<< Introduction
Starting Beekeeping - considerations
First, consider nature’s needs
Flooding nature with hoards of honeybees is not natural. Be mindful of whether there is enough forage for your bees and nature. If there are rare Bumble bees close by, find another apiary site.
Other Issues
Stings Visit an association and get stung. I mean, a proper sting; are you averse to it or react severely?
Is there forage around where you live? I heard of one beekeeper who lived in an arable region whose bees enjoyed Oil Seed Rape, but had to be fed sugar the rest of the year.
I recommend you do a theory and practical course first. Find a friendly mentor. It is easy to be overwhelmed by bees; many people give up after their first year.
Can you find a suitable site? Siting an apiary.
Space: Hives can be packed in to a small space. With two hives, they can sit side by side with their entrances facing opposite directions. There must be enough space to dissemble a hive in to four piles. Enough space between hives equates with how much space you need to move around them with comfort. The area surrounding your apiary will determine your likelihood of needing to exterminate less than perfect colonies. If your neighbours are close, you may decide to dispatch any colony that has bees that follow you 2 metres after an inspection. If this is your criteria, you will probably have to re-queen or cull some colonies.
For example, my bees fly over a farmer’s track which is seven meters away. My storage box is four meters from my hives. If the bees hound me after my inspections so that I cannot remove my suit, they are complaining too much. If I have a spare queen and requeening does not make an immediate difference, I destroy the cantankerous colony. I cannot wait and see, It’s not a nice thing to do, but I cannot take risks. Normally, I can wander around in front of my hives with impunity, but on average, I have to dispatch a colony every year. Bees can be gentle until they are disturbed, but subsequently prone to sting for the rest of the day.
Starting with two colonies means one can save the other if things go wrong. But if you start with one hive, making a second colony in the first year is usually possible. If you have two colonies, you can compare one with the other and gain a good sense of how regular bees behave and how every colony is different. When Asian hornets become established, you will need a minimum of five hives or a share a site. Otherwise, prepare to feel sad.
Always have an empty Nuc hive on standby. They are great for housing a small colony or swarm.
Most people in the UK start by buying a nuc, a small colony containing at least three brood frames, one of the stores, and at least one drawn frame. Nucs are expensive, especially if you immediately kill the queen accidentally. A nuc should be ready by the end of June. Little colonies must work harder than large ones to collect enough stores for winter. In other countries like the USA, packages (a queen with a box of bees) are the norm.
You may want to go natural. I urge you to treat varroa in the autumn or the first time the levels rise. Thereafter, you will have a sense of how the bees manage varroa and whether you can control them using biological methods. If these methods are insufficient, you can let your bees die or treat them with substances like thyme derivatives.
It helps if you share beekeeping with your partner or a friend. Beekeeping is a lovely thing to do as a twosome. Two minds are better than one, and lifting becomes easy.
Have you the time? The advice is 30 minutes per hive per week. But there is a lot of fiddling to do, so it will likely take longer than you think.
Storage undercover. When using poly hives, minimal space is required; otherwise, a space to match your ambitions (which often grows).
I recommend using poly hives to future-proof your bees from global warming.
Join the BBKA for insurance and its journal. Beecraft is another excellent magazine.
Use a smock to begin with. If you want a complete suit and have the money, I recommend you do some future-proofing and buy a washable, hornet-proof, vented suit.
Keeping bees is expensive, at least at the outset, but it can be cheap, e.g. using a Top bar hive. Making your upright hives is possible, but precision wood cuts are required. Frames can be made from disused pallets.
BK 1.
