Little Beekeeper Audrey

I've been my Poppop's little beekeeper-helper for as long as I can remember.  He started beekeeping while living in Connecticut and continued after he moved to North Carolina in about 1989 or so.  I'd spend weeks with my grandparents over the summer and we'd do all sorts of fun activities such as pottery, painting, craft projects like making a paper-mache clown, gardening, learning new musical instruments, and obviously, beekeeping.  

Poppop and Little Audrey keeping bees 1989

Grandma, the paper-mache clown, and me maybe 1991

Last year my husband joined the process to help Poppop extract 600 pounds of what my grandma calls liquid gold.  This year we extracted another 500 pounds.  Poppop had at least 9 hives, 3 of which he had at a friend's blueberry farm for pollination.  This year he's decided to reduce his efforts to 3 hives by selling most of them and giving me 2.  And thus begins my adventures of becoming a beekeeper!  We'll be transporting 2 hives to our house on September 23rd.  

Anson joining the beekeeping activities 2011

The purpose of this blog will be to take you along with me through the learning process of beekeeping and to possibly teach non-beekeepers a bit more about the hobby.  So far my knowledge all comes from what Poppop has taught me.  When he proposed the idea to me of keeping bees myself just a few months ago I immediately joined Reddit's r/beekeeping (an online community), began reading the book Storey's Guide to Keeping Honey Bees and I'm looking forward to joining the local Beekeeper's Association to learn more and extend my mentoring network after the kickball season ends. 

So, I'd say I'm well-informed but certainly a novice.  This excites me mostly, but I'm also somewhat nervous about a few things.  The most concerning aspect being swarms.  It's not that I fear the swarm itself, it's that I don't feel I have the necessary experience to know how to make my hive appealing to the swarm after it's captured.  Thankfully, Poppop has requeened both hives for me, so hopefully this will reduce that possibility.  

Another aspect that concerns me, but much less so, is friends, family or neighbors fearing our bees.  I wouldn't want anyone to be worried about spending time with us in our backyard.  So far, everyone has been something like indifferent, interested or supportive.  Our sweet neighbors to the right even thought to offer to cancel their mosquito spray service.  The neighbors down the corner were pleased to have pollination for their garden and the neighbor's across the street joked they didn't have anything agricultural to offer the street and said they were going to get an alpaca.  That joke is because there are about 3 houses on our street with chickens.  We're a very eco group I'd say!  

Anyway, I informed most everyone nearby besides the house behind us.  This is probably the house I should inform the most as we intend to actually face the hives directly towards them.  Our backyard is fairly small and we do all sorts of activities in it such as yard games, brewing beer, lawn maintenance, friends' dogs play, our cat plays, our cousin's baby runs around the yard, etc so it really wasn't a good idea to have the hives facing inward in that small space.  With Poppop's consulting, we decided the best location would be behind our shed giving the bees 3 feet to fly up and out and little room for babies and dogs to get in the front.  The shed has a nice wooden platform already built to the side of it which we will keep the 2 hives on. 

Shed location for the hives facing the back fence

We've purchased a couple items but the majority of our equipment Poppop is giving us.  He had duplicates of almost everything we need to get started.  This saves us a lot of money and also helps encourage us to pursue this endeavor.  Even still, we're keeping a log of expenses, inventory and eventually other metrics.  What kind of metrics, I don't know yet, but if you have ideas let me know!  Yield would be a good one when the time comes.  

So, this is the beginning!  We're on our way to becoming beekeepers!