A Beekeeper's New Year

First let me share our beekeeper's cocktail:  a chunk of honey comb, an ounce of honey liqueur, a squirt of lemon juice and champagne.  This is what we started the New Year's dinner with at my daughter's house last night:

I'm celebrating many things about beekeeping:

1.  That I am a beekeeper and have this marvelous opportunity to peek into the lives of fascinating insects and be a part of their growth and progress

2.  That my friend Gina and I are editing the GBA Newsletter together and are having a fabulous time - getting to know beekeepers across the state, sharing the ways people in Georgia manage their bees, and learning about putting together both a newsletter and a website for it.

3.  That my son-in-law, Jeff, and I have gotten to work the bees together, harvest honey together, and do various bee projects together for the last couple of years.

4.  That Julia, Noah, and I will continue to do hive inspections for the Metro club together at the Chastain Conservancy - I love anything I get to do with the two of them

5.  That Julia and I will be in charge of the Metro Atlanta Short Course in January 2014, giving us a big project to work on together all year

6.  That I have 1002 people who subscribe to this blog through Google and 539 people who "follow" this blog - all people who are interested in learning more about bees and beekeeping through whatever I choose to post

My New Year's resolutions about beekeeping:

1.  To clean up my side bars on this blog - I'd like to take off links that aren't so useful and add some that are.  If you know of a particularly good web site for beekeeping that I should link to, please let me know.  Don't send my blogs that only have one or two posts a year, but if you do know active, helpful websites that I haven't listed, please help me with this resolution.

2.  To continue natural beekeeping, even if I lose hives in the process and to stick to my guns about not using poison, chemicals, etc. in my bee hives.  My hives at Stonehurst were part of a UGA study and showed up with lots of chemical residue in spite of my not adding anything and using no foundation.  I need to research what chemicals they may use in the gardens at Stonehurst....or maybe the bees are bringing in poison from the Atlanta Botanical Garden where there are no weeds.

3.  To try to learn to make a good lotion from beeswax, something I have not been able to achieve in a way that makes me happy

4.  To finish reading some of the bee books that I've started but haven't finished.

5.  To do a better beekeeping management job in 2013 - I was behind and never did some of the things I should have done to be a good beekeeper in 2012 - this will be a different year.

Happy New Year to everyone - if you want to share your beekeeping resolutions, please do - hearing what others are focused on is always inspiring to me.