Our Story

So, let our adventure begin...our beekeeping adventure that is. 

In 2010 my brother Drew, who at that time was living in Indianapolis, invited Steve and I to a cookout at his home. Drew had been introduced to beekeeping when he worked at the North Park Nature Center in Chicago.  When he returned to Central Indiana, he set up a couple hives in his backyard. Each season he would host spinning parties and cookouts, which consisted of inviting friends and their children along with anyone who had expressed an interest in beekeeping. My own kids had attended several of these spinning parties, but Steve and I had not. Well, the cookout appealed to me, but Steve being a chef, was more interested in the bees & spinning of honey, and the beer!  Well needless to say, I saw that look, the look of complete fascination!  My first thought was oh no! He likes this way too much, he is going to think that he wants to become a Beek! I’d better think quick of every reason why we cannot do this! And then it happened! He declared that he wanted to be a beekeeper! I remember saying, oh no, we were there to help, eat and leave. Well two hives have grown to 25 and he is currently working on 25 more. 

As a chef, Steve knows the importance of how the world needs bees. Currently more than 80 agricultural crops are pollinated by honeybees and a third of your food that you consume is touched by a bee.  On top of that honey is the perfect food!  Beekeeping is a fun hobby and I enjoy spending the time with my “hunny” Steve!

 -Elizabeth

Or maybe it happened this way….

Growing up I had always had an interest in honeybees. On trips to Florida, I always wanted to bypass Stucky’s and go to Nickerson Farms and see their observation hives which intrigued me.   I would see the hives scattered in the orange groves and a trip was not complete without a stop at one of the roadside honey-stands. And during our many summer trips to Wawasee I would see the hives dotting the fields of many of the Amish and traditional farms of Northern Indiana.

Later in life after I began working in my culinary career, I had the opportunity to study at Anne Willan’s École de Cuisine La Varenne at Château du Feÿ in Burgundy, France. One day on a walk around the grounds, I remember hearing the buzz of the bees as they collected pollen bringing nectar from the French countryside, where I followed them back to their apiary and observed their comings and goings, kind of like O’Hare on steroids. 

But I never had the opportunity to really get in a hive and interact with the super organism that the honeybee colony is. At the cookout that my wife mentioned above, I got the opportunity to see how the smoke from a beekeeper’ smoker calms the bees which allowed me to take a closer look in the hive. Pulling out the frames, we scraped off the wax capping’s that the bees use to seal the hexagon cells, this is where the bees store honey for future use in the hive. I was mesmerized the way the extractors work by centrifugal force. A drum or container holds a frame basket which spins, flinging the honey out. With this method the wax comb stays intact within the frame and can be reused by the bees.

Now at this point our story diverges as I remember Elizabeth asking me if I would like to get a beehive on the way home. No matter which story you choose to believe, one hive became two before we even got the bees. And this is my story, and I am sticking to it!  For the last few years, we have normally kept between 15 to 20 hives, so the adventure continues….

-Steve