Our First Colony

Our very first package of bees purchased through Tom Jeffries/Columbia Station, OH. Healthy bees are progressing very well and have been fun to watch.

10,000 New Additions to the Family

It's official, we have an apiary of our own. Of course this alone does not make us qualified to actually own and care for honey bees. Other than the occasional sting or crossing paths in the garden, most of our interaction with honey bees has been brief and typically concludes with a few unceremonious swipes of the windshield wipers. So we have been reading lots of books, asking lots of questions and have started down the path to becoming full fledged beekeepers.

While I have yet to identify "punky wood" or anything else in the yard that actually stays lit in the smoker, I have an entirely new appreciation for the honey bee and those who keep them. We look forward to the surpluses of honey and the benefits of pollination our new additions will provide, but also to learning more about these remarkable and complex creatures and sharing the experience with others.

Common sense would dictate that, just as you would not name your new boat Titanic, we probably should not name our queens after those whose reigns have been notoriously short lived. However, we have named the first of our queens Catherine in a nod to The Tudors. Let's hope she is a bit more fertile than her namesake and can provide for at least a few (hundred) males along the way. Long live the Queen.