Who doesn’t love great food? Over the past few years, more and more people have come to realize that the best food can be simple and can also be found close to home. Amateur chefs are being inspired by the availability of locally sourced ingredients to make their own breads, beers, cheeses, and more. Historically homemade foods that were surrendered to the supermarket industry are once again being created in our own kitchens. Some of the more adventurous among us have realized that the key ingredient in many of our favorite foods can also be produced at home.

The rebirth of our appreciation for fresh, healthy, and local food is changing not only how and where we source, prepare, and consume our food, but also our personal hobbies. More people are keeping chickens in their back yards to provide fresh eggs. There has been a resurgence in homebrewing and kitchen cheese-making. The story is the same for backyard beekeeping, but beehives are populating more than backyards these days. From the south lawn of the White House to the roof of the Driscoll hotel in Austin, what has been dubbed “urban beekeeping” has been on the rise in the past decade. In the United States, most cities have enough flowers to support this growing number. Urban areas are generally pesticide-free, and have a greater variety of flowers compared to monoculture farms. In addition, usually urban gardens are designed to bloom all year round, providing a constant food source for bees! Urban beekeeping is a fantastic way to reconnect with the natural world, even if you feel like you live far from it.

Here at Walker Honey Farm, we’re all about promoting Honey Bee health and the proliferation of fresh, healthy, local food. Keeping your own hive might sound like a recipe for angry neighbors, but it is surprisingly simple and safe. Your bees will travel roughly two miles from the hive collecting pollen. Most central Texas neighborhoods have plenty of flowers to keep your bees happy and dripping with honey, just like the ones that make our Central Texas Wildflower Honey. If you are willing to keep your bees satisfied and healthy you will be rewarded with enough honey to meet your own needs and to keep your friends supplied too. When done responsibly, keeping bees can be a rewarding way of reconnecting with nature and expanding your backyard ecosystem. The addition of healthy hives can also help offset those lost to Colony Collapse Disorder. For more information on starting your own colony contact your local beekeepers association. (http://www.centraltexasbeekeepers.org/).