Bzzzzzz
My father retired about a year and a half ago and he’s been slap bored out of his mind. He had a church call him for an interim job, preaching on Sundays and teaching on Wednesdays. That’s been a good fit because it gives him the best parts of his old job without all the stress of counseling and weddings and burials and day to day administrative duties. The rest of his time is spent tinkering around with little projects around the house. Redo the carpet in the old boat? Sure, why not? Reorganize the garage? Check. Re-reorganize the garage? Check. Check.
About a year before he retired he got really interested in bees. I’m not really certain what triggered this new passion but he went out with a friend who had bees and he was hooked. When he retired, the folks at the office pooled some cash and bought him a Flow Hive. It’s promise is that you’ll basically raise your bees like normal but the harvesting of the honey is supposed to work from a tap rather than the traditional labor intensive chore of harvesting honey. It also has a window so you can see the gang at work in there, which is pretty rad. It’s sort of the red-headed step child of the bee world, it seems. Every old timer says it’s marketing crap that won’t work. The design community praises it as the best thing since sliced bread. Everyone agrees it is a thing of beauty. We really don’t know yet. Time will tell, I suppose. Dad went ahead and bought a traditional hive to accompany it and set them beside each other so we’ll see, I suppose. I’m pulling for the Flow Hive to be just as successful because it’s a great design and a thing of beauty and it would definitely be a way for lazier people like myself to get into this.
Dad finally got the hive set up in my backyard as his neighborhood has houses on top of each other. Conveniently, his only two grandchildren live where his hives are, too. So, there’s that. We live just outside of the city limits but have a very large yard and I talked to all my neighbors who were cool with it. We’ve had chickens for about 9 years, so they are pretty used to things being a little different over here already. This has been a great new hobby for dad and a new way to spend more time outside, learning and sharing his new passion. He’s taken classes and the folks who sold him his bees and some specialty equipment have been huge resource. They are called the Carolina Honey Bee Company. Check them out. They are great.
Meanwhile, I’ve hired a consultant named Jennifer Kilberg for my business and she’s been stressing that I shoot more stories and so some of that stuff will end up here in the blog I suppose. We’ve been working together for a short while now and she’s helping navigate new waters and get my stuff together. If you have a fun story or know someone who does, I’d love to come document it. Hit me up here @ matthew@matthewfranklincarter.com or text / call me at 864.243.1930. Thanks for following along!
