My introduction to beekeeping was back about 1990 when a retired farmer friend offered my son and I a beehive from his farm. We collected the hive and equipment and set off. We took some photos of the early days and cleaning up my office last week they resurfaced.
First thing was to put some foundation in some frames with the gadget that connected to our car battery.
We had a friend on the edge of town who offered to have the hive there bordering acres of flowering Paterson’s Curse - the perfect site for them. All we needed was some bees. A few days later another friend rang me and said a swarm had gathered on a tree in his back yard, so we set off to collect it.
Here are the pics from the time. Sam was 11/12 - he’s now 40.
