Am I still a beekeeper?

Last year I gave my blog a new title, Chronicles of a Beekeeper Wife. I anticipated someone trying to correct me by stating, “Shouldn’t that be The Beekeeper’s Wife?” To which I would answer, “No. I am a beekeeper, and I am a wife, and this blog is about my experiences beekeeping alongside my husband, not just as a bystander watching her husband as he keeps bees”.

New label for our 1lb jar of Crystallized Honey

Well fast-forward seventeen months from that title creation, and I have to wonder if it is now wrong. Since receiving my life threatening bee sting last July, I am no longer “working” directly with the bees. Instead I play a different role, one of behind the scenes. I keep our website current. I post on our Facebook page. I do the bookkeeping for our beekeeping business (now say that ten times really fast). I facilitate new label designs, work with printers on quotes, and I help to bottle, label and sell our honey etc.

But frankly, I miss working with the bees.

This spring, every couple of weeks there would be two or three less hives in our backyard, as Scott found new apiary sites to bring our colonies to. Some went back to the yard where we had the bear attack last year. We were told that someone in the community shot the bear (poor bear), so perhaps these hives will be left alone this year. Then a few more were added to our site nine miles south of here, and then four more were brought to Tod’s yard just down the road. We currently only have two hives left in our backyard. Thus, last Saturday I hung laundry, worked in the garden, and not one honeybee bothered me. Last year I couldn’t move two feet without being dive-bombed by a worker bee (literally hundreds of thousands of them flying around). Unfortunately they weren’t always happy to bump into me, and I would get stung just hanging out in the garden. Which was OK, until my bee sting reactions went in the opposite direction than what a beekeeper would want.  

Even though I want very much to get stung again, and again and again—with hopes of building up my immunity; the fact of the matter is that the doctors do not know how my body is going to handle my next sting, since the last one had my breathing airway closing up. And since we just don’t happen to have a couple thousand dollars sitting around to cover my next ER visit (It took ten months to pay off last years little emergency!) we wait to reunite me to bee stings.

Therefore I ask you,

“If I am still involved in planning our beeyard happenings with my husband, and if we still talk shop about beekeeping, and if I’m still his partner in extracting ours and others honey, and if we still work the farmers market together selling our honey, and educating others about beekeeping . . . 

does my blog title Chronicles of a Beekeeper Wife still fit? Am I still a beekeeper, even though I’m not hands-on working the bees?