Greetings! George (my father-in-law), Liam (my teenage son), and I are just beginning our fourth year of beekeeping. Up until this point I have been posting pictures and updates on Facebook, but I’ve decided it’s time to give the operation its own blog site. I will continue to post updates, descriptions, stories, photos, and answer any questions (to the best of my ability) readers might pose. Whenever we harvest honey, I will also use this site to let people know when it’s ready for purchase.

Our History

George and I decided to become amateur apiarists in 2014, when we each took an all-day class offered by the University of Minnesota about beekeeping for beginners. George had been interested in beekeeping for years, whereas I had had been thumbing through the latest Arboretum magazine and saw the class offered there, thought it looked interesting, and decided on a whim to see what beekeeping might be like. The class made for one of the most enlightening and educational Saturdays I’ve had in years, and on the spot I committed to trying beekeeping. Since neither George or I had any idea what we were doing, we decided to work as a team. Since then we have both taken several workshops with the U of M Bee Squad, along with the second year beekeeping class. We own a small library of books about bees, and a one-hour documentary film about bees that actually contains “bee cam” footage. I also belong to the Minnesota Hobby Beekeepers Association, and follow a page on Facebook called “Beekeeping Questions.” You could say we’ve really gotten into it.

My son Liam started coming to visit the bees with us during the first year. He took enough of a liking to them that he has his own bee suit and helps us care for the hives and harvest the honey. Of the three of us, Liam is the only one to have not been stung yet. He has been dubbed The Bee Whisperer due to his calm nature. Last year, we were all out checking on the hives and Liam had gone AWOL at one point. Annoyed, I asked “Liam, where are you?” as I turned around to see what he was going. He was directly behind me, staring down at his stomach, where a single honey bee sat motionless and he was gently patting it. Liam has a very zen-like presence around animals, even bees.

The hives are located on a horse farm in Corcoran, MN, perched on a tree line on the edge of a vast alfalfa field. They couldn’t be any more ideally located! In 2014 we had just one hive, which didn’t do very well at all, and we lost it by the end of the summer. In 2015 we started with three hives and all three made it through the year! We harvested about 17 pounds of honey that year. In 2016 we divided two of our three hives and continued through the summer with five hives. It was the first summer that we struggled with varroa mites and had to treat the hives multiple times. I believe it reduced our honey yield substantially, and ultimately cost us three of our hives, but in the end we did end up harvesting 77 pounds of honey, so all was not lost.

In the fall I winterized the remaining hives by getting rid of a dead one, and combining the weaker two with the stronger two, so we ended up only having two hives left (two weak/strong pairings). In my next blog post, I will pick up with the beginning of 2017, and how the hives were looking when we went out to check on them this past weekend.

Thanks for tuning in! Check back for updates on our adventures in beekeeping, and please ask questions or make comments!