I was in the bee business until I started driving a cross-country 18 wheeler. I got off the road in 1994 and was living in Pensacola, Florida at that time. I settled down to work with a road construction company. After working with this company for nearly two years, I was hurt on the job and had to retire. At the urging of my wife, I joined a beekeeping association and started keeping bees.

With several mentors teaching me the ways and whys, I learned more about bees in the last 7 years than I ever thought possible. Now I am a mentor my self, and a volunteer instructor (’Bees’ is the subject) at schools teaching mostly prekindergartens through Middle School. I am a volunteer instructor at a local High School FFA class. At one time, I had 86 hives and 100 nuclei (nucs). That made me a small sideliner. Then this year I sold down to only 30 hives and no nucs (I am now classified as a big hobbyist). I keep the nuc boxes for swarm collection.

I will try to post what I am doing in the bee yard and why I think it is a good system: Extracting and bottling honey: the different festivals I go to when I sell honey; and I will probably tell of some of the experiences I have had in the classroom with different age children and young adults.

If you have any questions, please send them to me in the comment sections of this blog. There is no such thing as a dumb question. If you don’t have the answer, then you need one. If you have any suggestions, then I will try to explain why not, or I will try to expound and implement them.

Thanks for showing up and giving me an opportunity to talk and share my knowledge with you.