It started keeping bees in late 2018 or at least I think it was that year. However, I was interested with creepy-crawly stuff for most of my life. I like nature in all it shapes and forms, plants or animals, critters or birds.
There were a number of reasons to start beekeeping, not just the fashionable idea of helping the environment. No no, there was much more than that… Have you seen the prices of mead in recent years?! 😉
You are right, it wasn’t just mead that started me keeping bees. I remember, from when I was a youth, my auntie’s back garden in which six old, empty hives drowned in a deep grass. They looked sad in their quiet destitute. I thought that it would be so ‘cool’ – a word from back then – to have bees and hear them buzz. To have hives full of life.
For obvious reasons, keeping bees back then was impossible. I was busy with other things, more important – I thought.
And then, a few years ago, a bee swarm stopped at my doorstep. My wife wasn’t too excited, but it gave me a chance to see beekeepers in action. After a number of phone calls, we were told that someone will come to collect the bees. In my naivety, I was expecting a SWAT team, dressed in sting proof suits, arriving in a ghostbusters-style vehicle. To my dismay, a rather different team turned up. Two, elderly gentlemen, wearing jeans and short bee jackets with thin veil protecting their faces, plus they had no extra bee proof vehicle but a white fiesta.
This was an epiphany, I knew bees were everywhere, after making all the phone calls I knew the local Beekeepers Association existed too. All I had to do was to complete the beginners course and start a new hobby.