posted
Does anyone in this community have experience with bee keeping?
I have a brooding(pun inteneded) desire to get envolved with it sometime in my life as a hobby. I have found tons of information on the net and even bought a book on bee keeping.
What I really want is some real live people that I can talk with that have experience, tips, stories etc.. You can only get so much from reading.
posted
My family did it for a while, but like Papa Moose says, ScottR is the guy to talk to. In the meantime, any questions, or just searching for people to talk to?
posted
I've never been stung, ever! Hooray for me!
Seriously, good luck with your endeavor, should you choose to keep the bees. May they bring you sweet success!
Posts: 1466 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
You'll need at least a half acre, and preferably more, of land off by itself. Anything less and you'll be spnding a lot of time with baking soda on your arm. But, the honey you get from the bees is not even comparable to anything you've ever had before. It's a bigger difference than taking some cheap, commericial bread that's been in the freezer for 6 months and comparing it to fresh, homemade loafs. Fresh honey from our hives is absolutley the best thing I have ever tasted in my life, it's absolutley amazing.
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My father-in-law and I kept beehives in our backyards (we both live in the suburbs); his hives, however, back up to a big field. I put mine in a strip of woods.
His hives fared much, much better.
Working on hives isn't hard, but you have to be diligent. If you decide to put hives on your own property, make sure that you point the opening of the hive away from human traffic (NOT toward your neighbor's house, for example.
The closer you are to the pollen the better. This isn't a hard and fast rule, though; bees have been known to forgo easy foraging for certain types of pollen. You just never know-- city hives can work out okay, I've heard, if there's a park within a 6 mile radius.
Beekeeping is pretty cheap, as a hobby, after your initial costs. I would not want to get into it full time though, but that's because I'm fairly lazy. We manage to produce about 120 lbs of honey a season, most of which we bottle and sell to the Made in Virginia store here in Fredericksburg. (In case anyone's in town, look for 'The Buzz Farm' label-- I didn't make up the name, but I DID write the marketing blurb. :-) )
If you have any more questions, ask away. If I can't answer 'em, I'll ask my father-in-law.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
There are two basic grades available for sale in Sri Lanka. One is medicinal grade - which is the equivalent of what you get in North America. It's called medicinal grade because it's commonly mixed with ayurvedic preparations to make them go down easier.
Other honey - normal honey? I don't know what it's called - is, oh, odd.
They don't get all the wax out, plus it can have a smoky flavor. Because it's often heated over a fire when they add sugar and water to extend it so they can make more money off it.
The one bottle of regular honey I've experienced was. . . gross.
I love honey - the real thing!
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I also posted a thread like this once, because I still want to get into beekeeping. My grandfather had bees all the years I was growing up and I once in awhile got to help him harvest honey. They were for our orchard. But alas, the old hives have fallen apart, the bees left (during the years I wasn't on the farm) and now I don't know how to get it started again.
At the Kansas State Fair this year, though, I did make some contact with the local beekeeping organization and talked to the local guru on that. He did say something about some disease/parasite (?) (I don't remember) that recently came into this country and affects all bees -- and that if you have hives, you will have to treat for this. I supposed that is what has made the price of honey jump so much in recent years.
posted
If you want to get into beekeeping, avoid the Animal Planet channel.
They have a special on Africanized honeybees ("killer bees") that will terrify you.
What's scary is that once the killers have taken over a hive, the entire hive will begin to exhibit the aggressive behavior, even the bees that are still European honeybees.
posted
My father has been in and out of beekeeping for probably 20 years. I've helped alot during that time...which has gotten me stung quite a bit.
My parent's recently moved to a rural area of NW Wisconsin and he has been having difficulty with the bears. So far the bears have won every year, destroying the beehives. He has been trying to develop some sort of bear-proof beehive system...so far no luck.
It is rather amazing how much honey you can generate from just a few hives. One downside to this is that when I was younger and helping my dad, I got so sick of being around honey that I couldn't stand to eat it anymore. The smell of honey when you have dozens of 5 gallon buckets full of it is so overwhelming it becomes nauseating.
Anyways, if you have any questions about beekeeping I can maybe answer them from my personal experience or find out the answers from my dad.
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When I was in New York I got some wonderful honey from Hawaii that was harvested in such a way that it was white and the consistency of butter. That is the best honey I've ever had. Posts: 4089 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Do you have any idea how cool it is that we actually have a resident bee keeper? (I've known forever that Scott R was our bee keeper, but just seeing the thread title just crystallized the thought.) I mean, how many places can you go and ask a bunch of virtual strangers about any topic and there's bound to be someone who is an expert, or has access to an expert?
During the winter, we check to make sure that the hives are battened down pretty well and that the entrance to the hive is blocked up (except for a one-inch opening); that takes about 15 minutes. (We have had notoriously little success in keeping hives alive over the last two winters though).
Summer, we may spend about an hour a week on each hive.
>>How long does it take to harvest one hive?
It depends. You have to get the frames out of the supers, get the bees off the frames, KEEP the bees off the frames, race away from the hives to where you're extracting them . . .
Then you have to cut the caps off the comb; then extract the honey out of the comb; then put the supers back. . .
We use a hand powered centrifugal extractor-- cheaper than the electric one, but if you're doing a number of hives, you better get help.
1 hive runs us about. . . mmm. . .dunno, an hour total? Figure 10-12 frames in each super, 2 frames in each extraction session, about one minute of whirling the frames around. . .
'Bout an hour, if you're organized.
>>Since I don't have enough land to put a hive on my own property, is it common to use other peoples land (with permission of course)?
Very common. Find a serious gardner. I suggest that it's much easier to tend your hive the closer you are to them, though.
>>Many sites recommend constructing your own brood chambers, supers etc.. Do you recommend it?
No. Those people are crazy. Why go through all that trouble when you can just buy the dern things? Check out your Trading-Post type paper; sometimes they've got good deals on beekeeping equipment. There are a number of beekeeping magazines that carry ads that allow you to order by mail or online.
posted
*shudder* My new coworker keeps bees and I actually enjoy honey enough to THINK about starting up a hive. Then I thought again. *shudder* I run flailing from bees.
I do like the feeling of doing something I never thought I would, though, so it is conceivable. *shudders again* Maybe.
For now, I think I'll stick to buying locally "grown" honey. Posts: 1777 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
I've only been stung once, and I think the bee that stung me just had bad aim, because it didn't hurt all that much, and I was able to scrape the stinger out fairly easily.
(BTW-- if you're stung, don't try to pull the stinger out. Take something with a thin, flat edge, and scrape it along your skin. A knife blade or a credit card work pretty well, I've heard. If you pull at the stinger, you may pop the poison sacs that trail the stinger, and force more poison into your skin. Bleh).
Caution and speed are the main things that keep me from getting stung. And calmness. I don't work without gloves, though I know some beekeepers who do. I tried it once, and it took me four times as long to check the hive because I was always shaking my hands free of the bees.
When you first get stung, not much is likely to happen, unless you are already allergic to bees. My father in law reports that the successive times he's been stung have been worse, but we've both heard that the longer you work with bees, and the more you get stung, the less the poison has an effect on you. I'd prefer not to have to find out, thank you very much.
When we fail to keep a hive through the winter, we fail spectacularly. All of the hives that have died have COMPLETELY died, leaving a barren hive. So, we generally order a queen + 50000 bees in the early spring.
>>When introducing new bees do you provide a comb already or have the bees make their own?
It's pretty good wisdom not to use comb from a previously failed colony. Whatever killed the bees from the failed colony may still be in there. Some states (there are a number of laws regarding beekeeping) require that hives that fail be burned, and the supers, hive bodies and so forth be scorched (not destroyed, just blackened a little) to prevent the disease from reoccuring.
Most frames that you order come with a base of wax so that the bees have to work less to get started. This is probably the best way to go when starting a hive-- the preformed bases let the bees get up and running much more quickly.
>>When you say you spend an hour a week per hive, does that mean you visit the hive once a week? or do you visit several times per week?
Once a week. Open the hive, check the brood chambers, the population of bees, check to see if there are any queen cells forming (indicating that the hive may be getting ready to swarm), check for drone population, check for sicknesses in the hive. . . that sort of thing. Not tough at all.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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