So You Want to Be a Beekeeper

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My friend Wendy is thinking about keeping bees. So are my friends Heidi and Anne. So is my friend Liz. So is practically everyone I know. Frankly, every day people ask me how they can start keeping bees.  Perhaps it’s time I compiled these details in a single spot.

Almost everyone I know is drawn to beekeeping because they want honey. That’s what enticed me, too. But, after only a little while, honey becomes simply a reward for doing a good job at managing the hive…honey is the celebratory by-product of an entire experience. The bees—and the experience of observing, smelling, hearing, and feeling the colony as it lives and works and makes decisions—keep us…not the honey. And you should know this: You won’t harvest honey the first year. You may not harvest honey the second year.

So, yes, I know you want some honey, Reader.

I know you also want to improve the world. And keeping bees will do that.

What you may not yet know is that keeping bees will change you—it will change the way you think and the way you live and the way you feel.  I can almost guarantee it.

Here are some questions to consider as you embark. Your answers will determine how you’ll begin your adventure:

  1. Why do you want to keep bees?
  2. Yes, I know you want honey…but how much honey will satisfy you? Do you plan to sell your honey? Or do you need only enough for you and your family and perhaps a bit to give to friends.
  3. Where will you keep your hives (it’s best to begin with two hives…for reasons I’ll go into later)? How much room do you have for them? In other words…do you have access to a rooftop or a yard or a farm? Are your neighbors nearby, and do you have good relationships with them? Do children play in your yard?
  4. Bees do best in sun. They like to face East or South or Southeast. So, as you look around for a spot, keep those factors in mind.
  5. I like to watch my bees fly. You’ll probably want to watch yours, too. Keep that in mind as you think of a location, too.
  6. If there’s no water source nearby, can you provide a dependable source of water (by way of a birdbath or a water bowl)?
  7. How much time can you devote to your bees each week? An hour? Two?
  8. How much money are you prepared to spend? And if you don’t have $200-$300 for start up, are you handy with tools?

I’m too sleepy to write any more (I LOVE daylight savings time, but I’m still sleepy this morning) and you would get too bored with my suggestions right now, so…in tomorrow’s post, after you’ve thought about these questions for a bit, I’ll suggest ways to get started.

We’ll talk about ways to acquire your bees (packages, nucs, swarms, cut outs, splits) and which type of hive is best suited to your situation (Langstroth or top-bar hives…or variations on each).

Oh, and read. Read, read, read. Beekeepers are smart. Seriously. Begin with The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Beekeeping.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sublime: So Beautiful It’s Terrifying

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Notes on a hive body

Yesterday was awesome! The weather got so nice that I could inspect all the bees in my care.

All the living hives are doing well. All the queens are laying, all the hives have stores and brood…which means they soon should be bursting at the seams.

One hive in particular KNOCKED MY SOCKS OFF. It’s the hive that lives at Simon and Patti’s place…one of the Zia Queen Bee hives. Simon named it the Queen Elizabeth hive. Probably because he’s from England.

So, the QE hive was going GANGBUSTERS. Bees are everywhere. Tons of brood on almost every frame. Drone brood, too. There were so many bees that it felt sublime…it was so beautiful that it frightened me a bit!

I’m sure this hive felt so squeezed for space that they’re planning a swarm…none of the other hives I saw have any drone brood. In other words, this hive is preparing to make a new queen…but they’ll need some drones around to mate with her, so they’re preparing the drone brood first.

I doubled their space and opened the brood nest. Both of which should make them feel as if they have more room.

 

Made by Hand: The Beekeeper

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My friend Heather posted this video on her Facebook page yesterday.

I have two favorite parts:

  1. I like how Megan Paska, the beekeeper in the piece, uses twine to light her smoker. I swear, Reader, keeping that smoker alive is one of my greatest challenges. So, I’ve decided to throw a big ball of twine into my bag to use in my smoker.
  2. I love how she simply slices off a little bit of comb from the bar. I don’t know why it’s never occurred to me to simply harvest a hunk of honey at a time and put it in a clean jar right there on site. I don’t know why I think things have to be so dang complicated.

My least favorite part: the fact that posting the video is so laborious. It’s a pain because it’s not from YouTube. So, I’m just gonna link to it here. Sorry.

 

Bee Stewards Are Not Dullards

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At the stove

I get to hang out with some real characters. Dull people don’t usually want to keep bees. The people who want to keep bees are either already very interesting or they’re about to become that way.

Yesterday, Murphy the dog and I drove up to Wilmington, Ohio to scout out a place for bees on a farm there. The farm belongs to my diabetes doctor and her radiologist husband.

When I arrived, Mark and Barbara were boiling maple syrup they collect from the trees in their woods. I can’t tell you how elaborate the tapping and collection set up. Mark met me at my car and walked me through the woods until we found Barbara, dressed in Carhartt coveralls and a stocking cap,  ladling thin but bubbling syrup at a wood-fired stove.

When you first meet your doctors, you have no idea that this is what they do on some sunny, chilly Tuesdays. It makes me like them even more.

I have the greatest doctors.

Ladling maple syrup

It’s Happening in Cincinnati’s East End

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Meet Joe Cocoran. Joe is the energy and the vision behind the East End Veteran’s Memorial Garden on Strader Street (off of Eastern Avenue in Cincinnati and within a stone’s throw of the Ohio River).

Joe constantly talks in terms of “we,” so I know there are others involved in making this spot of the East End exciting, and I’m eager to meet them as spring and summer bring more and more color to the garden.

Joe Cocoran at the East End Veteran's Memorial Garden

You know how a place feels just before it becomes sort of “the place” in a city? That’s the way the East End feels to me right now. There are good vibes. The neighbors are painting their houses bright colors—that’s a great sign, isn’t it? Joe and his friends are creating an urban oasis. Joe can’t stop himself. He has ideas. And then those ideas happen. Amazing.

We plan to introduce a couple of top-bar hives full of bees to the emerging gardens and orchards there. This is gonna be downright interesting.

And while you’re in the neighborhood checking out the community garden, walk over to Eli’s BBQ…it abuts the community garden. Places like Eli’s build communities. And there is no better BBQ in Cincinnati. Trust me on this.

Eli's BBQ on Eastern Avenue (AKA Riverside Drive)

 

 

On the Construction of Bob’s Top-Bar Hives

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Kim and Bob joined us for pizza last night, but before we headed out we headed down into their basement where Bob keeps his shop. We wanted to see the progress on his top-bar hives. Well, they’re as good as finished…and, I must admit, they’re really wonderful.

Bob found some plans online that he liked and built two hives from scrap lumber (I’ll ask him for the site address so I can link it here). I don’t think these took him long to build, but then, he’s sort of a professional at these things. It would probably take me an eternity. And much aggravation. But, as you can see here, it doesn’t seem to have challenged Bob all that much.

Bob: architect and bee steward

Bob plans on painting the hives (I told you he’s sort of particular) because the material he used wasn’t designed for holding up outside. They’re gonna be green…the color of their leftover house paint…which is two gorgeous shades of green. I’ll post a picture of the finished hives when we introduce the bees to it, okay? But this is what it looks like right now:

Bob's almost-finished KTBH with observation window

Low-Down and Uppity. But We Get Along Great.

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Kim and Bob want to add another hive to their apiary. They have two seriously strong hives already. They’re  hooked on keeping bees, and they want to expand. This year, we decided to add a top-bar hive to their mix.

Bob is an architect. And I mean to say he’s perhaps beyond an architect. He’s a big-time architect. Big time.

Last week I alerted him that it’s time to begin thinking of building a top-bar hive (from here on out referred to as a KTBH…for Kenya Top Bar Hive). But, I told him, we need to build a KTBH that includes a window so we can watch the bees without disturbing them. Also, TwoHoneys may be installing a couple of KTHBs at the East End Veterans’ Memorial Community Garden this year, and I’d like those to have windows, too. The less often we disturb the hives (and the gardeners!) in a community garden, the better.

Bob wanted specifications: “Link?” he wrote. (Bob communicates in single-word emails, so this endeavor was not without its challenges).

But KTBHs are known for their lack of standardization. I responded in my usual eloquent way and included this image with a rough idea of its dimensions.  Which I’m sure cracked him up. Bob’s sort of into, you know, “specifications,” a word rooted in “specific.” I think more in terms of loose ideas.

Bob was silent for a while, and then he sent me an email with this link and wrote, “This is acceptable.”

I wrote back that his plan should work but that I thought the hive was a bit too fancy for my tastes.

He responded, “I’m an architect, not a junk dealer.”

See?! That’s what people actually think of my wonderful top bar hives! Which I absolutely love. Don’t you just love that old tin roof, Reader? I do.

I told Bob he was uppity.

Yesterday, Kim text me to say that Bob was already in full construction mode and that if I wanted to be sure things met with my standards, I’d better get over there soon.

Bob emailed me later in the day to say that he’d made not one but two KTBHs.

I’ll head over there today to see what wonderful creations have emerged. Don’t worry, Reader, I’ll supply you with pictures.

 

Don’t Tell the Bees It’s Still February

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The weather this week is unbelievably mild. I don’t know what to make of the non-winter we’ve had. It’s probably the end of the world, but it sure feels good.

I fed all the hives under my care yesterday, and they were all beautifully active. However, the colonies with the most enthusiasm live in the Foster’s yard. Interestingly, these hives limped along more than others last season…before winter, we beefed them up by combining a number of our weakest hives, and now they’re going gangbusters and hauling in pollen by the bucketful.

Both Simon and I were astounded to see them so active. When I first spotted them, I thought they were gonna swarm right away. Perhaps I should give them more room soon. I’m sure this weather is messing with our usual timing.

(I love the sound of all the leaves crunching. Odd that you never hear that stuff until the video is uploaded and then it’s deafening.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLZEsnbYIMI&list=UUeiIt_hbhDt0bO52Xl3a91w&index=1&feature=plcp

 

First Bee Order for 2012—DONE!

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Yesterday I placed what is probably the first of my 2012 bee orders. I ordered 20 packages (each package comes with its own queen). For a number of years, I’ve order my bees through Dave Heilman of Ohio Honey Farm, and I’ve had good luck with them…each spring, Dave drives a big truck to Georgia and then, as he drives back to his place in Wooster, Ohio, he drops the packages off to his customers. This first call of the season to Dave always brightens my day. Not only is he a nice guy and we get to talk a little bit about bees, but it’s a sign that winter is blowing out. Things start perking.

So long as the weather holds up, we can expect to receive our bees on Saturday, April 14th.

Which means there’ll be a lot of commotion that day. And the next. I can hardly wait.

Now, some of you know that I’m trying to build a sustainable apiary of local bees and local survivor queens, so eventually I’ll not need to order packages of bees from elsewhere. But it’s slow going. This year I plan to raise local queens. And I’ve ordered a few queens with good reputations (from Zia Queen Bees in New Mexico and from Russell Apiaries in Mississippi) from which I hope to eventually raise more queens. We’ll see how it goes.

(As I type this, I hear a mouse eating something in my cabinet. It sounds as if an entire family of mice is eating through the entire cabinet and all its contents. And the cat curled up here is useless.)

Deb’s uncle Doyle wants me to supply him right this minute with queens from my apiary. I asked him to try holding his horses until June.

Below is a picture of my very first package of bees: