When
I brought my first batch of honey bees home–the buzzing box headed for
my backyard on a warm night in May–I was skeptical that my new
hobby made any sense. Would my bees starve? Would they get sick?
Would they annoy my neighbors?
Luckily, and by this point, I had been working part time for a bee removal company for a couple months, so I was somewhat seasoned by the job. And upon joining a local beekeepers club, I discovered both bees and urban beekeepers were multiplying in Prescott and the quad-city area. I also learned bees in a small backyard, such as mine, amongst the houses, schools and churches, have just as good a chance as anywhere else to thrive. Neighborhood trees, my giant Pyracantha bush, the neighbor's Russian Sage and any overgrown yards provide enough nectar and pollen–not to just sustain my bees throughout this summer season–but to score me some of their surplus honey!
My
closest neighbors hardly noticed how busy the hive situated only 60
feet from their house became,
even after I added a honey super (where the bees but the honey
as opposed to eggs). In fact, they welcomed my bees when I
first told them about it. They were only reminded again of my hive
with a gift of bee goodness (honey) I gave them across the fence on
Tuesday.
Jumping
back to my bee removal job, I get asked a lot: “How did I decide to
do this type of work?” Truth be told, there was no “Eureka!”
moment, but I believe the Universe must have been dropping seeds here
and there, starting with a home exchange I did in Sweden last fall
2014. My friends there were beekeepers, foodies and artists, and
owned an art gallery called Honey Gallery in Bromma, Stockholms Lan. The apartment I lived in
was next to allotment gardens, which I strolled through most days to
appreciate the precious undiscovered glory that is life: birds, bees, moths, butterflies, flowers, apple trees, wild deer and the people that nurtured it.
Another invisible seed was dropped early 2015 while visiting
the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension office armed with a
couple gardening questions. They gave me a local beekeepers and
master gardener's business card and said to call them. So I called
Cliff, and he and his wife, Nancy, invited me to their property in
Prescott Valley for a show-n-tell. I cannot remember now how the
conversation went, but Cliff and I got into bee suits and headed out
to the yard where all the hive boxes where buzzing and see how
comfortable I was handling frames full of bees, honeycomb and honey.
I was comfortable, and so I had to know more...
Things
started to really change when I found myself casually interviewing
for a job with Cliff's company, Last Shadow Apiary, in his kitchen
that I had no plans for. But life as it so happens, has a funny way
of sometimes bringing the right path to you even if you are too
oblivious to head down it on your own. After apprenticing on four bee removal calls
end of February/March, it was in April that I signed a contract with
Cliff and started getting calls to remove and relocate bee swarms and
hives from water boxes on my own. I travel all around
Prescott, and the quad-city area, performing this noble service. I have my own bee
suit and all the necessary equipment needed to capture/remove the
bees kept in the back of my car. I can feel the spirits of
generations of bees emanating a loud buzz as I drive down the road
and turn them over to Cliff's. He keeps as
many batches of bees as possible and puts them into vertical stacking
hive boxes in his bee yard and then re-queens them so they are less
aggressive (long story short).
I had never understood just how interesting bees were, but through Cliff's generosity and sharing his life-long knowledge of bees that I learned the ins and outs of keeping a bee hive, honey bee anatomy, procuring a new queen and how to handle her, and the most exciting part to me at this stage: harvesting the honey. What I revel in most now is located under a native Juniper tree in dappled light in my own backyard: the opportunity I have took for myself to have my own hive of honey bees for real! I wanted more than just an occasional purchase of agave nectar I was using for my various baking projects; I deeply desired the real deal with all it's fantastic nutrients from live cultures: the pollen, bee bread, honey in the wax, and the raw honey itself. Luckily, it has all been successful, as I continue to feel at ease working outdoors, being connected to the natural world in this special way and having a real sense of home in Prescott. Bees are such magical creatures that they do so much for us and ask for so little in return.
Looking ahead at 2016, I might expand my home apiary to 2 hives and maybe start to offer hive setup and management for other people too: restaurants, animal sanctuaries, urban farms, ranches and even a bee yard on the Prescott-Yavapai Indian reservation—why not? While putting a “maybe” and an “I might” in front of this last sentence, I find myself evolving as I go along trying to decide what works best in the context of my lifestyle and for the bees. It is also my hope that after you've read this (and maybe other parts of my blog) that you'll grow confident in your own wild and crazy plans like I did! Love, Sharon
I had never understood just how interesting bees were, but through Cliff's generosity and sharing his life-long knowledge of bees that I learned the ins and outs of keeping a bee hive, honey bee anatomy, procuring a new queen and how to handle her, and the most exciting part to me at this stage: harvesting the honey. What I revel in most now is located under a native Juniper tree in dappled light in my own backyard: the opportunity I have took for myself to have my own hive of honey bees for real! I wanted more than just an occasional purchase of agave nectar I was using for my various baking projects; I deeply desired the real deal with all it's fantastic nutrients from live cultures: the pollen, bee bread, honey in the wax, and the raw honey itself. Luckily, it has all been successful, as I continue to feel at ease working outdoors, being connected to the natural world in this special way and having a real sense of home in Prescott. Bees are such magical creatures that they do so much for us and ask for so little in return.
Looking ahead at 2016, I might expand my home apiary to 2 hives and maybe start to offer hive setup and management for other people too: restaurants, animal sanctuaries, urban farms, ranches and even a bee yard on the Prescott-Yavapai Indian reservation—why not? While putting a “maybe” and an “I might” in front of this last sentence, I find myself evolving as I go along trying to decide what works best in the context of my lifestyle and for the bees. It is also my hope that after you've read this (and maybe other parts of my blog) that you'll grow confident in your own wild and crazy plans like I did! Love, Sharon