“You know, I’ve always wanted to keep bees...”
My lovely wife of then 14 years looked at me and said, “I’ve never heard you say that. …but, it does fit you.” That was September of 2005. Since then it’s been quite a learning experience as our hive numbers have increased. Being the beekeeper of Two Guys and a Hive it’s my job to make sure they’ve got good shelter, they’re healthy, queenright, have access to needed foods, and have room to grow as well as store honey.
I also pick up wayward swarms and occasionally cut or trap out nuisance hives from structures and hollow trees. I along with my wife Jennifer and our two kids Ben and Claire, work together carefully to extract the raw honey and prepare it for our honor stand. All of the honey, wax, and pollen used in any of our products sold out of our honor stand come from our hives in Lee’s Summit or Greenwood, MO. To that point, everything in our honor stand is harvested, handmade and packaged by someone in our family.
The most common question I’m asked is “Do you ever get stung?” To which I answer a resounding, “Yes!” The 2nd most common question is, “Does it hurt?” To which I also answer a resounding, “Yes!” To follow that up though, beekeeping is a labor of love. It’s always a fun challenge to effectively work individual hives well enough to avoiding their natural defensive response. In a full size hive there are up to 80,000 bees and if even one of them doesn’t like what you’re doing she’ll let you know. Normally all goes smoothly, but as with playing football you’re eventually going to get hit.