Plain Talk Beekeeping
Lower-energy Beekeeping: Making do with less
A small bee operation
A small bee operation is not necessarily a subpar bee operation. Time and again, when I was conversing with beekeepers, they would say something like, “I only have three colonies,” as though that demeaned their contribution to beekeeping. Yet, it does seem to be a bit true. Beekeepers sometime speak with reverence when referring to a beekeeper who is managing thousands of colonies. At the end of the day, nothing is wrong with either a large or small number of beehives. The issue will be in the management details.
Through the years, I have written and discussed the virtues of the beekeeper who intensively manages a small number of hives rather than minimally managing a larger number. In a weak effort to be funny, I have sometimes stated that, at my age, two hives were enough for me and even that was probably one too many.
At my lab
When I was still an active professor at Ohio State, my bee program routinely managed about 200 hives in about a dozen different bee yards. As the years passed, conditions changed. Positions were eliminated and over time, I let the colony count dwindle to about 60. Forty was my absolute minimum.
Constant labor shortages were the persistent reason that I let the colony count fall, and decades after my retirement, labor is still a persistent issue. Some things just do not change.
A “one-person” show
For many years now, I rarely have had any help in my apiary. I am a one-man operation. This experience is not unique to me. Many of you spend much of your time alone with your bees. I am no role model in this endeavor but I am stuck in this situation.
For the present, I am healthy and reasonably mobile, but I cannot ignore the reality of my age. I no longer flare off perfectly good energy. I try to take care of myself in the yard. I value my waning stamina and mete my remaining energy out in judicious increments.
What should I pick up?
Beekeepers are notorious for having bad backs. I want hand trucks everywhere and wheels on everything else. But in beekeeping, sooner or later, something must be manually moved. I have essentially become my departed father. In his advanced years, he had all kinds of gadgets and wands for helping him pick up the myriad things he dropped. Increasingly, that is where I am. If it does not need picking up, leave it there until it does.
Honey is heavy. Processing equipment and hive equipment are cumbersome and have their own weight issues. My friends are all wise to me and always have other issues to attend to when I ask for help. I’m actually teasing with that jab, but it is mostly true. I am very reticent to ask another to help me with a task that only a few years ago would have been a non-issue …
