar source.  We are not a tropical climate so growing sugar cane was not an option, so I decided to have a go at beekeeping.

It has been a challenging journey fraught with heartache, frustration, success and triumph.  I have met a lot of wonderful people both in the hobby and interested in the fate of our honey bees.  The first year I immediately lost one package (they were not happy with the brand new hive and went to friendlier climes).  Then I lost the queen in another hive.  Somehow I ended up getting a nuc from a beekeeper closer to the Ohio River and went into that first winter with 2 hives.  The original package hive didn't make it but the nuc came though the winter and gave me a lot of honey the second year.  We tried again with 3 more packages (to make 4 total hives), got 3 hives to the fall then lost all of the hives in the winter.  This year I started with 4 packages but one absconded so I purchased a nuc.  So I currently have 4 hives.

Beekeeping is alot like farming any type of product.  You are at the mercy of the weather.  We had an extremely wet (the wettest on record) cool spring followed by excessively dry, hot humid summer.  We have not had any rain fall since late May.  Our fruit trees didn't flower at all in the spring and it seemed that a lot of other wild plants were the same.  Farmers had a very difficult time getting their crops in the field, further signalling a sign of trouble for the bees.  Bees rely on both pollen (protein source) as well as nectar from flowers.  If either one of those is not available, no brood is hatched and fewer bees fly.  It was a bit of a depressing late spring/early summer with a lot of beekeepers saying they were feeding their bees because there was no honey to be had.

That all changed this week!  The honey flow is on!  Don Popp pinged me last night and asked me if I had checked my hives b/c the bees were making honey.  Sure enough, when I checked tonight, all 4 hives were full and I was able to put another honey super on.  I went from thinking I would focus on getting all 4 hives into winter (and hopefullly start them strong in the spring) to thinking I might actually have some honey to harvest this year.  I am very excited.

I am doing my best to become a bee keeper, not a bee haver.  It has been way more work than I anticipated, but it has been a great learning experience and a fun hobby.  I hope that more people consider beekeeping as a worthwhile skill set in the future and they themselves become beekeeper.  It is a hobby of old men (and women).  When I look around my beekeeper meetings, I see alot of experience and not a lot of people coming to learn.  Hopefully we can start a trend of new, young beekeepers. Happy farming!