Rehoboth Farm

When Kim and I were dating as teenagers we used to go with her parents every night to walk in a local park. We would usually stay until near dark and then return home. Once when we were about to leave, we were sitting on a picnic table when I felt something hit my back and slide down to my beltline, something like a large bug. I sat up and felt around but couldnÂ’t find anything. "WhatÂ’s the matter?" Kim asked. "I donÂ’t know, I could swear that something went into my pants, but maybe not", I said. Kim laughed and said that I would know if that happened, and then soon after we left. On the way home I still had the feeling that all was not right.

After we had been back at her house for about 30 minutes I sat down on the couch and thatÂ’s when something began to move. I jumped up from the couch and began to shake my legs, Kim was saying "What?, what?, what are you doing?! I was yelling, "SomethingÂ’s in there!!", as I jumped and shook all over her living room. Just then I could feel it move into one pants leg and so I started shaking that once with violence. Finally, out of the end of one jeans leg came a huge cockroach that hit the floor and then scurried away to disappear near a wall.

Kim fell back on the couch in hysterics as I stood there huffing and puffing, my 80Â’s hair all in a tussle. She had discovered my inherent fear of insects.

Fast forward eighteen years to 2002. Our one year old son, Gabriel had developed allergies to just about everything including the Christmas tree. We had read that eating local raw honey might enable you to develop resistance to local allergens so we decided to try it. We had bought a small jar of honey recently from a local farm fair and on it was the phone number of the beekeeper, a Mr. Harris, so we gave him a call. He invited us to come over and get as much as we needed.

Mr. Harris is 79 years old but doesnÂ’t look a day over 65. Until he began beekeeping he suffered from arthritis, but it quickly went away, along with most of his other problems. His doctor is so impressed with his health compared to other men his age that he has become somewhat of an expert on the health benefits of honey. He even comes to speak at our local beekeepers meetings of which Mr. Harris is president. We began replacing much of our sugar usage with honey and soon we were buying Mr. Harris out of his supply. He suggested that we get a hive of our own.

In October of 2003, we were building our home on our new land and were anxious to start the ‘homestead’ lifestyle once again after being out of it for three and a half years. One day I told Kim that I really wanted to have some honeybees, and I even bought ‘Beekeeping, A Practical Guide’ by Richard Bonney. After I read the book, I told her about how simple beekeeping sounded and all of the benefits that you gain from it. She said, "But honey, don’t you have a fear of flying insects, especially ones that sting?" The park incident immediately came to mind. She agreed that bees would be wonderful, if, I could get past the ‘bug’ aspect.

Well, determination took over. We found, via the Market Bulletin, a man about 150 miles from us who sold entire hives with bees, his name was Mr. Pluta. We made arrangements to come over and get a hive on one Saturday. Kim asked me where we would put the bees for the return trip home; I had not really thought about it until then. I asked Mr. Pluta and he said that he would plug the entrance to the hive, so inside the car should be fine (as long as we drove carefully). The mental image of 30,000 bees loose inside our car made me pass on this choice. I settled on renting a U-Haul trailer and we were on our way.

Mr. PlutaÂ’s house was surrounded by more than 100 bee hives, covering about three acres. Bees could be seen everywhere moving at great speed and the sound of buzzing filled the air. Mr. Pluta himself reminded me of a bee, he moved from hive, to hive, to roadside stand almost non-stop and at a fast clip. We basically had to stand in one spot and talk to him as he passed by. I finally figured out the trick and ran along beside him as he made his rounds and explained who I was and why I was there. Just when he would start picking out a hive for us, a car would pull up to his stand and he was off. After a few minutes he would return and we would be on the move again. After a while things calmed down and we got the hive loaded up. He told us about how he put hives on crops in South Georgia like peaches, strawberries and even cotton. He had honey from these crops that actually tasted like peaches, strawberries and yes, cotton. His honey was wonderful, we bought gallons.

We got our hive home and set it up. Mr. Harris came out and inspected it and gave us the thumbs up. Bees are actually fascinating to sit and watch. As long as the temperature is above about 60 degrees, there will be some type of activity going on. I bought a veil and a smoker from Brushy Mountain Bee Supply and the first time I opened up the hive I was nervous as a cat. The smoker makes a huge difference, and I was bold enough to pull out a frame to look at. Bees started covering the veil, and the fact of having 30 or 40 stinging insects within an inch or two of your face is somewhat intimidating, at first.

Actually once you get stung the first couple of times, the fear goes away and it just becomes a nuisance. Once I got too bold and used a bare hand instead of a gloved one. I happened to pull out the very frame the queen was on and, of course, about 10 guard bees pounced on that particular hand. I got seven stings from the wrist up to my fingers and my hand swelled up for two days, then went back to normal. These types of incidences have lowered my fear of insects, somewhat.

While we were building, our builder told us about a bee hive on one of their other job sites. He asked if we could remove it. I got with Mr. Harris and we went over to take a look. On the way over Mr. Harris said that it was likely a wasp or hornetÂ’s nest because honeybees in the wild are extremely rare. When we got there Mr. Harris smiled and said he couldnÂ’t believe it; on the side of a tree was a large honey bee hive with a good deal of bees working it. He and I and Mike spent a couple of hours removing the comb and placing it in a wooden hive. Kim took pictures of the operation, and Mr. Harris later used them at a Georgia Beekeepers Convention at the University of Georgia. The pictures won first prize for the photo contest that they hold each year. (see below).

Taking care of bees is much harder than it used to be, it seems that everything is out to get them; Varroa and Tracheal mites, Wax Moths, Foulbrood and now the Small Hive Beetle. Not to mention having to feed them syrup over the winter and constantly check on their levels of brood, pollen and honey stores. All of this is forgotten, however, the first time that you extract. When you see your honey supers starting to fill up it is a great feeling, the whole hive even takes on a distinct honey smell. Once you have those heavy supers in the house, and each frame is capped completely over in a neat wall of white wax, thatÂ’s when the real fun begins. There is something almost Biblical about uncapping a frame and seeing all of that golden honey that your bees have produced for you. It just makes you thank the Lord for his creation. Honey extracting should always be a family affair, even if you, the children and the kitchen get completely sticky in the process, to the children thatÂ’s half the fun.

We had been used to seeing honey in small quantities until we had our own. The first time we extracted we got nearly four gallons of honey, which looked more like 40. Then we planted a half an acre of white clover. Last year we got over eight gallons of honey from just our one hive, which is pretty good for being in the country where there are not a lot of flowers growing wild. This year we hope to expand to additional hives, but first we have to get the Small Hive Beetles under control. They have killed off two of our hives and we are now on our third, and not giving up. We tried to go organic on the first two with no parasite control, but have resigned ourselves to the fact that we have to do something to keep the hive viable.

The market for honey is growing as mainstream folks have figured out the wide benefits of it as well. We put all of our honey in small Mason jars because we feel like it looks best that way. I bring them to work and sell them for $5 per half-pint right off my desk. This works out to about $80 per gallon, but people are willing to pay it for a high quality product that looks like it came straight off the pantry shelf in a real farm house...which , of course, it did.