One Year Blogiversary

Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of this blog and September marks our first full year as beekeepers.  I'd say both have been successful!  I've (mostly) stuck to my commitment of blogging about once a month and readership is as could be expected with a niche topic.  Here is a global view of where my readers view my blog:

Over 1200 page views to date!

I'd love some feedback regarding the blog if you have any regarding content or otherwise.

Our first year as beekeepers has been a great learning experience.  We've not yet gotten the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of our labor in terms of actual product but we have gotten to enjoy many other aspects discussed as reasons to keep bees in this blog post from last year.  The connection with nature is really my favorite part.  I love listening to the bees buzz and watch them zooming in and out of the hive.  It's amazing to watch them work.  Two of the most inspiring bee activities to me are watching the bees head down working inside of a cell and watching a new bee eat her way out of her cell to life.  It's incredible and no other bees can help her out.  Then she immediately gets to work.  It's very tranquil to just watch them go about their tasks.

Bees head down working inside of cells and one bee emerging to begin her life working for the hive

Also this year we lost two hives and got the opportunity to start two new ones, both of which are thriving today.  We've had hive beetle issues, and learned about wax moths the hard way.  We have gotten stung, dealt with robbing and lit the ground on fire starting the smoker.  Our neighbors have been supportive and even appreciative of the pollination our bees have provided.  Poppop has been a great mentor to me and it's been nice to have the opportunity to learn from his 20+ years of experience.  Also, I've made some friends from the Wake County Beekeeper Association and have enjoyed the various community activities related to bees.

Overall, it's been a great year and I am thankful for the experiences.  Does one year mean I'm no longer a newbie?

Why keep bees?

You may be wondering why someone would want to keep bees.  Anson and I asked ourselves that question during the bee-filled van ride home to Raleigh.  Comedian Eddie Izzard has some funny things to say about keeping bees:

Well, there are many reasons one would want to keep bees.  Here are the top reasons Anson and I are interested, listed in order of importance to us:

1. Honey -- The benefits of honey are plentiful and there's even a website dedicated to the benefits-of-honey.com but to name a few:
• Immune system booster; Antioxidant; Probiotic
• Potential allergy immunity 
• Sore throat relief
• Good for your skin: heals wounds and burns, moisturizes 
• Delicious
2. Connect with nature
• I've read that beekeeping reduces stress (but I have no stress!)
• Anson and I saw a new bee emerging from its cell today.  They have to chew their way through their wax cell to get out as adults.  It was almost emotional to watch.
3. Education
• Bees are fascinating! I'll make a blog post on why later.  I've been making a list of cool facts to share.  I'll also try to take pictures of bees doing bee things.
4. Easy and rewarding hobby
• Bees are low maintenance and require minimal effort and time to keep
• Honey is a great gifts for loved ones
• Beeswax can be used to make candles, lip balm, hand salve, and more.  I think we'll likely make candles and not the latter two but we could if we were so inclined! 
5. Pollination
• I heard in a documentary that 40% of our food is dependent on bees in some capacity.  75% of the US's fruits, nuts and vegetables are pollinated by bees.  Pollination is so critical to our food supply that bees are shipped all over the US to crops as they come into season.  This has become a $15B industry.  If you think about the need for pollination for our food sources, you'll see that bees are critical to our world.  For example, without bees to pollinate alfalfa we would have no hay to feed cattle.  Circle of life stuff.  But Anson and I are just happy that our gardening neighbors will benefit.  We also want to plant blueberries next year.
6. Bees are in trouble and need our help! 
• In 1940 there were more than 5 million managed bee colonies.  Today there are less than 2.5 million. The following things are putting bees at risk 
• Colony Collapse Disorder
• Increased use of pesticides 
• Invasive parasitic mites and beetles
• Other theories abound for the vanishing bees (such as cell phones) but I won't name them all

Citation 

Citation II

And of course lots of wikipedia

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!