It all begins with an idea. This idea hit me on a drive home from an average office job. 9-5 with an hour commute. I was tired from work and, as always, more than happy to be driving home from work.
Excited to go home and spend the evening with my 3 dogs and my favorite people, I let my mind drift. I think a lot of us have a desire to get out of the rat race and into something we are passionate about. I had already been in the mindset of looking to make a living from doing something other than driving to an office everyday and looking out a window.
The bees were a hobby initially. Something I could start with my young growing family. Something we could all learn about together. Well, we learned. We learned so much that first year it could make your head spin. We learned about honeybees and how to care for them. We made mistakes and learned from those. I think most importantly though, we learned about ourselves.
The bees brought us this amazing perspective we hadn’t had prior to caring for them. I, like many others, had this fear of stinging insects. I also thought everything with wings and a stinger was called a bee. Boy was I wrong. Honeybees are so docile. They really only sting if they perceive you as a threat. Otherwise, they are really just trying to do their pollinator things and survive.
We lost our 2 hives over the first winter we kept. The biggest thing we realized come spring was that we never wanted to be without a hive. The pleasure we got from them being in our world was like nothing else. It was heartbreaking to no longer have them pollinating our home garden.
So, we purchased more honeybees. The next year was much more dedicated. We kept learning and we treated for mites. Which was something we skipped that first year. We were actually instructed not to treat that first year and I have to assume it was so we could focus on the amount of information we had to take in. We got our bees locally as well. The first year we had them shipped from Georgia and they just weren’t equipped to withstand our Pennsylvania winters.
We came into winter with 7 hives from that year. We caught some swarms, did a cutout, and continued to learn, learn, learn. Did I mention how much we have learned.
While we are still learning (does that ever really stop?) our confidence has skyrocketed, and we feel we are fully equipped to share some of our successfully overwintered Pennsylvania bees with some lucky pioneers in 2022. This is only the beginning. Honeybees have become an integral part of our lives. Even though they’ve been here, our eyes have now been opened to them and their importance. We have to share what we know.
I can say with full confidence, that today without the bees, we’d be lost. They are integral to our happiness as a family. But even bigger than that, and more importantly, they’re just as integral to the world, and most of them don’t even realize it.
