Buzz

One of the things you may have already noticed (well, hopefully you noticed...) about this blog is the fact that the word "honey" is in the title. James and I have picked up a few hobbies throughout our relationship, one of which is beekeeping (others include: archery, kayaking, fishkeeping, etc.). Sounds weird, I know, a young couple with much more exciting things going on should maybe be more focused on bar-hopping than bee-keeping. We're a little different.

This all started when we decided to help his parents out by refurbishing the apple orchard at the farm. We had a pretty rough winter a few years ago and between the hurricane that blew through (yea! We get those here in Kentucky), and the ice storm, several of their apple trees fell down. After hauling them off, it was clear they needed something to fill in the gaps.

So James and I bought about 30 apple trees, all different kinds, to help fill in the orchard. Someone at one point mentioned that in order to really get the apples going, they kept bees. The cross-pollination helps the trees to produce more fruit. You see, with James, sometimes all it takes is a tiny comment like this to start an obsession.

Then the bee-keeping began. Now, we aren't ones to just jump right into something head first. We are both very deliberate, thoughtful, and intelligent (I write this with a smirk... as I type, at the farm, I can hear James outside with a rifle ca-cawing for crows, and intelligent isn't the first word that comes the mind). We began researching. We bought bee books, followed bee blogs, and googled the crap out of it. One day James asked me to climb in the truck, he was taking me to pick up my surprise birthday present. I was all set to go pick up my new pony and bubbled with excitement the further away from the city we drove. We pulled up to a house, surrounded by fields, and a man in a space suit walked out. There it was. My birthday present...

We drug the old hive bodies out to the farm and signed up for bee-keeping classes. Soon enough we had an amateur apiary started.

This all began last spring. I'll write about our adventure to pick up the bees later. But for now they are all tucked in, snuggled up in their bee hives, waiting patiently for winter to pass so they can climb on out and get busy again.