Adventures in Beekeeping

While working in our garden last summer, we were delighted to observe the many honey bees busy pollinating our flowers. These remarkable insects are no longer than your fingernail, yet they are essential for agricultural produce, and in effect, the survival of the human race. Albert Einstein alludes to this in his estimate that “if the honey bee becomes extinct, mankind will follow within four years.” Watching these miracle workers prompted a discussion of how great it would be to have our own hive and take care of these thousands of tiny, flying, stinging insects. So with a dream of happy bees filling our yard with their busy songs of pollination, we began our adventure.

To get started, we needed a hive, bees, and a location for the hive. We contacted local beekeeper Fred Thornbrugh for advice and he emailed us a list of beekeeping equipment suppliers to choose from. We chose an organization run by beekeepers, called Betterbee Inc., for our hive parts and other necessary tools like smokers and veils. Our hive is going to be “chemical-free”. Other than the obvious implication, this means that our bees will be building their own foundations for their combs, instead of building on top of plastic foundations. With the first step secured, it was time to find our bees.

Locating the right bees proved to be more complicated than we initially thought. Bees are relatively easy to come by, but most suppliers we found online were on the west coast and sell bees of questionable origin that had previously been used to pollinate last season’s almond crops. These bees could quite possibly be sickly and/or riddled with chemicals. Through our new friend and beekeeping advisor, Fred, we were able to track down a bee supplier who was not only local, but would provide us with a nuc, or nucleus, kit. Unlike ordering a few pounds of bees and a queen independent from one another, a nuc kit is a mini hive complete with established queen. Established queen equals productive workers, and productive workers equals healthy hive.

When we first decided to try out this beekeeping hat, we dreamed of being backyard beekeepers. However, after scrolling online through images of swarming masses of bees covering various flora and fauna, we figured that our neighbors probably wouldn’t be very excited about that idea. We decided that keeping them at a local farm would be best for all involved; we would have a quiet place for the bees, the bees would have easy access to food and water, and the farms produce would increase greatly due to the pollinators. We found our perfect match in Heather Thurber of Breezy Pines Farm.

At this moment, our hive still resembles the outside of a rather large cardboard box sitting in our living room floor. Our bees are arriving on the 10:30 ferry Sunday May 10th so until then we wait, with butterflies in our stomach and bees on our mind.