Who We Are

When Nick and I first started dating, we found we had alot of common interests and beekeeping was number one on the list. It’s quite unusual to find your “person”, your soulmate, but to find a man who also has this common interest was definitely love! Sure, we have other interests we both adore, but beekeeping was the icing on the cake.

We started our beekeeping adventure in the Spring of 2020 with two nucs. Nucs are usually sold in smaller cardboard boxes which contain five frames of bees and a mated queen. You then transfer those frames into brood boxes. Once those foundation (brood) boxes are built to 80 percent capacity by your bees with comb, you then add another brood box. We eventually added honey supers which they never did draw out and produce any honey. We nutured those bees throughout the Spring and Summer and into Fall. Neither hive was strong enough to sustain their colonies against wax moths which is what killed them in the end.

We took our losses and cried a few tears. The feeling of letting down over 150,000 honey bees was almost too much to bear.

Over the winter we decided we’d give it another shot this Spring. We found a beekeeper in North Georgia (Blairsville area) who was selling established nucs at a good price. We placed our order in early March and drove up to the area shortly thereafter to pick up our bees. The beekeeper put the nucs into our foundation (brood) boxes, secured all openings, and then wrapped the boxes in enough plastic wrap to ensure the bees stayed inside and the boxes were secure. We headed home and took our boxes to their permanent home - inside our fenced garden area.

These two hives have flourished producing nearly 100 pounds of honey thus far. We were able to split one of the hives, thus making a third hive. The third hive has a special queen, one that is not susceptible to varroa mites. Her daughters will be the same. This third hive has grown to the numbers needed to support a second brood box.

And the love affair continues. A love affair which began many years ago between the humans and their bees.