The Curious Beekeeper
Too May Bees? Drawing Down is Better than Walking Out
In my youth, all honey came in a comb, something I never questioned. It wasn’t until I departed my Pennsylvania homeland that I discovered something amiss: Whenever I tried to buy honey, the good part was missing. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why someone would separate honey from its cradle. Like waffles without syrup or corn with no cob, what was the point?
For decades afterward, wherever I traveled, I sought rural grocery stores, those intriguing shops with warped wooden floors, high prices, and low maintenance — the kind that smelled like pickles and bloody meat. Typically, the front windows, darkened with hand-painted poster boards, boasted of bread at 18 cents a loaf or Winesaps at 14 cents a pound. But those didn’t interest me; I was on the lookout for that elusive comb of honey.
I persisted in this quest, and now and again emerged victorious, clutching a dried-up bit of comb honey in a splintered wooden box. This was my ultimate delight, a gift from the honey bee gods, and a nod to my past.
During those years — which pulsed with college and marriage and family — I sometimes fantasized about having a reliable source of comb honey. I couldn’t imagine having bees of my own because, well, when you’re young and broke and moving every six months, you don’t envision permanence. But much later, the pieces fell into place when we purchased a few acres of rural property with a through-the-woods drive to my husband’s work.
My first hives
I began beekeeping with two gift hives, each with a double brood chamber oozing with bees. The offering came from an affable but scruffy acquaintance who was downsizing his apiary, a man so eager to get rid of bees that he delivered them to my home and assisted with an initial inspection. How odd, I thought, that someone was so eager to divest themselves of something I wanted so badly.
I had prepared in advance by procuring a pristine bee suit, a shiny hive tool, a bespoke rock-solid hive stand anchored in concrete, and a smoker that had never seen a flame. What else could I possibly need? I remember the sensory spell of that first Saturday morning — how the bees erupted like lava from between the frames, how the fragrance of honey and fresh-cut grass co-mingled with a gentle whiff of bananas, and how the manic chirp of chipmunks accented the background buzz of bees …
