Reasons I Love Beekeeping

  • The calm hum of the bee yard, which is very loud and first and gradually fades into the background

  • The insignificance you feel around thousands of bees going about their day-to-day

  • Finding the queen at first glance on the first frame in a hive, and the quiet confidence that comes from that. Then, in the very next hive, spending a full 15 minutes going through every single frame to find the queen and feeling humbled. You can never get too comfortable beekeeping. 

  • Looking up and realizing the whole yard of 64 hives is done and that, somehow, a full hour has passed in the blink of an eye. 

  • Coming home after a long day of sweaty work to mow my grandma’s grass until the sun comes down. Feeling a part of something bigger in the family. 

  • Taking lunch into the field and sitting down in some grass with the crew talking about life. 

  • Watching the river of honey flow by at the bottom of the extracting line

  • Wondering how frames can be so impossibly full and heavy with honey

  • Sorting frames and cleaning them for the next year, knowing that it is the next year (and the next year and the next year) that counts

  • The optimism that next year will always be the biggest year yet, and that everything is always falling into place