# How I Got Into Bees

*Post 1 of 29 in the AZ Hive series*

The honest answer is “a high school friend, forty years, and a swarm that showed up at the right moment.”

I grew up in Pennsylvania, served in the Air Force, and have spent most of my life as a jack-of-some-trades — fishing, hunting, photography, woodworking, computers. Married 38 years, two daughters. Beekeeping was nowhere on the list.

But back in high school I had a friend who kept bees, and we’d talk about it. A lot. The idea stuck somewhere in the back of my head and just sat there. For four decades.

Then March 17, 2020, happened. Like a lot of people, I got sent home to work remotely with about a day’s notice. I had time on my hands and a workshop.

Two months later — May 6, 2020 — my son-in-law came home from work with a swarm.

That was it. The forty-year-old idea finally had a reason to exist. Within a few days we had a Langstroth deep and cheap jackets from Tractor Supply, and a much steeper learning curve than either of us expected.

Because of the pandemic, there were no club meetings to attend, so I read everything I could find and watched a small library of YouTube videos. By the end of that first summer I had two hives, a swarm trap, a homemade vented hive bottom, and a growing suspicion that the standard Langstroth wasn’t going to be my long-term answer.

That’s where this story starts to get interesting.

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**Next:** *From a Swarm to Our First Langstroth* — what we did in the first 48 hours, and the rookie mistake I’m still a little embarrassed about.