Eleven or twelve years ago, I decided to purchase a couple of Nucs to start on a beekeeping journey. This is also when I decided it would be fun to see what all this “blogging” was about and started a beekeeping blog (this site!). It was great fun that first year, dealing with two hives and reporting some of my insane conclusions in those early days.

Of course, two weren’t enough, so I expanded to 4 in year two and believe I may have caught a swarm or two. By years 3 and 4, I was experimenting with every type of “bee increase” you could imagine (nucs, splits, raising queens, etc…) As the years went on, those first two hives became 80 hives. As with all of my hobbies, I eagerly took beekeeping over the edge!!!

It was not until last July, as I once again spent most of my free time on the Summer weekends either extracting a seemingly never ended pile of capped honey supers or running down various tasks in a multitude of beeyards, that everything became clear – I had once again turned a great, fun-loving hobby into a daggone job!!!

As I write this post, it occurs to me that my activity on this blog also dropped off substantially as the hive count rose. I enjoy running on here, on this blog. But, just managing the hives (along with family, work and so on) was preventing me from really enjoying this small bit of fun.

So, I have finally wizened up and realize that an ideal number of hives for me runs at two dozen, not 7!!! Therefore, this year I will begin to sell both Nucs and fully operational hives. I am hopeful of reducing my count over the next couple of years to something that is more of an enjoyable hobby than a full-time job! I plan to update the site with the relevant information shortly, regarding how to reserve a hive or nuc, costs and so forth.

Hopefully this is also a sign of more posts here, and more dialogue with fellow beekeepers across Virginia (and elsewhere.)