One question I get asked a lot is how I got involved in wanting to keep bees. It definitely wasn’t that I woke up one day wanting for bee stings!
More, it was a gradual thing: In 2010, I started reading about the plight of the honeybee. (It is astounding to me how many people still don’t know about this topic!) They’re dying, in great numbers, especially for commercial beekeepers – and nobody really knows why.
Once you start reading about bees, it’s easy to get hooked. The topic is, so far, endlessly interesting, at least for me.
So under the Christmas tree that year was a smoker, a bee hat, gloves, and a gift certificate to the local beekeeping store (who knew there was a local beekeeping store??) for all the things one needs to become a beekeeper. (Thank you again Doug.
In February of 2011, I ordered my first package of bees. A package of bees costs about $100 and comes a box of bees, usually between 10,000 and 12,000 of’em. I bought my colony from Tim Brod, who would truck them back to Colorado from Chico, California, after they’d helped with that season’s massive almond harvest.
(Did you know? Almonds are a “uni-crop,” grown across vast acreage in California. The trees need bees to pollinate the crop. Lots and lots of bees!)
They arrived in April – picture a big flatbed truck stacked with boxes and boxes of bees. Here’s a picture of me and my bees from that day:
I have to admit, it did kind of freak me out, that some of the bees were outside of the box!
I took them in to the side yard and did as Gregg the Bee Guru taught us in class: Open up the box, dump them into the hive. Then I wired the “queen cage” to the brood (bottom) box. Inside the cage was Queen Maggie, of course. Her Royal Majesty of hive #1. But that’s another story.
A few days later, after HRH Maggie’s pheromone became known to her colony, I took the lid off of her container and released her and her subjects – about a dozen attending bees – into the hive. Lucky for me, Gregg came over to help.
She’s been a prize of a Queen ever since! All hail Queen Maggie.