This is a work in progress….., but here is the short of it. I began beekeeping on a whim in 2000 with 3 hive purchased at an auction, then 4 more at an action a few weeks later. I was hooked! Each year the number of hives grew and I became more and more interested in the hobby. Before I knew it I was not only producing honey, but raising queens, serving in the local beekeeping association, and even giving presentations at the county fair. So now it is 2006 and I have nearly 100 hives and run some 140+ mating nucs for raising queens. I have invested a fair bit of money and time to learn Instrumental Insemination of queens and am trying to build a good population of New World Carniolan breeder queens. It is basically a commercial operation, but is not big enough yet to live on (I almost broke even last year 
. It’s sort of a catch-22, with a day job I don’t have time to manage any more bees, but without the day job I don’t have any income to pay the bills or support a family. So for now I’m officially a sideliner, somewhere between a hobbiest and a beekeeper who makes a living on beekeeping alone. -Tim Arheit, Honey Run Apiaries
