Busy as a bee

... Or should that be "bees?" Specifically, I'm talking about my newest endeavor. I am becoming a beekeeper (or beek). Thanks to my loving wife, I have a very pretty 8-frame English Garden Hive. The boxes are cypress and the roof is copper clad. If nothing else, I'm sure the bees will appreciate their top quality, split level home in the high rent district.

It's strange. Keeping chickens seems like a much more intuitive task. You shelter them, feed them and water them and they give you eggs. Bees, on the other hand, are more self sufficient. You dump them in a box, give them a little sugar water to get started and walk away. Typical advice suggests that you inspect their hive every couple weeks. From what I've read, though, there isn't much you can do but hope for the best.

That just seems foreign to me. I pay a couple hundred bucks, then 6-18 months later, I get 50-200 lbs. of honey. It almost feels like planting a fruit tree. I feel like I should have to earn my reward. Maybe there is more to it that I don't see yet. Only time will tell.

So why would I start keeping bees? Well, I really like the prospect of increased crop yields from my yard/gardens. I suppose the honey will make nice Xmas presents too. Mostly, though, I can't help but feel that my kids are missing something I got as a kid. I remember going out to the crab apple tree in my parent's yard with a baby food jar. I would see how many bees I could catch. Usually I would only get 3 or 4. One time, I managed to get 11 in a peanut butter jar. When I look at my back yard fruits, all I see are carpenter bees, mason bees and other tiny bees, flies, etc. I rarely see a honeybee. My kids need the option of catching bees in jars. It just seems to make the world a more magical place.