Beekeeping has always seemed something of a peripheral topic for our family. Neither Jen nor I have much in the way of personal experience with bees. But as we saw many of our large backyard garden's vegetables back in Katy fail to pollinate due to a lack of bees among the suburban sprawl of Houston, we began to include bees in our long-term plans. Here we are, years later in Tennessee, in the throes of a pending global Bee Apocalypse, personally knowing fine folks right here in Wilson County that face the annual loss of over half of their hives. With all of the literature coming out concerning the decline in bees, it has become our position that anyone with the means and space should start a few hives. So we began attending Wilson County Beekeepers Association meetings, and became dues-paying members shortly thereafter.

We attended the monthly meetings regularly at first, with the intention of starting our first hive back in 2015. Jen even bought me a Langstroth hive and starter kit for Christmas. I gleefully put it together and used a woodburner to decorate our new hive with the Stonybrook brand. However, the scarcity of nucs that year and our increasingly-busy schedule made us delay until 2016. And then there was The Building...

As a return favor for some computer work and out of their remarkable kindness and spirit of sharing, Carey and Petra with WCBA came out and toured Stonybrook to help us determine the best hive placement. Their advice was to place the bees in the far southwest corner of the barnyard, as the chickens would help keep the hives pest-free and minimize the need for mowing and trimming around the hives. However, with the excavation for The Building finally starting up, Carey and Petra advised against starting out hives near the hustle and bustle of an active construction site, as the bees would get antsy and seek quieter digs. Soon thereafter, another WCBA member Mike Nokes dutifully called with an offer for his Spring nucs (Nokes Nucs!), and we embarrassingly had to decline.

So here we are starting out 2018, with the lonely Stonybrook hive, smoker, gloves and veil collecting dust down in the den with no planned start date. We will be moving forward with planting our wildflower pollinator prairie as planned in the Spring. Who knows, maybe we'll be tasting our first Stonybrook honey by the end of the Summer of 2018?