This son may be hitting the “pause” button

(Richardson, TX) Several things have conspired together to lead me to my current state of mind: to stop keeping bees. Due to my bees drinkings habits (like humans that way, you know?) I can’t keep hives at my house. That’s made things much less convenient for me. Then I had the disastrous hive failures that had never occurred before (I blame the West Nile virus-inspired aerial mosquito spraying). And finally, I’m more motivated to see my father and younger brother succeed in their bee enterprise in College Station, TX. That’s why I’ve given them all my captured swarms. So I am contemplating giving them my very last hive that is sitting at my friend Paul’s house in East Dallas. It’s a strong hive (5 medium supers tall). We pulled 2 medium supers last weekend, extracted 17 medium frames of light amber honey. It could be the last honey I extract from my own bees for some time.

I can report that my father and brother now have ~24 hives. They will harvest very little honey this year. The intention is to strengthen these hives in preparation for expanding to an even greater number of hives next year. The goal is to reach sideliner status with dreams of commercial status. Using natural organic beekeeping methods. No chemicals/pesticides. No plastic frames. No artificial feeds. The path from where they are at to where they want to be is daunting. Costs and logistics. And the risk of catastrophic losses looming every year. But the gamble is that the natural way of keeping bees will lead to less losses.

I can’t imagine that I will stay out of beekeeping forever. I mean, my wife would kill me for buying that Maxant motor-powered extractor if I never used it again. I do plan on expanding my efforts to bait swarms next year to help my family beekeeping operation.

Here’s a video I took today showing neighborhood bees “robbing” my wet supers in my bait hive. Plus a cameo from a (not so) friendly chameleon.

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