We used to have an apiary. Jim wanted to expand it and went to an auction in another town held by a person who wanted to get out of the honey business. Unknown to Jim, the bees in that apiary were diseased. It did not take long for that disease to spread to all of our hives. There was only one solution: burn the bees and the supers that they called home.
For several years Jim has wanted to keep bees again and got as far as building new supers to house them, but was too busy to take it further.
Last year we met two honey vendors at the farmers markets we set up at. One is Bill Beebe (what an appropriate name!) a distributor of bee keeping supplies. The other is Bob Nelson, who is married to Sue of the maple syrup stories. Bob and Sue have a creek that runs through their property, which wild bees use as a highway during the spring. Bob successfully captures these swarms.
Now that Jim has local connections, he has become inspired to start up colonies this spring. Today we are traveling to the northern part of the county to buy supplies from Beebe's Bees, owned by Bill and his wife Kathy. We haven't seen them since the end of farmers market season last October. It'll be nice to see them and their operation.
Oh, this is funny to me. I am listening to sound tracks of old TV shows to get inspiration for another project. Just now, "Star Trek" played. What a great start to a day that will bring a new "Enterprise" to our little farm.
May the Force be with us!!!
Marcheta *honeybee trekker
P.S. I rather like Pooh's approach to space travel better, though. What do you think? :)
No comments:
Post a Comment