I think I fell in love with the thought of becoming a real beekeeper sometime after I tasted really good honey from a local source. There was a beehive set up at the community garden when I got there in 2011 . I was interested in tasting real honey and was given the opportunity to sell some honey from the beehive at the garden. The beekeeper said that I could sell her honey at the Mableton Farmers Market and for every jar sold Mary said that I could keep $1 from every sale. I sold 5 jars and collected $4. I dropped the price of the honey for one customer to convince them to buy it. It was so good that I wanted the customer to have one. I believe in buying very local honey. I will never buy honey that I don't know the origin of. Your honey should be from local bees in your community if at all possible. It contains the good stuff that you need. The bees have done all the work for you. .
I decided that I wanted to learn to be a beekeeper. I quickly learned that it can be difficult to find a mentor to teach you how to become a beekeeper. I have been pretty lucky to find a really good mentor in Dr. Jennifer K. Leavey, professor at Georgia Tech and the Director of the Georgia Tech Honey Bee Project. She was kind enough to let me work and learn with them. It all started with an email asking to volunteer with her project. I had to take a couple of intro classes from her to learn the basics of the life of honeybees and how to care for them and inspect the hive. I read as much as I could and then came time to really get to see the bee hive. It's located on top of a building on the Tech campus. The day of the hive inspection was a spring day in April. A rather hot day for April too. We had been told by Dr. Leavey to wear light colored clothes. I forgot that and wore all black and Dr. Leavey looked at me as if to wonder how and why I would wear all black. I wear all black so much because it makes me look smaller and black matches black. Myself and the students went and got dressed in the beekeeping apparel. I had to put an entire suit over my clothes and the veil. We went outside and started the hive inspection. It was going well and the bees were doing really well after a very brutal winter for Georgia. It had been an extremely cold winter this year but the bees were doing really well.
I started to get really hot. It was a hot day, for early April. I started to feel really tired. I wished I could go lay down and take a nap. Now why would I want to do that? I just felt like I did. I started to walk to the door to go back inside and suddenly felt really weak and light headed. I wanted a good drink of water too. I felt that sleepy tired feeling again too. Nobody noticed but I tried to go inside but I had to wait so they could check me to make sure no bees were stuck to my suit before I went back inside. Someone said, "Turn around and raise your arms." I did but felt myself not feeling like myself and I knew something was wrong. I was about to pass out. I had on too many clothes, it was too hot, I had not eaten, I had not drank much water and I was in trouble. Sometime you just gotta keep it real. I was gonna fall on my face in a few seconds. I told the group, "Hey ya'll, I think I am going to fall out, I feel kinda sick." Everyone was really nice, Dr Leavey went to get me some water and that really nice young man sat on the cool concrete floor of the lab with me. I though that was so nice of him to do that. Its the little things that count. I sat for about 45
minutes and then I felt like wow, these dang bees done knocked the honey outta me.
I decided that I wanted to learn to be a beekeeper. I quickly learned that it can be difficult to find a mentor to teach you how to become a beekeeper. I have been pretty lucky to find a really good mentor in Dr. Jennifer K. Leavey, professor at Georgia Tech and the Director of the Georgia Tech Honey Bee Project. She was kind enough to let me work and learn with them. It all started with an email asking to volunteer with her project. I had to take a couple of intro classes from her to learn the basics of the life of honeybees and how to care for them and inspect the hive. I read as much as I could and then came time to really get to see the bee hive. It's located on top of a building on the Tech campus. The day of the hive inspection was a spring day in April. A rather hot day for April too. We had been told by Dr. Leavey to wear light colored clothes. I forgot that and wore all black and Dr. Leavey looked at me as if to wonder how and why I would wear all black. I wear all black so much because it makes me look smaller and black matches black. Myself and the students went and got dressed in the beekeeping apparel. I had to put an entire suit over my clothes and the veil. We went outside and started the hive inspection. It was going well and the bees were doing really well after a very brutal winter for Georgia. It had been an extremely cold winter this year but the bees were doing really well.
I started to get really hot. It was a hot day, for early April. I started to feel really tired. I wished I could go lay down and take a nap. Now why would I want to do that? I just felt like I did. I started to walk to the door to go back inside and suddenly felt really weak and light headed. I wanted a good drink of water too. I felt that sleepy tired feeling again too. Nobody noticed but I tried to go inside but I had to wait so they could check me to make sure no bees were stuck to my suit before I went back inside. Someone said, "Turn around and raise your arms." I did but felt myself not feeling like myself and I knew something was wrong. I was about to pass out. I had on too many clothes, it was too hot, I had not eaten, I had not drank much water and I was in trouble. Sometime you just gotta keep it real. I was gonna fall on my face in a few seconds. I told the group, "Hey ya'll, I think I am going to fall out, I feel kinda sick." Everyone was really nice, Dr Leavey went to get me some water and that really nice young man sat on the cool concrete floor of the lab with me. I though that was so nice of him to do that. Its the little things that count. I sat for about 45
minutes and then I felt like wow, these dang bees done knocked the honey outta me.
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