My father started when I was 5. He would take me with him often and even more when I got into my teens. In my 20's, I decided I wanted some. Was in, then out for a few years, then back in and out again. Got back in a few years ago because I liked it and I wanted something to do with my aging father. Been a GREAT time with him. He runs 15 in Ga, I run 12 in AL. We have some great chats on the phone about our girls.

 

I've been doing a lot of reading about homesteading and being self sufficient and I saw honey bees mentioned a few times. While a bag of sugar at the supermarket is a heck of a lot cheaper and easier, having honey that I "made" in my backyard sounds like it will be very rewarding. I read about the ways to do it and the types of hives so my dad and I built the standard Lang hive.

So now I have my first hive with about 3 drawn frames full of sugar water honey and it it exciting handling all these bees with my bare hands.

 

It all started back in the crazy days when we were young...we had all but one of our kids at home, heated the house with wood, home schooled, big garden, stockpiles of guns and ammo, as self sufficient as we could get and bee's seemed the next step in this evolution. That was the beginning...I found an older beek who had 500 hives and he said I could go with him to work some trailers of bee's "just wear a windbreaker" he tells me and he loaned me a veil. So there I was standing on a trailer with about 20 hives on it in a huge cloud of bee's....ya know when they show a slow-mo shot of a beekeeper surrounded by flying bee's in the documentaries?? That is what it was like to me and I was HOOKED!! Fell in love with them that very day and have been ever since. That was 25 years ago.

 

Nice post beeks,,,keep it going.:applause:

 

My father had a couple of hives as I was growing up, and when I think back on those times I can still smell the sweet smell of comb and honey as he cut the cappings and let the comb drain over a pan in the kitchen. He would let us kids chew on the honey comb, and those were vivid memories, that was living my friends. I guess now that I am older I realize that I have been hooked all these years and never slowed down enough until now to acquire my own hives. Now when I am working my hives the smell from the combs always bring back a flood of good memories.

 

I met a beekeeper and asked him whether I could buy some honey from him, last year.
Instead I got whole new world of knowledge and excitement I never was aware of.

 

I like anything outside, requires a lot of learning and takes the mind away for a while. Just like gardening, backpacking, fishing, hunting, wood working, reading, socializing, collecting stuff.

Was visiting sister-in-law in Michigan. Her husband had bees and we checked them out. Spent every night during that visit reading his bee magazines. I was sold on the idea.

Took a winter class and spring hands-on training. Bought some bees and became addicted.

Now I might have to call that Dr. Whats His Name to help me with the addiction. LOL

I also discovered how great the people are to be around that are beekeepers. Great folks!

Most of all it was something my wife and I can do together while standing next to each other.

 

Your comment about other beeks is so true. And anyone who belongs on this forum seems to be supper helpful, neighbors being neighborly like they used to be.
Great People.

 

Boy Scout Merit Badge - Beekeeping back in 1969. Granddad bought me my first hive the next week. Picked up swarms, feral hives and made splits after every flow until I was up to 25 at 15 years old. Then my Dad decided to do more than just drive me to the apiaries and bought 25 hives of his own. I left everything to my Dad wehn they forged me into a Marine!

 

My Father was a Bee Keeper before I was born. He was a Michigan State Grad in Agriculture. He was employed at a large family owned orchard and became the Bee Keeper. He worked up an allergic issue over time and stopped the work. I was a child and found his gear in the basement, remember it smelling very musty when I put the helmet and veil on. 30 years later I was growing my own Apple, Pear and Peach trees with a 1/4 acre of pumpkins and was thinking that a hive of bees would help pollinate them as the Wife and I were looking for cash crop ventures. Researched on getting a hive and the next thing I know.... Bees are the primary cash crop! Go figure. We have another cash crop proof of concept this year growing Hops! Hope that one works out as well.

 

Three things for me...

First one was a neighbor who kept bees. It was thrilling and terrifying (I'd been mauled by wasps when I was a toddler), and he tolerated my presence and questions better than almost any adult.

Second was an observation hive at a nature center. I got hooked on stopping there to watch the progress of the observation hives. I would have started keeping bees right then and there had it been legal in the city.

Third was my fiance (now wife) telling me how interested she was in beekeeping. Since we live 700 miles apart (her for a teenage son and me closing in on a pension), it has been something we can do "together" even though we are apart.

 

Well, i am just getting started but when I was a kid there was a hive of bees in our bedroom wall. They were there forever it seems. I used to lay there and listen to them buzz at night. Seems they would swarm a couple times a year and the swarm would land in our apple trees. My Mom got a couple hives going, but I never looked inside or anything. Fast forward 30 years--Stumbled upon some bee videos on you tube, found some bee forums,studied for a couple years-- here I am with my first hives! They are insanely addicting and interesting. I want to be looking in there all the time. I hope this turns out to be a lifelong addiction. Thats the short version of my story!

 

Beekeeping is always something I wanted to do, but with raising kids, careers, and the such, it was always on the back burner. Well, the kids are both through college and married, and well on their way, so it was time. I had Santa bring me a couple of beekeeping books for Christmas, and I spent the rest of the winter reading everything I could get my hands on. The rest of the time, I was in my woodworking shop building my hive equipment. My wife and I took a beginning beekeeping course this spring, read some more, and hived our first package on April 16th. We joined our local beekeeping association, along with the Illinois State Beekeepers Association, and we are enjoying our bees more than you can imagine!

My educational background is in Ornamental Horticulture and Landscape Design, so I perhaps have a deeper appreciation and admiration for the importance of Honey Bees. Our hives are thriving, and I really enjoy the fact that working the hives is something my wife and I can do together. (She is more addicted to the bees than I am.......and I don't know what's worse, the occasional sting, or her smacking me when I accidentally smash a bee while working the hives!)

My only regret is that I didn't start keeping bees 25 years ago. But, since I just turned 51, I think I have some quality time left to enjoy the miracle of nature that is the Honey Bee!

 

40 years ago, I did some carpentry work for my brother-in-law. Instead of money, he gave me two complete hives consisting of 2 deeps and 4 medium supers each. Only one colony was still alive. He gave me instructions how to make two stacks with the hives, but since I only had one colony of bees, I stacked everything into one stack. 4 deeps and 8 supers with some 2x4s for support.

I left them and came back months later, no knowing that I was supposed to have a veil, smoker, and hive tool, I used a flat edged screwdriver. and pickup bed to stand on, I proceeded to collect 8 supers of honey and had to borrow a 2-frame extractor from my brother. He told me to cut the caps off the honey and extract. No more instruction than that. I used a dinner fork to scratch the caps and extracted into several 5 gallon buckets.

When I strained the honey, I used a pair of my wife's pantyhose with one leg tucked into the other leg and nailed it to the top frame of my kitchen door. Then I used a pitcher to pour the honey into the pantyhose and sat on the floor and waited till the honey filled up a pint jar then handed it to my wife to lid. It was an all night affair.

Got out of beekeeping a year later and when I went cross country driving. After about 30+ years, I got ran over by an 18 wheeler and had to quit working. After sitting in my house for nearly 4 years convalescing, my wife talked me into joining a bee association. One thing led to another and here I am.

 

i have worked in the oil and gas industry since the mid 60's. In my early years the oil and gas companies contaminated a lot of soil and subsurface water. We didn't do it on purpose, we just didn't know any better. The industry is now very clean except for exceptions like the Maldanado blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

I have read about the demise of domestic bees for the past few years. I live in virgin West Texas ranch country where there are precious few chemicals to affect bees. Therefore, I want to give something back. I started with three hives this past April 8, and if I can winter them I plan on ordering nine more hives for next spring. I don't need the money, and I hope all of my hives swarm from time to time.

Lazy

 

When my daughters were much younger, we did a homeschool curriculum one year that was based on the "Little House" books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. In "Little House in the Big Woods" there's a chapter "Pa and the Bee Tree", so that meant we did a unit study on honey bees. As part of that, my wife found a beekeeper willing to let us come and tour his honey house, see his bees, etc, so I took a day off work and we made it a family outing.

A couple years later we moved from the city to the country. My girls got horses. I got honey bees.

 

In the late 70's for some reason my dad wanted some bees. He came home with 3 hives and that wasn't enough to light the smoker about the time he had it going he was finished. So he bought out a man's bees and honey house equipment 30 hives maybe. His next thing was a ton truck and 30 hives wasn't enough to load this truck had to have more. So if I remember right he bought another opertation of about 100 hives and equipment and built up from there. Now that's not answering how I got into it that's my dad introduction. Presonally I tell people I just got drafted. Back in those days if mom and dad said get up and come you just did it. After I got out of high school I left the bees and went into construction work as a mason and did that for years. I did help dad when he needed but he mainly pollenated so help wasn't something he needed and did the bees himself. A few years back the construction business went south (Mexico) and I was out of work. Dad told he he could use some help so I started helping him again until things picked back up. Daddy was diagnosed with colon cancer a little later and passed away this January after 2 years fighting it so here I am with a bee business. Don't be sorry about my dad passing away I got the honor of knowing and working with him. Not just being his son and visiting with him once in a while. He was a mason also we had lots of fun together working construction and in the beeyards and I know not all get that with theirs.

 

Well, I had a garden. I decided I would like a hive of bees for pollination. A neighbor of my mother's had a swarm of bees in a cherry tree, so I took a veil and a hive body over to collect the swarm. It was April, sort of a drizzly, nasty day and I was working on a ladder. Those girls just kept getting madder and madder. I discovered that bees in a swarm CAN sting, lol. They got under my veil and I got about a dozen stings or so. I finally just drizzled honey over the frames of the hive and left. The next day, they were hived!

That was a long time ago, but I always have kept a few hives. Bees are fascinating.

A week or so ago, my daughter and I were going somewhere, when the call came about a swarm, so we loaded up a deep, and off we went. DD swung into action, placing everything together in the right spot while I talked to the homeowner. It seems she was paying attention all these years. Afterwards, she told me she'd like a hive of her own, so I'm planning on making a very gentle hive for her. (she lives in town)

There's nothing like the feeling I got when I found another beek in the family.

 

My dad always had a few hives - he learned from my Mother's father. I remember some of my Grandfather's old hives under some apple trees at the family home. Two of them were large observation hives - the whole back came off to expose a glass cover. We always worked his bees together when I got old enough. The best times were spent by the woodstove extracting honey, he would cut off the cappings and I would crank the extractor (and chew on the cappings - Yum). We stopped in the 80s when the tracheal mites got going, plus he was getting older and I wasn't living in the area. He passed away in '06, I had kept all of the old equipment just stacked out back (guess I just didn't want to get rid of it). Well, in the spring of '08, a swarm took up residence in one of the old boxes and that was it - I was back in bees. Lost that first batch to winter and inexperience but have "upgraded" my equipment and am hooked again. Took a bee course (twice) and joined the local beekeepers association. Best thing I ever did (other than marrying my wife).

 

I became the pastor of a small country church and one of the attenders told me one day that he had a couple bee hives but he had become allergic to bees and didn't know how he was going to get the honey. I told him that I knew nothing about bees but if he would tell me what to do I would try to get his honey off.
I was amazed at how gentle the bees were and fascinated by them.
6 years later I am still fascinated. Started my own hive this year from a package. Have been helping a local beekeeper with his 50 hives spread throughout this area for the past year. I don't mind getting stung...(much)...and have learned much from these marvelous, hard working, creatures.
--- marty ---

 

Guy in a bee costume had a gun to my head...... Nope, just was always curious. My first hive was mail order from Sears, the bees too! Had to assemble it all. Pretty cool.

 

Love the humor, hey if you can't laugh why cry.

 

I'm the building inspector in my county. A few years ago, I had to do an inspection for a local beek who was building a "honey house".
He showed me around his bee yard and explained a few things to me. (I only got stung once)
Beekeeping seemed to go hand in hand with my other interest in self sufficiency, so I mentioned it to the wife. She got excited, so we started doing some research and then took the plunge.

 

My uncle had some hives on our family farm when I was growing up and I use to watch him work them.

He passed the on to my dad, who knew nothing about them and we lost both hives back in the late 70's while in was in the military.

My father in law had a couple of hives of bees when my wife and I 1st got married, but my mother in law burnt both of them up when she let a trash fire get out of control from not watching it yakking on the phone with one of her sisters.

I just got two Nucs last June.

 

My story has nothing to do with family and dosn't sound as interesting. But I grow giant pumpkins(hence punkin peep). Ever winter mutiple seed auctions got held to raise money for various clubs. The seeds have gentics everyone wants there hands on, and some people pay top dollar. Well, one growers son was having a auction for his boy scout poject which was beekeeping. I thought gee, beekeeping sounds interesting, Ill check it out on youtube. Next thing I know it 4am, and im still up reading about bees. My parents at that point wern't terriblly supportive the idea and went along with lots of the misconceptions. After awhile of convincing, my parents decided I could keep bees. Well, I was gonna wait till the next year(last year) to start. 10 days before I got my first bees two years ago, I decided I was gonna keep bees that year. My parents bought me a nuc for my 14th birthday. (16 now)Im hooked now. My parents are really supportive of the whole endevour as far as bee meetings, and picking up bees goes. (helping me pick up equiptment this weekend hopefully)They figure I can't get into to much trouble keeping bees. I love those little ladys, and didn't relize I liked them so much until I lost em all. Getting bees again was a joyus thing this spring. None of my family is really into it, so Im not gonna have to many hives going into college in a few years.(only 40 or 50 )

 

I started on a whim. Needed a new hobby to keep me busy.