First, let me describe to you why and how exactly I became a lady beekeeper. With all the hype about CCD (colony collapse disorder) the popularity of beekeeping has risen, and many have made a foray into the hobby to preserve the dwindling bee population. Though I believe that backyard beekeepers are doing their part to help maintain the European honeybee population in America, my decision to become a beekeeper wasn’t initially because of this noble cause.
It was a bit more selfish really. You see, my husband and I had been brewing beer in our home for several years, and we wanted to up the ante. As a self-proclaimed Ren-faire addict my obvious alcoholic beverage of choice is mead, the ancient honey wine. Unfortunately the sheer volume of honey required for good mead makes mead batches expensive. After a quick internet search I discovered that I could obtain honeybees and equipment for the price of a few batches of mead. Seemed like a good investment to me, and how medieval (in a good way, as a renaissance nerd would use it) is farming your own bees?
The next step was convincing my husband to say yes to bees. At this point I had been toying with the idea of beekeeping for several months. I had mentioned it to my husband a couple of times offhand, but he almost certainly thought it was another one of my half-cocked ideas that never quite pan out. Another point of note is that by this time I had been trying to convince my husband for about a year (since we moved into our new house) to get a dog. He was (and still is) adamantly against the idea of a dog.
I finally broached the bee subject again late one night after returning from a long day of work during a very stressful crunch-time. The conversation went something like this:
Me: “Can we get bees?”
Husband: “Sure.”
Me: “Wait, are you kidding? What about a dog?”
Husband: “I’d rather not get a dog, I’m allergic to dogs.” (He isn’t. More on that next time…)
Me: “So you’d rather have thousands of bees, than one cuddly dog?”
Husband: “Yes.”
Me: “You know most people would prefer the dog.”
Husband: “I know.”
Me: “Well, bees it is.”
The next morning before work I ordered a beekeeper starter kit from Honeybee Headquarters that included a 3lb package of Italian bees. And that is how I ended up with 3lbs of honeybees instead of a dog.
A toast to bees!
