Beekeeping

Many of you would say that it is an odd career path that a person should take after working for so many years as a software developer.  I would emphatically agree, if it weren’t for what really happens in a beehive.

Many years ago, when I was a boy, I was introduced to beekeeping.  My father was beekeeper, and his brother too.  Their uncle made it possible for them to start their own beekeeping businesses.  Some of his cousins are still beekeepers today, and carry on the legacy that their father started, managing thousands of hives and employing dozens of people.  So it goes to say that beekeeping has had an influence in my life.

When I graduated high school and had begun to seek my path, I went to my father’s uncle and he gave me a job while I went to night school at a local community college.  It was piece work at first, learning how to make frames of wax for the bees to raise little bees and store their honey.  Later, during the following summer, I went to North Dakota to help them make the next honey crop.  We piled empty supers (boxes specially made for collecting honey) on top of obelisk-like hives that by the end of summer were nearly too tall for me to reach the top of.

My Great Uncle taught me many things during that summer.  I learned that the hive has a system that needs to be managed and supported.  It was much easier back then.  Not as many pesticides, pest or diseases.  Most of the time, you could put a few frames of bees together with a queen and they would take care of the rest.  Even then, I could see that there was a certain amount of troubleshooting that would be needed in the hive from time to time.

It was after this summer that I decided to focus more on my education after I returned from completing a religious service in South Korea for two years.  It wasn’t so much the hard labor of being a beekeeper that sent me to school, it was the example of the intelligent people that I watched and my personal interests in computers.

Fast forward to a few years ago and I found myself needing employment.  The computer industry was proving to be more difficult to find a job that would take me a direction that I wanted to go.  I tried going back to college so I could provide new horizons for myself.  However, my business degree didn’t open the doors that I was hoping for, so I turned back to my beekeeping roots and found welcoming arms.

But I found that things were different now.  I was doing more troubleshooting than before.  I was using all my senses to understand why a colony was failing.  Sometimes you heard it, or you would smell it, and others you could see the problem.  The days of putting a few bees together and queen were over.  There were mites to battle, and illnesses to treat.  The job description changed from hired muscle to hive analyst.

So much of my analytical training from being a software developer was being used that it left me in awe of those that I worked with, who had not the same background but were highly skilled as a beekeeper.  If they were to apply themselves to software, there is no doubt that they would succeed with ease.

So having completed a number of years as a beekeeper, I took a moment to take notice of those who are applying themselves to it.  The family that gave so many wonderful examples have begun to retire.  Their health from the many years and decades of this labor intensive employment have forced them into an easier lifestyle.  I see the writing on the wall.  More to the point, I feel the aches in my back.  I also feel the urge to use the knowledge and skills that I have gained.  The need to create software has again come full circle.  Life has a way of cycling onto itself.