Greetings to the members here.
I have a brood box and two supers and an outer cover that I found and in pretty sad shape (albeit in better condition than the rest of the brood boxes and supers present there) in a long abandoned bee yard that had been obviously decimated by our local bear population. After some replacement wood sections, sanding and painting, my brood box, supers and outer cover are filled with plastic frames that were salvaged from the same bee yard. (The ones that weren't chewed up or warped) They now sit neatly stacked on a platform of cinder blocks awaiting a few items such as an inner cover and bees next spring.
Beekeeping is something I have spent years reading about and considering, although having surplus honey would be a great additional thing, I more interested in the keeping of bees out of my own curiosity concerning bees themselves, my interest will more than likely never evolve beyond a hobby where I keep one to a couple of hives at most. I've retired from my full time job as a paramedic an retire from the Army guard in a few years, the abundance of free time on my hands leaves me with little excuse to delay doing this any longer. I'll spend the winter months reading more (providing that I have left anything to read) and picking up a bee suit, veil, smoker and the inner cover and bee feeder.
As far as a mentor, they are in very short supply here, there is one bee keeper locally who I have spoken with via phone once for a few minutes that seems like he has much going on, from what I understand, he's a commercial keeper and probably has little time for mentoring. I am located in the Southern California Mountains, thus, there aren't any clubs in the area and a call to the county agriculture department yielded no contacts for a mentor other than one county employee that has been very helpful over the phone. There are no inspectors and there is no registration and such where I live, thus, most of not all the information I will gather is confined to what is available in print, web and forums.
With this being said, I have no "cool" beekeeping stories to tell, I imagine I'll spend most of my time here lurking to absorb various threads.
Cheers!
Dennis