Sustainable

My friends at work know that I have bees. They also know that my bees are probably as close as I'm ever going to get to any type of sustainable lifestyle. Today one of them shared this Sustainable comic from the guys at xkcd.com. We thought it was funny and you might too!

Oh no! Well that's annoying...

…You can say that again. For Christmas my wife and kids ordered me a package of bees. They were set to arrive in late March. We are lucky enough to have a local supplier and so we have plans to go pick them up when they are ready and we are looking forward to going as a family to pick them up. This weekend I spent the better part of two days tinkering with some of my equipment and making preparations. Today I got an email from our supplier saying our bees won't be ready till the first week of April. Bummer. Well I guess that gives me another week or two to get my act together. I better get on with it. So much to do and so little time.

My Backyard Bees

In the Spring of 2012, we accidentally started beekeeping...

My wife and I were helping a friend who had some pesky honey bees taking up residence in her home. Through our research we quickly became fascinated with the world of the honey bee and decided, if we're going to go to all of this trouble to help rid our friend of her bees, the least we could do was put them in our backyard and see if we could get some honey!

Ok, so all those "we's and our's," I might be stretching the truth a little, the fact is my wife has been supportive of my little honeybee experiment from the beginning but sometimes when I turn my back I think I hear her eyes rolling around to the back of her head. My wife keeps me grounded, and without her I would probably be, eating sardines from a can and living out of homeless shelters, moving from one job to the next eking out an existence.

My wife and I and our three kids live in a community just south of Chattanooga, Tennessee called Flintstone, Georgia (aka Chattanooga Valley). Our neighborhood is one of those quite cul-de-sacs were we know all of our neighbors and the most exciting thing that has happened in the last few years was when the "cat lady" painted her house pink. I like to mix things up a little and so last summer we got some bees. 

For some time now, we've talked about getting a couple of acres with a goat and a cow and a couple of chickens. But we like our little neighborhood and so we have had to get creative. 

Last year, I got an old Langstroth hive from a local beekeeper, and with the help of  a couple of friends,

I rescued some bees from the floor of another friend's house where these bees had taken up residence. I spent the summer trying to figure out how to keep bees. I had mild success and I learned a lot along the way.

This summer we have decided to ramp up our operation and start a few more hives. We have ordered some bees from a local supplier and in April we are expecting our first packaged bees.  

We will be documenting our adventure on this blog, I have a few friends that I've roped into helping me along the way and I am hoping that they might contribute some of their experiences too. Thanks for checking us out.