Bee-ginning a New Adventure in Beekeeping

Just this last Tuesday I installed my very first 3 lb. package of bees. I'll eventually share my experience with that, but first I want to go in to what brought me to this point of putting 10,000 stinging insects into my backyard. This is a question, which I am sure, that my wife still doesn't fully know the answer to. She tolerates my enjoyment of beekeeping. She says that I am much braver than her, but I wonder if there isn't a part of her that thinks that I may be somewhat more crazy as well. :) Well, I think a part of this all began with my grandfather. He kept bees for a while. I think it may have only been for a year or so. He was a doctor and had a patient whose husband was a beekeeper. This is what got him involved. He was always adopting new hobbies. I believe this trait of trying new hobbies was passed down to me. Anyway, my grandfather's bees died (perhaps because of varroa?) I'm not sure if I was even born by the time he'd given up beekeeping or not. I never remember him having bees, but I'd been told that Grandpa once kept bees. My dad has a cousin who now is a side-line beekeeper in Utah. I don't know what exactly it was that got my father interested in beekeeping, but once my dad started keeping bees, something clicked for me. It was almost a revelation to me of, "Hey, you can do this. This is something feasible. This isn't just something that crazy people do. Oh, and it's not all that difficult to get started!" So I guess, in some way, beekeeping has sort-of been passed down from my grandfather, to my father, and now to me.

So I started reading up on bees and beekeeping. I started with Beekeeping for Dummies by Howland Blackiston. Great book. I then read the Backyard Beekeeper by Kim Flottum (my dad had both of these books--so I borrowed them from him). My dad set up two hives of italian bees in March of 2010 in Idaho. Every time I visited my parents that summer/spring, I'd take a walk out to the backyard to see the bees. My favorite thing to this day is to sit down and watch the bees come and go from the hive. I love to see the color of pollen packed on the bees' hind legs. Sometimes I'd watch a single bee leaving the hive and watch them make larger and larger concentric circles emanating from the hive. After this orientation flight, the bee would make a bee-line toward whatever foraging source it'd be journeying to. I also enjoyed seeing the heavy "bomber" bees coming in loaded with nectar and then falling on to the bottom board and climbing into the hive. I felt bad for the ones that missed the board by going too low, these had to climb up the hive stand or gather their wits, and take off again to fly back up to the hive entrance. It was nice to be able to get my feet wet, in some regards, with experience with bees prior to committing to get my own.

I moved out to Cleveland Heights in August of 2010. Because I knew I'd be making the move, I knew I wouldn't be able to enter the beekeeping realm on my own until Spring 2011. Well, that time is here now, and my new adventure is upon me. I've mentioned one thing that has brought me to be a beekeeper: watching bees. I think this is honestly, the number one reason that I want to keep bees. However, there's more. I love watching them come and go. As I've had the opportunity to inspect beehives, I think it is fascinating to watch a bee emerge from it's capped cell. (I'm going to have to build myself an observation hive, one of these days.) The second reason: bees are fascinating social insects. The super-organism that is the honeybee colony is incredible to see in motion. The father of American Beekeeping & inventor of the movable frame hive, Lorenzo L. Langstroth was a big proponent of bees and often commented on how the honeybee testifies of the Creator. I agree with Rev. Langstroth. The waggle dance, the different roles that bees play in the colony due to developmental stages, the intricacies of swarm behavior, honey storage, wax production, pollen storage, are all so fascinating to me. Thirdly: Honey. Fourth: this is, for me, a really strong reason as to why I want to be a beekeeper, that beekeeping has many side hobbies and benefits that will make beekeeping never dull. For example, there's beeswax candle making, soap making, lotion/lip-balm making, baking with honey, observation hives, queen rearing, varietal/artisanal honeys, and perhaps even honeybee research. The fact that honeybees and pollinators now face new pesticides (neonicitinoids--Clothianaidin) and that CCD, nosema, and varroa are decimating honeybees, only makes me more proud and determined to be a beekeeper. SAVE the BEES! My goal throughout this blog is to provide readers information and stories regarding my adventure with my bees in the Heights of Cleveland.