My Little Honey Bees

I'm so happy to be sharing my little girls' story with you!
Let me tell you why I became a beekeeper...

About 2 1/2 years ago I looked out at my apple trees in my orchard and noticed I didn't see any bees... where had they gone? This was before I heard about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and how our honey bees were disappearing... it was just something that struck me as "WOW, where are they?". I remember thinking back a few years earlier and how my apple trees were buzzing with bees amongst the apple petals gently falling to the ground.

My attention was drawn to honey bees and how they were always just "there" and now they "weren't"... I started on a quest to find someone who might want to place a hive in my orchard. A year later I found James, a local Santa Cruz beekeeper, and spent a day with him visiting his hives at UC Santa Cruz. It was at that moment when my heart went out to these wonderful little industrious honey bees and I made a commitment to become a beekeeper.

It took about a month to place two hives in my orchard ~ one from James and one from his father, Peter. On May 6, 2008 James and Heather delivered 2 hives to my orchard. I named one " my Scotts Valley hive" and I named the other "my San Francisco hive". Interestingly enough, my SF hive was painted grey, just like the foggy conditions my little girls had lived in prior to moving to sunny Scotts Valley.