I can learn from my mistakes, but I would rather learn from yours!
Sounds harsh at first! When you think about it, it's rather smart and very generous of the person willing to share their struggles and failures so that I don't have to repeat them. I've long wanted to have bees on my property, and that desire started long before I had property of my own. This is the genesis of a dream that I have had for quite some time. I was 8 years old.
I was 7 years old when I was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. The hospital that I was getting treatment from hosted a camp just for kids that were going through cancer treatment. Camp Periwinkle was the place that my interest of bees was born. The beekeeper there, Mr. Bee, introduced me to bees and gave me my first taste of honey comb dripping with that sweet natural honey!! Fast forward 30 years. I was 38.
My family and I attended an annual emergency preparedness expo at a church where a local bee keeper was giving a "Beekeeping" presentation. Listening to him tell of his bees immediately brought me back to this memory as a child watching Mr Bee! In the coming months I poured over you tube videos and devoured beekeeping podcast as much as I could stand. I had decided that I wanted to keep bees as natural as possible. The bees have been surviving for thousands of years without our input. The recent addition of pesticides and cruel chemicals in the hive and on crops has , in my opinion, caused what we now call Colony Collapse Disorder. I want to let the bees adapt and overcome as naturally as I can. My worry was that I would have to learn everything from videos and articles. The next year at the preparedness expo I was able to attend the beekeeping presentation again and was pleasantly surprised to find out the presenter, Brian Muldrow, kept bees the exact way I wanted to! This was truly an answer to prayer!
Beginner Bee Class with Muldrow Bee Farm
NOW WE'RE TALKIN"!! In the coming months I enrolled in bee college. A year long beekeeping class at a local community college. Brian Muldrow became my beekeeping professor, mentor, and friend. I could now learn from his mistakes, saving myself countless frustrations and money. What I learned from Brian in the course of a day spent working bees would have taken me months otherwise! (If you are interested in learning beekeeping, I would highly advise you find a local beekeeper who practices beekeeping the way you want to and learn from them.) I had started to take on my own bee recovery jobs and it was spring of 2017.
Bee recovery jobs consist of removing feral bees from structures. One of my first bee recovery jobs. A trapout from a large cedar tree.
This particular bee recovery would be the last one for a long while. Weeks after I started this bee recovery, I came down with a wicked case of Pneumonia that landed me in the I.C.U and home recovering myself for the next two months. Sitting on the couch for days at a time gave me plenty of time to think of where my life was heading now. I needed to find a job because my previous one was no longer available to me.
Beekeeping Bandits My youngest and I in my shop building bee boxes
I settled on beekeeping. This could be the business that my whole family can take part in. I could charge a small Bee Recovery fee, sell the honey and other products made be the bees, and sell bees and bee equipment. My wife and my youngest have taken a particular interest in beekeeping! BINGO! I set to planning. I got my logo and started taking bee recovery jobs so I could start building up my bee yard with a healthy population of bees. (Bee recoveries consist of removing bees from trees, walls, tires, or where ever else bees have decided to take up residence.)
This line of work was hot, messy, and precarious at times but so rewarding, especially when my family was able to come be a part of the process! Performing bee recoveries greatly accelerated my understanding and knowledge of bees. With the help and companionship of
Muldrow Bee Farm
and fellow friend and beekeeper @scotthutslar, my apiary (bee yard) was growing with minimal losses. The summer was almost over and I was getting ready to prepare the apiary for the coming fall. We were looking forward to some down time but weren't exactly prepared for what was about to come!
We're on Instagram and facebook
