Today I installed honey bees into our Warre hive.
Three years ago I ordered my first 3 pound package of bees to be delivered, but due to an accident during the shipping process, my bees and many other people's (literally millions of honey bees) perished in transit.
Two years ago, I found a local apiary (bee farm) about a hour away, put in an order, picked them up around mid May, and put them in a Top Bar hive. Late in the Fall of that same year, after failing to thrive, they swarmed, and I was left with some empty honeycomb and a sense of determination to figure out what went wrong.
Last year, I decided to try a Warre style hive, got another starter box of bees from the same place as the previous year (Wolf Creek Apiary) and was thrilled to see the original installation of some 15,000ish grow to 3 or 4 times that amount and fill 4 boxes with comb that was also full of honey, and pollen, and a continuing supply of new bees!
Yes! And then... no...
Last December, after an unusually warm winter, I found - again - that the bees were gone, but this time as I went to dismantle it, I was stunned. The hive was empty of bees, but packed with honey! I should have been happy to have all that honey, and I was, but I would have rather had the bees still buzzing around...
I realized then that I was hooked, and I was going to do it again and again, and that I'll always be an urban bee keeper. I don't do it for the honey. I don't do it to help pollinate our fruit trees and garden in the back yard. I don't do it because it is cool... I do it for all these reasons and so many more!
Honey Bees are struggling. As I've seen firsthand, it is hard to keep hives going year after year, and this matters as their continued existence and successful survival affects us all - us as in all of us - us as in all the plants, animals, and people on the planet.
Funny enough, I was actually first introduced to the concept of bee keeping by one of my most senior Tae Kwon Do students - Master Todd Welsh. I was fascinated and impressed. In February of this year, about a decade after he shared some of his first harvest of honey, I was pleased to be able to present Todd with a jar from my hive.
Today I find myself reflecting on how good my life is and how many times I can trace that back directly to a person I've met or an event I've attended because of my involvement in Tae Kwon Do. I am grateful for the sequence of events that started me down this martial arts path, and I'm even more grateful for the people I've met and continue to meet along the way.
Respectfully,
Kathy Wiz
It seems totally in tune with who you are to see something struggling and want to assist in their survival. Not out of pride or for a pot of gold, but because it's right. Thank you for being the example to follow.
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