The path to starting as a beekeeper was a little slower than I wanted. But, after about two years of learning, reading, and watching videos, my wife finally consented to getting a beehive for our backyard. That’s the way it often goes- she’s hesitant, I’m eager, and then I have to wait until she’s ready. Of course, the waiting isn’t a passive endeavor; it is very active! It involves subtle mentions, occasional sharing of information, and lots of expressions of enthusiasm. In the end, I wear her down.

For my birthday in 2022, she took me to the beekeeping store in Lawrence, as a surprise. We ate lunch at a local restaurant, and then she revealed the real reason for our trip to Lawrence. We spent about an hour in the store, looking, learning, asking questions. When we left that day, I was excited- I was 52 years old, and it was one of the best birthdays I’d ever had! We bought our first hive boxes shortly after, and I spent the winter learning more, preparing the frames and boxes, and gearing up for a new adventure!

It’s hard to describe the excitement I felt on that beautiful day in April when I brought my first package of bees home. You heard that right, one of the ways bees come are in what’s called a “package”. That’s about 3 lbs. of bees, which amounts to around 12,000 of them, in a small plastic box. The package also comes with a queen in a special cage and a can of sugar syrup mounted in the box to provide a slow-drip supply of nutrients for the bees as they travel up from a Southern state, like Texas or Georgia.

Installing the package into my brand new hive box was an exhilarating experience. I had seen enough people doing it without wearing the astronaut suit, that I decided to give it a try. The processes is an art, not a science, and includes removing the syrup canister, opening the lid, and shaking all 12,000 bees down into their new home. BEES WERE EVERYWHERE! They were flying all around, some of them were staying in the box, and I was right in the middle of all the chaos— no stings!

I secured the queen, still inside her little cage, into the hive, and closed the lid. The cloud of bees quickly recognized her presence in the hive by her pheromone, and before long they were mostly settled into their new home. The queen would spend the next three days in her cage as worker bees ate through the candy plug to release her.