Welcome to the Bees with eeb blog.  I keep thinking about bees, and this being October the chances of having a beehive in the immediate future is rather low.  So I figured an outlet for this obsession might be good, so I thought perhaps I should write about the experience.  Then I realized my parents had granted me the initials e-e-b, and I had a Julie & Julia moment, and here we are.

It started on October 4, 2014 at the Waterford Home and Craft show.  I was walking around the town with my lovely wife when I saw it.  The Aunt Bea’s Backyard Beehives booth.  They make top bar hives, and I spoke with John of Aunt Bea’s for 20 minutes (much to my lovely wife’s dismay…).

The next day I purchased Les Crowder’s book Top-Bar Beekeeping on Amazon, and when it arrived I read it in 24 hours. So then I wanted a top bar hive of my own.

As some background, my grandfather raised bees on Block Island, RI for nearly 50 years.  In his retirement he sold honey and beeswax candles from their house on West Side Road, while my grandmother made jams from blackberries, rose hips, and other berries on the island.  We visited nearly every summer for a week or more, and some of my greatest memories are watching my grandfather work.

I never thought about raising my own bees, but after finishing the book I kept smelling honey and beeswax.  My grandfather had a candle house where I spent many a summer day.  I could smell the candle house on my fingers now, any time of day.

So the only question was whether to build a top bar hive per Les Crowder’s design, or buy one from Aunt Bea’s.  I tracked down John again at Clifton Day the following weekend, and spent a good 30 minutes examining the hive and talking about bees with John.  Eventually I decided to be safe and purchase my first hive from Aunt Bea’s, and as my wife pointed out it seems a bit unfair to pick a vendor’s brain at two separate events and not support them.  So I bought I hive, and I pick it up this weekend.

So this blog is hopefully for an outlet for thoughts about bees, and my journey as I prepare for a package of bees next spring.  Stay tuned.

By the way, according to the site grammer.about.com: The English word ‘alphabet’ comes to us, by way of Latin, from the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, ‘alpha’ and ‘beta.’ These Greek words were in turn derived from the original Semitic names for the symbols ‘aleph’ (for ox) and ‘beth’ (for house).