Who are these guys and what are they doing?

We're Bob Nelson and John Rodgers.  I'm a native Coloradan and he's from the other side of the puddle (that's a euphimism for: he's English, mate)  We started raising bees.  Was that enough of an answer for you?  Probably.  If not, then here's a bit of expansion.  John and I got into the beekeeping thing last year when he wondered if I'd be interested.  I pondered for all of about two seconds and said, "Sounds like a blast" or some such lameness.  In that two seconds, I was already thinking of how to make money off the honey.  John is slowly coming around to the idea (I'm the conservative, capitalist in this business partnership; he's slowly converting - yeah, right!). 

He handed me Sue Hubbell's A Book of Bees and I was fascinated.  Here's a middle-aged woman raising 100 hives pretty much by herself.  She had gotten up to several hundred but was slowly cutting back and making a decent living off of it.  We started doing more and more research and reading (I'll toss out a list of recommended material here shortly) and decided that going au natural was probably the best bet.  Our presiding thought is "What will work best for the bees that we may benefit?"  Rampant pesticide use inside and outside of beehives and a host of other common practices has wrecked the immune system of most commercially kept bees and many hobbyist kept bees.  So we're expirementing with what the FDA calls "natural": no chemicals added.  Our practices will be organic, but since we're doing this initially in a suburban setting, we can't guarantee that the bees won't bring something home.

Our hope is to build fitter and more resilient bees and get some darn good honey.  To note, neither John nor I are liberal hippie types.  I'm very conservative in my thought processes and John is a moderate.  However, we both have a deep love of nature and want to keep the bees around.

So stay tuned for more info on Colony Collapse Disorder and tips to help the bees.  Also, you'll probably see us find the rewards of getting stung...I think it helped my allergies a bit, but I forgot to take pictures...