I didn't know this was going to be one of the new skills I was going to learn for 13skills.com, but my husband got the "bug" and we are now beekeepers.
Early last year, we attended beekeeping classes at the local Oklahoma State University extension office. The instructor was very informative and other fellow beekeepers attended to help field the mass of questions the students asked during breaks.
For the last day of class, we attended a hive building workshop.We took the grand kids with us, thinking they might enjoy learning how to build a bee hive. They ended up being very helpful and enjoyed nailing and gluing the frames together.
Tom watched endless hours of videos on the internet to prepare himself for the two hives he was going to get in the spring.
Then my friend, Dottie, called.
She had a friend that wanted to get rid of the beehive filled with bees on her property and we were free to take them. As this story unfolds, you'll see we made lots of mistakes. It was definitely a learning experience.
On a cool, rainy day, Tom and I loaded up early in the morning and followed my friend Dottie to the property where the bees were located. This is before we learned that bees do not like rainy days. We did learned that the bees had not been handled in over two years and may even have some Africanized traits in them. We were nervous on our first bee experience, but we braved on, donning our bee suits.
Tom's suit was a nice jacket with a zip-on hood and veil. I wore a coat with a veil that tied around my chest and waist. Dottie helped us into our gear. As she zipped Tom into his veil, the zipper head came off into her hands. We didn't know what the problem was, but we tucked everything into the Velcro flap at his neck and continued on.
In the drizzly rain, Tom cracked open the bee hive to peer inside. We had never seen so many bees in one place! Angry at being disturbed on a chilly, dripping day, the bees boiled out of the hive and swirled around us. Many of them landed on my back, turning my coat black with bees.
Several times, we walked away from the hive to reorient and to let the bees settle down a little. Unfortunately, Tom kept getting stung. It seems there was a gap in the suit where the zipper had malfunctioned. Bees also were slipping up under his jacket where his pants had slipped down (as they usually do). Later, Tom estimated that he had been stung about twenty times at the base of his throat and a few more times in other places. Luckily, he wasn't showing any allergic reaction and didn't even swell.
After all that work (and agony on Tom's part) the bees didn't like the new home we had provided for them and flew away. Even though Tom had to evaluate seriously whether he wanted to pursue beekeeping further, he decided in the long run that he still was interested. He has learned a lot and now has four hives to manage and thoroughly enjoys his hobby.
