My son wanted the beekeeping merit badge the last year it was available, so we bought two hives for him. I now have 20 hives. My plan is to have around 200 by the time I retire from my day job.

Blessed Bee
Doug

 

when i was a little kid, a guy down the street (who was already fascinating to us because he named his cat quasar) had a hive in his backyard. it was the first time i realized that regular people could be beekeepers. that idea stuck with me, and for years and years now, i've wanted to keep a hive or three, but circumstances (usually apartment living) prohibited it.

now i have my own house, my own fenced yard, my own money, and a lovely lavender hive with a queen named iris. next year she'll have a neighbor in a spring green hive named lucy. and yes, i dragged my whole **** family to home depot to choose the paint, baha.

edit - oops, can't say the D-word, huh? geez, talk about family-friendly, ha.

[ July 24, 2006, 09:19 AM: Message edited by: rache ]

 

I'm at least a 5th generation beekeeper. It just seems like the natural thing to do. I've been around them all my life I guess. I do it just as a hobby. I have 6 hives but I also run 8 more that below to my Dad and my grandfather. My grandfather has some interseting stories of his grandfather keeping bees.

 

I like bugs and things that grow, and have had a curiosity about bees, but never enough to do anything about it.

At my new house there were a couple of tart cherry trees that would get covered in blooms but I'd only get a few cherries from...obviously a pollination problem. So I decided to buy a bee hive for pollination.

I now have 5 hives and just started one for my 8 yr old son.

I've gotten 100's of pounds of cherries from the trees since but they've lost 75% of their branches because of the weight of all of the cherries (the trees are old).

Now the bees are a lot more important than the cherries :>

-rick

 

I also had a guy down the street with bees when I was kid. My grandfather was also a beekeeper.

Earlier this year I went to a birthday party, the owner had bees. He lent me the BeeKeeping Handbook, and Beekeeping for dummies. I read them, and became fasinated. I bought 4 hives from a local guy, and now I have purchased 30 hives worth of woodenware for next year. I plan to eventually have more than 2000.

 

Bees have been in the family for a few generations.

Earlier this year I went to a birthday party, the owner had bees. He lent me the BeeKeeping Handbook, and Beekeeping for dummies. I read them, and became fasinated. I bought 4 hives from a local guy, and now I have purchased 30 hives worth of woodenware for next year. I plan to eventually have more than 2000.


going from 30 to 2000 is a big increase you must lots of time on your hands?

 

Rasing a garden I noticed no polinators , checked other plants and found no bees on them. This area was bee-dead.So decided to get a hive and on and on and on.

 

I have always had ant farms, aquariums, terariums, you name it. A friend at work is a beekeeper (20+ years) and told me he would help me get started. So 5 years ago I bought woodenware and he gave me a nuc with a queen, a nuc with a virgin, and a shake out with a queen cell to get started. I'm now running about 20 hives and doing cutouts and swarm collection for about 3 counties around here. I also have an observation hive of course

 

I had always been fascinated with the observation hives at the zoo. One afternoon in the summer I came outside to see a grapefruit sized ball of bees on a fixture in my carport.
"Let's get some spray and kill them," said my wife.
"Let's get a box and keep them," I said.
Those bees didn't stick around long enough for me to find a cardboard box, but the bug, so to say, was in place. Later that fall I 'm standing at a booth at the fair, searching through a one frame, one sided observation hive for a marked queen I just can't find, when it hits me - I can keep bees if I want to now. So I started collecting equipment, put in an order for a box of bees, and haven't looked back.

 

An Eagle scout at a district Jamboree at Big Stone County Minnesota in the 60's had an observation hive. He had gold bees and I was used to the black ones that were a little vicious. Though he never got back with a young snot-nosed kid and it took until year before last for me to start studying and I got a survivor hive out of a house last year.

In five days I'll bee one year living the buzz that started long ago. I learned in the Air Force that all the book learning in the world is only a single step. It isn't until you actually sink your teeth into it that you learn personality and the character of the aircraft and/or the hive.

David

 

I have always had a fascination with social insects I would drive my Mother nuts with jars of ants and other bugs in my bed room. One day I got mixed up with a nest of Bald face Hornets when we were clearing land for my uncle. Almost ended up in the Hospital, but had to find out more about them and Honeybees seemed like the most interesting. After long last I finally started keeping bees at the age of forty seven. My only regret is I should have started and seventeen. I work for a power company to make a living but beekeeping is my passion. God willing I will do it until I get to feeble or die.

 

First, I LOVE honey.
Second, I'll try to do anything myself at least once (well...many things).
Third, I'm a science teacher and chronic experimenter and I have to share everything with anyone willing to listen.
Fourth, I'm a gardener and noticed a lack of pollinators in the area.
Fifth, I talked about wanting to try it for years.
Finally and most important, my husband bought me some equipment for Christmas after I took a bee class and decided I couldn't afford to get it started.

So here I am with 2 hives, one a swarm I caught one morning outside my school in Lang hive and the other a tbh one of my students built as a spring project for me with a window in the side so I can watch all the time.

It looks like I may actually get some honey this year!
Yup, I'm hooked.

PS My husband hasn't gotten jealous, yet.

 

I was at the Farm show in January and picked up some literature at the beekeeping display for cold winter reading. After getting my curiousity aroused it was off to the library for more books.
After a couple catalog requests and browsing this web sight that came up on a google search I just had to try.
Shortly after ordering my equipment our local Ag extension office had a bee class for youth so my son decided to try it too since the class came with equipment, bees and some primary education.

 

My brother in law asked me to go to Georgia to help sharing the driving. I asked why are we going to Georgia? He said to bring back Bees. I said sure ! You have a truck to bring them back on ? His response was no we are bringing them back in my Van. I was a bit bewildered and asked if it was the same van we were riding in

? He said yes so it happened we brought back bout 150 packages of bees the first year and the second year we we brought back 232 packages. Zero stings after riding for 18 hours one way . Two weeks later I bought my first two hives . That was in 2001 . I now have 25 hive in various stages of growth, and love working with bees. They are easier to understand than people. I also belong to the Finger Lakes Bee Club . We meet in Ithaca. If you are interested in joining I will send you the information. Lots of Great people belong to it . We just had our summer picnic over in trumansburg ...Rick

 

A vegetable garden, fruit trees, and honey .

 

1996. Planted 1/2 acre of pumpkins for market, great garden, no fruit. Suggested to my dad that we rent a couple hive for the following year, he, in turn (knowing I was painfully afraid of bees and wasps) suggested I start beekeeping. Took a great class that winter, got two hives the next spring. By 2000 I had a 45 hive pollinating operation, commercial extracting set-up and great pumpkin gardens!! I have since left pollinating behind, too much work for just myself. Down to just a few hives due to getting married, building a new home and having a child. We still have a great client list for custom extracting. We are slowly building back up, looking for 20-25 hives in the next 3 years.

David

 

The man who is now my husband handed me a bee school flyer from the county agricultural office and said, "Here, you could do this". Seems he was a serious mead maker but without a reliable source for clean honey. So I took the course, and now run 20 hives kept mostly on organic farms. We have lots of mead, and the honey is pretty good, too! I'm trying Buckfast queens this year, and getting into comb honey. Sometimes I say I married my husband for his mead, and he married me for my honey.

 

I got bored and decided I wanted a new hobby. Saw something about bee removal on TV and it perked my interest. Started reading stuff on the internet and got fascinated. My wife gave me the "Beekeeping for Dummies" book at Xmas and I read it all in one day. Haven't slowed down since. I also like to do woodwork so it works well with beekeeping.

 

First got involved with bees as an inspector for the ND Ag. Dept in 1988. Got a couple of hives of my own started in 1992. Now have 535 as a sideline operation.

 

eight or nine years ago I was in the bay area for my brother's abdominal surgery. while waiting in the hospital I came across an article in the Smithsonian. lets say it wowed me.

when I came back to so-cal I bought a hive from a member in OC beekeepers association. two weeks later it was dead because an ant invasion. "rookie mistake"
that winter I ordered a 3 lb package and was on my way.

 

I am a second generation beekeeper and have been around them my entire life. I didn't keep any myself till about 7 years ago started buying some equipment to have something to do with my father. Currently I have just over 100 hives and buying more equipment all the time. Dreaming of 1000 but I am sure that won't be enough when I get there. haha.

 

When I was 15 a swarm landed just below my house and I watched a beekeeper hive them. Years later I worked for a guy who kept bees and one day he said come with me and handed me a beesuit and I watched him work the hive. For years I had thought about getting into it and last fall I placed an order for the bees which was nonrefundable so I said I guess I better spend the winter learning about bees because they will be here in the spring weather I like it or not!

 

My grandfather kept bees from 1917 until his death in 1961. I was only 12 when he died and never got to work bees with him much. I helped a commercial beekeeper for a season in 1991 and 5 years ago I caught a swarm in a fig bush. I have 20 hives, hoping to get up to 200 for pollination in a few years.

 

Having read about varroa mites wiping out commercial and feral hives, and noticing just how few bees were there were in our garden in the spring, I began exploring what having a hive of bees would involve. Two months later, in July, 2005, a swarm settled in our persimmon tree. And I became a beekeeper!

 

"going from 30 to 2000 is a big increase you must lots of time on your hands?"

Na, just a really supportive wife. I have an 8 year plan to reach between 500 and 750. This is of course sacrificing most of the honey for growth, and purchasing used equipment. I plan on beekeeping to take over my regular job at 400 or so. I recently purchased 45 deeps, and 50 supers (mix of shallow and medium) plus frames, 11 outer covers, 7 inners, and 6 bottoms, with a big wax melter, for $500. If I can keep doing this, I should be able to expand at a decent rate. The guy that I plan to buy my nucs from went from about 20 hives to over 500 hives in 4 years. He did this by making nucs, and raising queens.