Had to go out and buy some honey this past week. After living for years with jars of it stashed in every corner of the house, it felt a bit strange.
Two years ago we had massive die-offs in our two backyard beehives.
One of my beekeeping mentors, Bud Watt — formerly of Noxubee County, now of Empire, Louisiana — ventured the foragers had gotten into some sort of agricultural poison and brought it back to the hive.
In the almost two decades we’ve had bees, I’ve learned new skills, harvested untold gallons of honey and formed new friendships.
But I’d taken on new pursuits and saw this as a sign and opportunity to close that chapter.
Then, on Father’s Day last year, Rita Boykin phoned to say a swarm of bees had been roaming about her neighborhood for several days and they were within sight in her backyard.
Honeybees often swarm in the spring. The queen and a sizable portion of the hive leave in search of more spacious digs. The remaining bees raise a new queen and carry on as before.
Sometimes the swarming bees have a difficult time finding a suitable home. Apparently such was the case here.
I grabbed a hive and box of beekeeping gear and headed for Sanders Mill Road.
In a garage behind their home, Eddie Boykin and his youngest son, Peyton, were working on a car they’ve been restoring.
By now it had started to rain.
Eddie pointed to a brown splotch in the middle of a large grassy field behind their house.
They were a sad, bedraggled looking lot. I set the hive box next to the patch of bees and they immediately started filing in. I think I heard a few of them say, “Thank you, kind sir.”
By the next morning the hive box was full of bees.
Over the summer they built up their numbers and made some honey.
It was nice having bees in the backyard again, but by fall I was ready to let it go.
Jamie and Jim Davidson, who have a been keeping bees for six years, said they would be happy to add the Father’s Day hive to their two.
The move went well and that was that, or so I thought.
That is until Dispatch managing Editor Zack Plair said his 15-year-old daughter, Julia, was really interested in honeybees. Could she come by and see our hives?
On a warm Sunday afternoon in late October, Julia and her dad met me in Jamie and Jim’s backyard.
We suited her up in a veil and bee suit, though it was unnecessary. That particular hive of bees has a gentle nature.
Julia pulled out frames covered with bees and dripping with honey. After she and her dad tasted the honey straight from the hive, the hook was set.
A couple days later Zack said they would be ordering bees and hive boxes.
When I told Jamie and Jim about the conversion of the young acolyte and her dad, they said, “Why don’t we give her the hive you gave us?”
And so one well-traveled hive of bees goes to Starkville, fittingly under the care of a young girl and her father.
“They’re ever so cute,” said Julia, a former spelling bee competitor. “I especially like going into the hive and seeing what they’re up to.”
“She’s obsessed with it,” Zack said about his daughter’s enthusiasm for her bees. “Anytime they’re buzzing around, she goes out and looks at them.”
Recently Julia saw her dad making a dish for dinner using store-bought honey.
“This will be the last year we will have to do that,” she told him.
Birney Imes ([email protected]) is the former publisher of The Dispatch.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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