I'm Chip Euliss from North Dakota. Chip is a nickname since before I was born; my real name is Ned. I'm 63 years old and I retired from a Federal Research Biologist position a little over a year ago. My training is in wetland/wildlife issues and that was the focus of most of my research. Over the years, my interests shifted to the various ecosystem services that our contemporary landscape provides and how land use shifts affects the delivery of ecosystem services to humans. For those unfamiliar with the term, an ecosystem service is basically something that humans need and get from our landscapes. There are many different types of ecosystem services but things like habitat provisioning for wildlife, flood control, climate mitigation and even pollination services are examples. In the later parts of my career, I worked pollination services for honey and native bees into my research program. The work continues with folks I trained and the focus is still the same; quantifying the change in diverse ecosystem services over time and under proposed land use change scenarios. I'm still involved with a couple of graduate students but hope to get them finished up within the year. My interest in bees started years ago when a swarm moved into one of my wife's bluebird boxes. I hived them up and have been keeping bees ever since. From 1 hive 15 years ago to 700 last year. My plan was to build a small bee business that would give me something to keep me busy about half-time when I retired. I'm afraid I failed miserably because I now have too many bees to keep a comfortable schedule. My plan is to sell most of my bees in a year to give me more time to goof off. I hope to be at 200 hives in about a year; that should be a comfortable number to keep me busy. I also like to fish and hope to do even more when I reduce the size of my apiary.
So there you have my story. Poor fellow who wanted a few bees to play with when he retired but wound up with too many for the comfortable lifestyle he planned! It's always good to have a plan, but they sometimes spin off in an unexpected direction.
I look forward to hearing about everyone's interactions with their bees!
Chip