I was taught early on that nothing in life is free. If you want something you have to work for it. My introduction to beekeeping started at an early age. I had a father, grandpa, and uncle to guide me. At times I wished that they did something other than keep bees. As a teenager, I rebelled. Getting stung was not fun. Beekeeping is a hard way to make a living. The hours are long, the summers are hot, and working in the honey house after school took the fun right out of it.
I have been invited to share some basic beekeeping thoughts with you. As many of you know, keeping bees can be challenging. So many changes have been made since I had my first bee yard many years ago.
One must understand that honey bees are often overbearing, boisterous, quarrelsome, and scolding. If one thinks they can tame a honey bee, they have “a rail off their fence” as Moses Quinby would say. New beekeepers face a learning curve with many failures just like more experienced beekeepers. No one knows everything about honey bees. We are all facing new challenges. The biggest change I have seen in my life has been the introduction of mites into the United States. Other challenges have been expanding urban development, the rapid change in the ways bees are managed and the introduction of sensors to determine the progress and health of a colony.
The editor of ABJ has challenged me to share some basic guidelines for 1-5-year beekeepers. I have known a few individuals that wanted to get into beekeeping because they thought it would be an easy way to get rich. The first bit of advice I can give you is, don’t think about getting rich. If you want a dependable source of honey, find a beekeeper selling honey, even if it seems a bit more expensive than the honey sold in your local grocery store.
My thoughts go back to the days when bees could be found in large numbers living in the wild. Anyone with a box could gather them up as swarms. In fact, several well-known beekeepers of past years started beekeeping by capturing a swarm. Bees still swarm but not in the numbers prior to the arrival of mites.
My second thought is that keeping bees should be fun. It is more enjoyable when you know something about honey bees well before you get your first colony. The reason to subscribe to this bee magazine is to learn something. Beekeepers come from all walks of life. Belonging to a bee club expands the opportunity to know more about other individuals keeping bees near where you live, and a chance to exchange ideas about how you are keeping bees.
There is more to keeping bees than many other hobbies. Honey bees are animals. They are not domesticated like dogs or cats. They are farm animals considered more like chickens, cows, and horses. Many HOAs have rules against keeping farm animals. Many towns and cities have zoning ordinances that control the number of hives one can keep on a property.
All of that, you may already know. Lets get back to the comment I made earlier about honey bees. If you keep bees, understand that the bees do what they do regardless of what you think you can make them do. The roles are reversed. You must adapt…
