Welcome to My Blog: Random Thoughts from a Backyard Beekeeper.

Backyard beekeeper and Kansas sunflowers

Whether you are a beekeeper or have found this blog by hook or crook, I am glad you are here. Let me briefly introduce myself. My name is Rebecca O'Bea, pronounced "Oh Bee," an oddly appropriate name for a beekeeper. I'm a retired emergency room nurse, the proud spouse, and the daughter of retired military officers. I write in the cozy mystery genre, and the first book in my cozy series, Hive and Seek, The Backyard Beekeeping Mystery Series, is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.

I've held a deep admiration for honeybees(Apis mellifera) all of my life. My father, a B17 bomber pilot during WWII, taught high school science following his retirement from the USAF. He was a lifelong scholar who kept beehives. As a young girl growing up in Louisiana, I have memories of sitting on the front steps of my porch, watching my dad through the haze and smoke emerge with a chunk of honeycomb. The honey's taste and the comb's waxiness evoke nostalgic memories. (I still chew on honeycomb while extracting honey.) Little did I know my family would lose this member of the greatest generation before I graduated high school. Still, his love of nature and all its curiosity and most certainly his love of reading is a legacy that has remained with me throughout my life.

Naturally, living in a military town, I married an army officer, and as most military families do, we moved throughout his career until we retired at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Throughout, my long-suffering husband helped me drag along horses, dogs, and cats, and once an aquarium of my son's fish. Editors note: A lot of sloshing was happening, but they managed to survive. Phew!

Our final duty station here in Kansas allowed us to purchase a small farm acreage for my menagerie of animals, and here we remain. The son is grown with a family of his own, and the aquarium is long gone, but along with the horses, we've added honeybees and chickens.

About now, you may be saying, blah, blah, blah. Who cares about all of this background information? If you are still with me thus far and are interested in reading my stories, you will probably recognize many of my life experiences in the pages of my stories. Hive and Seek follows the adventures of a small-town Kansas beekeeper who stumbles across a dead body amongst her beehives and becomes a suspect. She resolves to solve the crime in the spirit of all amateur sleuths found in the pages of your favorite mystery.

I am working hard on my second installment in the series, Seek and Sabotage, which will be available for pre-order soon!

You may find yourself between the pages of one of my novels!

Until then, please follow me on Facebook and Instagram. The links are provided at the bottom of the page. If you want to get in touch, please sign up on the Contact form.