About Me: Reyah Carlson
Honeybees have fascinated me since I was old enough to start reading. I remember my 1st grade teacher reading a
story about a beekeeper and his wife, who gave visiting children a lesson about honeybees along with a piece of
comb honey.
My mother took me to grocery store and she bought comb honey in a small wooden box. I remember marveling at the
work of art, and couldnt wait to dig into it..that was the BEE-ginning of it all.
I was off to the library and agriculture extension office to get books and pamphlets and anything else regarding
honeybees that I could get my hands on. Back in those days, the Sears Roebuck farm catalog sold beekeeping supplies
and bees. The years past slowly for the first grader who was now in 5th grade, still reading about and studying the
honeybees, at which point nothing could have made me happier than to have my own beehive.
It was Sunday afternoon in April 1970 when I saw the postman pull up to our house. I thought to myself " there
is no mail on Sunday, what is he doing here"? He came to the door and said he had a package for me, and there it
was, a 3lb package of Midnight Honeybees…a trademark name for a super gentle honeybee. Talk about a surprise!!!
The years had past and I had lost interest in taking care of bees, but I had never forgotten or totally given up
on my passion for them. In 1980 at age 22 I moved from California to New Milford, Connecticut, then to Vershire,
Vermont in 1988. My obsession for honeybees began to grow again, and became as strong as ever, and I was certainly
in a position to start keeping bees again, but this time I had ten hives.
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