In the beginning…
One spring morning, Joe was cleaning up the yard, and preparing the garden. As he was considering removing a small ornamental pond, he noticed a bee sipping water. He thought, “Hmmm…that’s a honeybee”.
He was a little intrigued. Since Joe had recently become familiar with Google after being
gifted a tablet (an old dog can learn new tricks, after all!) so he ‘googled’ honeybees and discovered a guy tracking wild honeybees with a small box; trapping a bee when it landed on a flower, offering it sugar water, then marking it with non-toxic paint, eventually tracking it back to its hive in the wild.
A carpenter, Joe, built himself a little box, learned to mark the bees, and had success tracking them to their hive. Discovering wild hives reside almost exclusively high up in hollowed-out trees, he needed a way to bring the hive closer to learn more about their behavior firsthand. But being the frugal man that he is, purchasing a beehive and bees were out of the question!
Back to Google and the ‘University of YouTube’, he went.
Joe learned it was possible to attract a swarm of bees (a group of honeybees on the lookout
for a new home) using a wood box. One Saturday, he built a box, intending to place it up in a tree as recommended, but ran out of time that day. Sunday is for worship and rest, so that day was out.
Monday and Tuesday night were busy, so he came home from work Wednesday intending to hang the box and discovered it was surrounded by bees! And so, it began, Joe’s journey into beekeeping.
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