Just wanted to say Hi and tell how we got started in beekeeping! Our interest started for two reasons - I have a friend who keeps bees and we have a wild honey bee colony in our walnut tree. I said once that keeping bees would be fun and my husband bought me a hive for Christmas! We started reading a lot and attending our local beekeeping meetings. On May 6, my dad noticed a swarm near our walnut tree. We cut the branch and shook them into my hive. We noticed bees still flying around a nearby cedar tree and found another swarm! We quickly assembled another hive and put the bees in! The next day, we found another swarm! We had to borrow hive parts from my friend/mentor and now we had 3 hives! On Saturday, my son came home from college and said he had driven though a cloud of bees at the walnut tree. We walked out to look and we sat on the driveway and watched the swarm form into a ball in a tree. This one was a bit high so we had to get out the backhoe. My son lifted my husband and I up in the scoop and we cut the branch and put the swarm into a bucket! We didn't want a fourth hive at this time so we gave the bees to my mentor for a split she was doing. Since that time, we have inspected the hives and found queens, eggs and larvae in each one. So, now we are bee keepers - just like that!!