How it all began...

Childhood memories.....

I was first introduced to the wonders of bee keeping back in the 1960s as a child "helping" my father manage his hives. I learned of Queens, workers and drones. Seeing the different types of bees, the young and the older ones and the brood developing from eggs into larvae then the capped brood and finally the magic of seeing a brand new bee emerge....workers from flat brood cells and drones from the domed cells. The Queens developed in special peanut shaped Queen cells. My father closely monitored the development of the Queen cells. Sometimes he started new colonies by moving a Queen cell and a few frames of bees to a new hive. Lots of looking mostly with joy and occasionally with dismay when a hive was struggling.

Catching swarms was very exciting. It also seemed to be accompanied by a lot of commotion but ended in the zen like feeling of observing the swarm calmly arranging its' new home.

The reward for the stings received along the way was the fall honey harvest. Back then we used a hot capping knife to take the top off the comb. Then the frames laden with honey went into the extractor. That extractor was a hand crank. As a child it was fun turning the crank, getting the frames to spin faster and faster until the golden liquid poured from the spout on the side. The honey was strained through mesh and then it was portioned into bottles. I hardly recall the bottling...I think the adults did that when we weren't around. The harvested honey supplied us with golden sweetness that would last until the next season when the honey bee cycle began anew.

Many years later my eldest daughter Jen and Ryan asked if they could put a couple of bee hives on our property. Needless to say, with fond memories of youth circling in my head, I readily agreed and the renewed cycle of bee keeping commenced.

Somehow it seems much more complex and work intensive than the bee keeping of my youth...I expect the reality is that my father did all hard work, paid all the bills and I participated in all the fun and wondrous aspects of bee keeping!

This blog is the journey of our venture into bee keeping and the production of pure, raw honey from our micro apiary... EquiFlora Honey Farm.