Thinking about beekeeping...

[Pam in CT]

... that is, pretty much, it. 

Looking for folks who do, or have tried, this.  For how long? What did it take to get started? How much time once you got started? How much land do you have to work with? Are your neighbors' yards good pollinators? What's your survival over the winter record? Do you have a specific strategy to keep everblooming stuff going throughout spring/summer/fall, or do you supplementally feed, or are your bees free range? What other questions should I ask?

We have a 2.7 acre lot, but only ~1.5 is cleared.  My neighbors in all directions are similarly wooded. Only one of them has sufficient landscaping / gardening to be of much use as supplemental pollination. I have a lot of flowering trees and shrubs that I have chosen over the years so as to stagger the bloom times, so I pretty much have *something* blooming from forsythia season (fading, now) through to late hydrangeas and asters  (late September). But I don't have a sense of how *much* I need, or how feasible it is to depend on supplemental feeding.

I do aspire, some day in the AfterTimes, to get back to being able to travel for 1-2 weeks at a time, and I don't want bees to hold me back. (Mr Pam in CT has become a COVID chicken farmer, but our neighbor is delighted to keep an eye on them in return for the eggs.)

[bibiche]

You might also want to have a look at recent research regarding native bees and how honey bees outcompete them. 

[Indigo Blue]

Oh wow. Awesome that you want to do that! I have a friend who is a master beekeeper (one of the very few left in our state). I don’t have good advice for you, really. I do know that they sometimes struggle with subsidized farmers whose land is adjacent to theirs. If the farmers spray their fields during the day when bees are pollinating, it could cause damage. I often wonder about the level of pesticides that make it into the honey.

My friend has retired from public service   and now keeps bees full time. His wife (my good friend) makes candles, lotion cups, balm, and much more. They sell at local markets and do very well. They sometimes have educational seminars at our library and field trips to their farm for schools. 
 

Fun fact: They went out of town once and we took care of their animals. I got stung by a stray bee that got stuck in my hair. In the head. I don’t think I’ll ever convince my husband how painful it was.

They love what they do and are very busy. 

[Terabith]

I know nothing about beekeeping, but I have a cute story about it to share.  

I have a friend with a five year old, and said friend is trying to get into beekeeping.  Both he and his five year old have adorable beekeeping outfits.  They went to a mutual friend's house and collected a swarm in a hive and DROVE IT HOME IN THEIR CAR, with the five year old carefully listening to make sure the bees stayed in their hive mid transport.  Unfortunately, the swarm decided they didn't care for the hive once they got to the yard and vacated the premises.  Mutual friend had another swarm in a tree, so my friend and his five year old went over to try and collect it.  They tried to get the hive out of the tree it was in by throwing baseballs at it, shooting arrows, and aiming the pressure washer.  No dice.  

I am not brave enough to be a beekeeper.  

[Spy Car]

🍿

I love bees and enjoy putting flowering plants in the garden I know they are sure to enjoy. Right now they are going crazy on my Pride of Madeira and native sages.

Never kept a hive...other than not disturbing a hive that swarmed and took residence for a few years in an old dog house I had stored out in the "way back."

Done a lot of "armchair" beekeeping. Debated in my mind about "top bar" (aka Kenyan) style hives vs Langstroth hives (the typical box hives that commercial beekeepers chose). And we agreed to shelter some hives for beekeeping friends during Covid (but that didn't happen).

Will read with interest.

Bill

[Carrie12345]

We went as far as getting a catalog for bee keeping equipment and identifying a bee keeping class. 🙂

Love the concept, and would like to do it someday. We just weren’t able to commit the time and money when we were most excited about it, lol.

We found that classes and/or meetings were being held at a relatively nearby college campus that focuses on environmental studies, at our county’s environmental education center, and at unspecified locations through an area beekeeper’s association.

[Indigo Blue]

12 minutes ago, Terabith said:

I know nothing about beekeeping, but I have a cute story about it to share.  

I have a friend with a five year old, and said friend is trying to get into beekeeping.  Both he and his five year old have adorable beekeeping outfits.  They went to a mutual friend's house and collected a swarm in a hive and DROVE IT HOME IN THEIR CAR, with the five year old carefully listening to make sure the bees stayed in their hive mid transport.  Unfortunately, the swarm decided they didn't care for the hive once they got to the yard and vacated the premises.  Mutual friend had another swarm in a tree, so my friend and his five year old went over to try and collect it.  They tried to get the hive out of the tree it was in by throwing baseballs at it, shooting arrows, and aiming the pressure washer.  No dice.  

I am not brave enough to be a beekeeper.  

All the what if’s in my head right now...

Especially being rear ended or getting into a bad accident with a bee hive in your car. 

Not to hijack the thread.....sorry. 

[Ottakee]

I think this is a great idea .  We had a master beekeeper at our community garden meeting Saturday.  I learned so much from her in just 10 minutes....and I learned that I know almost nothing about beekeeping.

[HS Mom in NC]

Our local [county] extension office offered a taxpayer funded overview class that taught the basics.  There was a 2 or 3 day long detailed class called Bee Keeping School people could take for $100ish. Maybe there's something like that in your area.

Edited April 21, 2021 by Homeschool Mom in AZ

[Katy]

I know nothing about it.  If you start a YouTube channel about it I’ll subscribe because I’m interested too.

I’ve heard honeybees don’t compete much with native pollinators because they rarely go for the same plants. Native bees prefer plants native to the Americas like corn, beans, tomatoes, and peppers.  Honey bees prefer plants native to Europe & Asia. I don’t remember where I heard this or if it’s credible. I think maybe it was a gardening blog or YouTube channel wondering why their tomatoes & peppers did poorly even with several honeybee hives & came to the conclusion they weren’t encouraging the right kind of bees. 

[wathe]

My only beekeeping story is of treating a beekeeper for severe anaphylaxis to bee stings.  She was advised that she might want to consider a new hobby.

[bibiche]

16 minutes ago, Katy said:

I know nothing about it.  If you start a YouTube channel about it I’ll subscribe because I’m interested too.

I’ve heard honeybees don’t compete much with native pollinators because they rarely go for the same plants. Native bees prefer plants native to the Americas like corn, beans, tomatoes, and peppers.  Honey bees prefer plants native to Europe & Asia. I don’t remember where I heard this or if it’s credible. I think maybe it was a gardening blog or YouTube channel wondering why their tomatoes & peppers did poorly even with several honeybee hives & came to the conclusion they weren’t encouraging the right kind of bees. 

I don’t think it’s as straightforward as that. I was actually just attending a lecture addressing this.  I don’t have time to look for links, but here’s a brief article that should provide some or at least some jumping off points. The lecture I attended also mentioned that there is the concern that honey bees can spread disease to native bees, further jeopardizing native bee populations.

https://neighborhoodgreening.org/saving-our-bees-by-heather-holm/

ETA Sorry to harsh your mellow, @Pam in CT, but it’s Earth Day, so I couldn’t let it go by without saying something!! 😉

Edited April 21, 2021 by bibiche

[Laura Corin]

No experience,  but I present to you - with language warning

 

[Spy Car]

43 minutes ago, kand said:

We are unwitting keepers of mason bees as I keep finding them nesting in random places, so I’m planning on picking up a mason bee house to give them some more proper places to live that aren’t our electric sockets 😬. I don’t know if mason bees are native to your area. I like them because they almost never sting  and are really great pollinators. My understanding is that they are even better pollinators than honeybees. Where I am, I expect just putting out the house will be enough to invite more of them, but there are also programs around where you get them by mail and then at the end of the season you send all the little tubes back with bees in them. We also have a local nursery that rents them out for the season. I guess the downside is that it may not be a great hobby for someone who’s looking to spend more time on it. It may be simpler than what you’re looking for, but that’s why it works for me 😁. 

A dozen years back (or so) I learned of mason bees and had a leftover scrap from a cedar post project, so I drilled a bunch of holes to the best understanding of the size and depth they prefer and tucked it way in a rose arbor.

Sadly, no mason bees ever took occupancy.

Bill

[Sharpie]

My ds got into bee keeping and had bees for around 7 years.  He was young when he started....less than 10 yrs old.  He took an online course from Penn State and we had an adult friend who guided him/us.   We have plenty of acres for them to roam (over 100) with neighboring fields/woods.  You could start off with one hive as I suspect you have enough food for a hive to survive summer.   It's a fun hobby in my opinion and while my ds is much more knowledgeable than myself, I learned a lot.  We started with nucs instead of a queen and a handful of workers. 

Yes, we transported the nucs in our vehicle home.  Air conditioning on full blast and we slipped the nuc boxes in mesh laundry bags to try and contain strays.  🙂  There were a few that were loose in the vehicle but the cold air helped keep them calm.  We picked them up in the evening and got up super early to remove them from the mesh laundry bags into their hive boxes. 

My ds captured 2 or 3 swarms over the years and currently we have one hive left from a swarm.  Lemon grass oil helps attract them if you have an empty nuc box or hive box.  The queen determines if they'll stay or not. 

My ds would check the hives periodically for mites and he  treated for mites per the recommendations from Penn State.  We did get special honey type food, sorry can't remember the exact details, that he put in the fall to help them winter.  We never harvested all of the honey supers, leaving at least one or two for the bees to eat over winter. 

We did not have great success overwintering them.  It was very hit or miss and if you ask 10 beekeepers the secret to overwinter, you'll get 12 different answers. 😉  There is a beekeeper in the area whose livelihood comes from beekeeping and he keeps his bees in a temperature controlled building over winter.  Ours remained outside, tucked in a spot that protected them from the wind but we never wrapped them.  If you wrap them and condensation forms & drips on the bees, they die.  If they get too cold, they die.  If they run out of food, they die.  One year we had a very (!) late warm snap and 2 of the hives left during that very warm spell. 

The most amount of work, in my opinion, came upon harvest time.  We spun the frames out and filtered the raw honey into jars.  My kitchen was a sticky mess for days.  It would have been easier not to filter them but I personally didn't want all the little bits of wax/bee pieces that get in.  We never heated it and just put it into jars as raw honey. 

My ds eventually lost interest and it wasn't a super cheap hobby to get into.  Now my dh is taking over since my ds is in college. 

 

 

[Pam in CT]

re outcompeting the native bees

3 hours ago, bibiche said:

You might also want to have a look at recent research regarding native bees and how honey bees outcompete them. 

 

2 hours ago, bibiche said:

I don’t think it’s as straightforward as that. I was actually just attending a lecture addressing this.  I don’t have time to look for links, but here’s a brief article that should provide some or at least some jumping off points. The lecture I attended also mentioned that there is the concern that honey bees can spread disease to native bees, further jeopardizing native bee populations.

https://neighborhoodgreening.org/saving-our-bees-by-heather-holm/

ETA Sorry to harsh your mellow, @Pam in CT, but it’s Earth Day, so I couldn’t let it go by without saying something!! 😉

bibiche, you are MAKING ME VERY SAD because it is the PEACH TREES THAT YOU EXHORTED ME TO PUT IN last fall, that has brought me to this idea.  Well, and also that the only pole beans that actually produced any beans last year were the ones that happened to be right next to my nepeta, and I finally worked out the connection there.  I blame YOU for this whole harebrained idea.

We do have mason bees.  And I do have a number of the native plants my state extension says to plant to encourage them -- pussy willow, wild geranium, blueberries, aster (as well as the nepeta, which maybe isn't native but *is crack to them*; and purple monarda which is about the only flower that blooms in my thin shaded soil after the last of the allium in July) -- and they do buzz about with purpose, and doubtless find winter habitat in all the brush I leave piled around vaguely around the out-of-sight perimeter.  Evidently there is also such a thing as "squash bees," which we probably have (?) -- my vegetable gardening neighbor has grown squash for years, and spaghetti squash was my most successful effort last year, so, prolly, but I never knew to look for them.  And bumble bees, which are the cutest.

 

But I love honey!!  I just signed up for a zoom class from a CT beekeepers' club.

 

[bibiche]

😫 Now I feel bad, @Pam in CT.

I actually only know this stuff because I was going to get bees a couple years ago, because I love honey too!  And I was going to do my part to Save the Bees! But after talking to a number of naturalists and doing some research I determined that honey bees really aren’t the way to save the world. Bummer. It was going to be so easy and so delicious. 

[Spy Car]

I was just out observing the bees. So busy. I started following the activities of individual bees and trying to guess which flower on the giant stalks of my Pride of Madeira they would hit next.

I wonder where the bees live? In the suburbs of a major metropolis that can't all be from hives maintained by beekeepers--can they?

Bill

 

[bibiche]

Pam, check out The Xerces Society for lots of great info on pollinators and what you can do to attract them.
http://xerces.org

[Spy Car]

10 minutes ago, bibiche said:

Pam, check out The Xerces Society for lots of great info on pollinators and what you can do to attract them.
http://xerces.org

I wish that groups that promote growing native Milkweed (which is essential to the preservation of Monarch butterflies) would at least warn gardeners how important it is to keep Milkweed sap out of one's eyes.

Bill

 

[bibiche]

23 minutes ago, Spy Car said:

I wish that groups that promote growing native Milkweed (which is essential to the preservation of Monarch butterflies) would at least warn gardeners how important it is to keep Milkweed sap out of one's eyes.

Bill

 

It’s on the Xerces site in the FAQs. 🙂 I think it’s also kinda common sense. 😜

[Spy Car]

7 minutes ago, bibiche said:

It’s on the Xerces site in the FAQs. 🙂 I think it’s also kinda common sense. 😜

There isn't a mention of it in their article Native Milkweed Planting and Establishment in California and the "warning" in the FAQ is buried and understated.

It is great to grow and promote Milkweed--essential to preserving Monarchs--but one can have serious eye damage if one gets Milkweed sap in one's eyes.

The head of our local butterfly chapter (who knew better) was rushed to Jules Stein (UCLA) and told he might have serious permanent eye injury or even blindness back in the day, after he was pruning back Milkweed on his property and wiped his eyes on a hot day.

Needs to come with a warning IMO.

Bill

[Melissa in Australia]

I have bees

we have 6 hives

we have had them for around 10 years. They are a lot of fun.

it took us around4 years from wanting to have bees and having all the stuff till we found a swarm and filled our hive. Once you have 1 hive it is relatively easy to make a nucleus hive from it to increase your hive numbers.

we are on 5 acres. The native gumtrees around us are our main source of nectar. So we have 2 runs of honey production every year, when the silver top is flowering and when the mahogany is flowering. I have a big flower garden etc, but that is more maintenance nectar and pollen for the bees

[Melissa in Australia]

Bees love purple and blue flowers, so things like lavender, borage, etc. they also love brassica flowers. they go absolutely crazy over poppy flowers, I have seen up to 10 bees in each poppy flower at a time.

there is nothing like having bees to encourage you to plant lots of plants that flower, which helps all the native fauna as well as the bees.

[Melissa in Australia]

We don’t get extremely cold winters, but  damp cold weather stops the bees doing much foraging . We try to leave the bees with at least 1 supper of honey to overwinter with. We have had years where there wasn’t enough honey stored and we have fed the bees. Dh made a feeder platform that sits under the hive lid, we put sugar on it and the bees access it when they want.

 

we try to requeen the hives every 2 years. This helps reduce swarming. Swarming is undesirable as you lose most of your worker bees, plus honey bees are not native to Australia.

[Melissa in Australia]

Bees can travel as far as 5 km to forage, but prefer closer than 2 km. So distant neighbour gardens are good too.

to get lots of honey you need a nectar run, that is when there are lots of flowers high in nectar flowering all at the same time. 
clover is really good as well. Could you seed your lawn with clover?

Edited April 21, 2021 by Melissa in Australia

[Pam in CT]

re Xerces' pollinator plant list

55 minutes ago, bibiche said:

Pam, check out The Xerces Society for lots of great info on pollinators and what you can do to attract them.
http://xerces.org

Yeah, I was looking at that earlier.  I've cycled through a bunch already, and in my intermittently attentive somewhat slapdash fashion have weeded down to the ones that can survive my lack of sun, parade of critters, and unshakeable resistance to milkweed, sorry monarchs, not only does it blind you but it is also, forgive me, butt ugly.  But achillea, asters, joe pye, monarda manage to survive my Darwinian landscape; and I am trying sunflowers and liatris this year.  I've failed with liatris before but I'm trying it in containers this time; I invariably do better on tasks like, er, watering when things are right before my eyes; and I think critter access is a bit less when things are in containers and there's only one way in.

But honey, bibiche. HONEY.

 

 

re gum trees

2 minutes ago, Melissa in Australia said:

I have bees

we have 6 hives

we have had them for around 10 years. They are a lot of fun.

it took us around4 years from wanting to have bees and having all the stuff till we found a swarm and filled our hive. Once you have 1 hive it is relatively easy to make a nucleus hive from it to increase your hive numbers.

we are on 5 acres. The native gumtrees around us are our main source of nectar. So we have 2 runs of honey production every year, when the silver top is flowering and when the mahogany is flowering. I have a big flower garden etc, but that is more maintenance nectar and pollen for the bees

I had to look up gum trees.  I don't think that'll be an option for me, sigh.  BUT DO YOU HAVE KOALAS?!!!  When we were in Brisbane we spent an awesome day at the sanctuary.

The swarm found you??  That is some kinda karma.

3 minutes ago, Melissa in Australia said:

We don’t get extremely cold winters, but  damp cold weather stops the bees doing much foraging . We try to leave the bees with at least 1 supper of honey to overwinter with. We have had years where there wasn’t enough honey stored and we have fed the bees. Dh made a feeder platform that sits under the hive lid, we put sugar on it and the bees access it when they want.

 

we try to requeen the hives every 2 years. This helps reduce swarming. Swarming is undesirable as you lose most of your worker bees, plus honey bees are not native to Australia.

Yeah, our winters are a PITA.  We rarely get SUSTAINED really-cold weather, but it's hugely unpredictable -- in a typical winter there are a handful of 10 degree F days, and wild spikes and swings as early as October and as late as May.

How do you.... requeen?  What do you do with the old one? 

 

The yard already has a good amount of clover mixed in with the grass and er, moss. But I feel like the clover is only blossoming for a few weeks?  I've never really focused on it.

[Spy Car]

I'd actually be more into a source of beeswax than the honey, which is why (in my pipedream) I gravitate towards the top-bar hives.

Like bees, I love blue/lavender colored flowers, so my yard is popular with our local bees.

Bill

[Melissa in Australia]

19 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

re Xerces' pollinator plant list

Yeah, I was looking at that earlier.  I've cycled through a bunch already, and in my intermittently attentive somewhat slapdash fashion have weeded down to the ones that can survive my lack of sun, parade of critters, and unshakeable resistance to milkweed, sorry monarchs, not only does it blind you but it is also, forgive me, butt ugly.  But achillea, asters, joe pye, monarda manage to survive my Darwinian landscape; and I am trying sunflowers and liatris this year.  I've failed with liatris before but I'm trying it in containers this time; I invariably do better on tasks like, er, watering when things are right before my eyes; and I think critter access is a bit less when things are in containers and there's only one way in.

But honey, bibiche. HONEY.

 

 

re gum trees

I had to look up gum trees.  I don't think that'll be an option for me, sigh.  BUT DO YOU HAVE KOALAS?!!!  When we were in Brisbane we spent an awesome day at the sanctuary.

The swarm found you??  That is some kinda karma.

Yeah, our winters are a PITA.  We rarely get SUSTAINED really-cold weather, but it's hugely unpredictable -- in a typical winter there are a handful of 10 degree F days, and wild spikes and swings as early as October and as late as May.

How do you.... requeen?  What do you do with the old one? 

 

The yard already has a good amount of clover mixed in with the grass and er, moss. But I feel like the clover is only blossoming for a few weeks?  I've never really focused on it.

No Koalas right at my place, wrong type of trees, but there are some about 40 km away.

we buy a new queen, they come in the mail in a little queen box, with 5 worker bees to keep her alive . There  is a plug of bee  candy that they hav etc eat through to get out. We then find the old queen and remove it, and put the queen box into the hive. 3  days later we check that she made it out of the queen box

 

[Melissa in Australia]

1 minute ago, Spy Car said:

I'd actually be more into a source of beeswax than the honey, which is why (in my pipedream) I gravitate towards the top-bar hives.

Like bees, I love blue/lavender colored flowers, so my yard is popular with our local bees.

Bill

You could always be like those medieval monks, and turn the honey into mead. They were after the wax for candles 

[Spy Car]

Just now, Melissa in Australia said:

You could always be like those medieval monks, and turn the honey into mead. They were after the wax for candles 

Actually, I think that's precisely what I would do with the honey if I had hives (beyond giving it away). Don't really have a sweet tooth.

These is an Ethiopian version of mead they call Tej, that's pretty good. They flavor it with a hop-like herb called gesho. I bet good hops would work just as well. The slight bitterness helps balance the residual sweetness of the mead.

And unfortunately I wasn't much of drinker pre-Covid, but have really fallen out of practice during the pandemic. If we could bees to produce coffee, I'd be all in. LOL.

The wax I'd use.

Bill

 

[Melissa in Australia]

My dh makes mead, but rarely drinks. He finds it a useful thing to give away to people.

 

[Spy Car]

4 minutes ago, Melissa in Australia said:

My dh makes mead, but rarely drinks. He finds it a useful thing to give away to people.

 

It would make a nice gift. Has your husband ever used hops to flavor his mead?

Bill

[Melissa in Australia]

No. He has used oranges and is currently making some with mandarins.

Our honey is very dark, with a very strong flavour, being gum tree honey

Edited April 22, 2021 by Melissa in Australia

[Spy Car]

3 minutes ago, Melissa in Australia said:

No. He has used oranges and is currently making some with mandarins.

pour honey is very dark, with a very strong flavour, being gum tree honey

I bet it is good. I'd be willing to get back in practice if I were in your neighborhood.

Bill

 

[bibiche]

1 hour ago, Pam in CT said:

But honey, bibiche. HONEY.

I hear you on the honey. Perhaps you should get bees and then I can live vicariously through you. 

As for milkweed, yeah, common milkweed is not a love-at-first-sight flower, it’s for sure, but It smells heavenly. Butterfly weed (asclépias tuberosa) is lovely though, and not a thug like common milkweed (asclepias syriaca). It’s native to your area. Do it for the butterflies. Maybe you can make a deal: get bees but save the butterflies. 😜

[Selkie]

2 hours ago, Spy Car said:

I wish that groups that promote growing native Milkweed (which is essential to the preservation of Monarch butterflies) would at least warn gardeners how important it is to keep Milkweed sap out of one's eyes.

Bill

 

I'm a milkweed fan so long as it is not growing in my pastures. It is very toxic to horses, and dogs and cats as well.

[Pam in CT]

re ascelpsias tuberosa

20 minutes ago, bibiche said:

I hear you on the honey. Perhaps you should get bees and then I can live vicariously through you. 

As for milkweed, yeah, common milkweed is not a love-at-first-sight flower, it’s for sure, but It smells heavenly. Butterfly weed (asclépias tuberosa) is lovely though, and not a thug like common milkweed (asclepias syriaca). It’s native to your area. Do it for the butterflies. Maybe you can make a deal: get bees but save the butterflies. 😜

I am *attempting* to produce ascelpias tuberosa from seeds at this very moment. It has sprouted. Sadly the forecast is for 28 degrees tonight, sigh. They are in the COVID cold frames however, so they do have a fighting chance.

I must confess, I'm right on the edge here and I may do honeybees despite the clear and present risk to the natives; and if I do it will be For The Peach Trees, so, I'll send you a jar in the event I ever get a jar, LOL.

[Momto6inIN]

10 hours ago, Pam in CT said:

... that is, pretty much, it. 

Looking for folks who do, or have tried, this.  For how long? What did it take to get started? How much time once you got started? How much land do you have to work with? Are your neighbors' yards good pollinators? What's your survival over the winter record? Do you have a specific strategy to keep everblooming stuff going throughout spring/summer/fall, or do you supplementally feed, or are your bees free range? What other questions should I ask?

We have a 2.7 acre lot, but only ~1.5 is cleared.  My neighbors in all directions are similarly wooded. Only one of them has sufficient landscaping / gardening to be of much use as supplemental pollination. I have a lot of flowering trees and shrubs that I have chosen over the years so as to stagger the bloom times, so I pretty much have *something* blooming from forsythia season (fading, now) through to late hydrangeas and asters  (late September). But I don't have a sense of how *much* I need, or how feasible it is to depend on supplemental feeding.

I do aspire, some day in the AfterTimes, to get back to being able to travel for 1-2 weeks at a time, and I don't want bees to hold me back. (Mr Pam in CT has become a COVID chicken farmer, but our neighbor is delighted to keep an eye on them in return for the eggs.)

We are lazy beekeepers 😊

My DS got into it when he was 13, he's 21 now. He got a nuc to start with and mentored with an experienced beekeeper my DH used to work with. Over the years he's captured a few swarms here and there and also split the hive a couple of times to make new hives. Bees really take very minimal time to take care of. Give them sugar water in the spring to get them started til plants get going with nectar. Check them every so often in the summer to see if you need to add another box on top. Harvest honey in the fall and be sure to leave them enough to get through the winter. Easy peasy! Some winters we've had good luck and others we've had bad luck, but overall more hives have survived the winter than don't. Ours are free range. We live on 1.3 acres and I don't landscape or anything so nothing fancy nearby for them to eat. Our nearest neighbors live a half mile away and we're surrounded by corn and soybean fields, so I'm pretty sure our bees survive on dandelions and other wildflowers. They are very free range! They like our swimming pool, which is unfortunate. We have had success with 2 hives in our location, although this particular year we just have 1.

[madteaparty]

20 hours ago, Laura Corin said:

No experience,  but I present to you - with language warning

 

That’s not how you steal the honey! You need a machine and things. 🤣🤣

[madteaparty]

I took a class, I ordered the bees and then decided it was way too much work. I’m saving beekeeping for my half-empty-nest stage. 

[Laura Corin]

2 minutes ago, madteaparty said:

That’s not how you steal the honey! You need a machine and things. 🤣🤣

Ferraris?

[bibiche]

@Pam in CT My cousin has a Flow beehive that she and her children really enjoy. There has been some controversy surrounding it, but I think it’s a pretty easy, though costly, entrance into beekeeping.

https://www.honeyflow.com

 

[Pam in CT]

re filling the empty nest...

2 hours ago, madteaparty said:

I took a class, I ordered the bees and then decided it was way too much work. I’m saving beekeeping for my half-empty-nest stage. 

,,, with chickens and bees.

Yes, well, my late last little one is about to graduate high school, so that day is now upon us!

 

Throughout COVID, my dearly beloved sister-in-law has kept up a standing Sunday afternoon meetup in Central Park with a pack of her similarly-aged friends.  We joined them a few weeks ago. So these are HER friends, not ours, but we've met them all over the years at her parties, her sons' life cycle events etc.

There were 5 couples. ALL FOUR (except SIL and BIL) had COVID puppies.  (My brother & fam also got a COVID puppy.  My next door neighbor got a COVID puppy.  All up and down my street, COVID puppies everywhere.)

I figure bees will be way less work than a puppy, which honestly sounds worse than a baby.  (Both our prior dog, and our current dog, were used models when we got them, so we've never done the puppy thing, but good grief what a PITA.) 

Also, HONEY...

 

re hive model

1 hour ago, bibiche said:

@Pam in CT My cousin has a Flow beehive that she and her children really enjoy. There has been some controversy surrounding it, but I think it’s a pretty easy, though costly, entrance into beekeeping.

https://www.honeyflow.com

 

Hmmm.  I like the simplicity of the all-in-one purchase... but I've been eyeing this one.  The simplicity of the lines appeals.

[bibiche]

11 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

re filling the empty nest...

,,, with chickens and bees.

Yes, well, my late last little one is about to graduate high school, so that day is now upon us!

 

Throughout COVID, my dearly beloved sister-in-law has kept up a standing Sunday afternoon meetup in Central Park with a pack of her similarly-aged friends.  We joined them a few weeks ago. So these are HER friends, not ours, but we've met them all over the years at her parties, her sons' life cycle events etc.

There were 5 couples. ALL FOUR (except SIL and BIL) had COVID puppies.  (My brother & fam also got a COVID puppy.  My next door neighbor got a COVID puppy.  All up and down my street, COVID puppies everywhere.)

I figure bees will be way less work than a puppy, which honestly sounds worse than a baby.  (Both our prior dog, and our current dog, were used models when we got them, so we've never done the puppy thing, but good grief what a PITA.) 

Also, HONEY...

 

re hive model

Hmmm.  I like the simplicity of the all-in-one purchase... but I've been eyeing this one.  The simplicity of the lines appeals.

So nice! 😩 I want honey bees!!

[madteaparty]

5 hours ago, Laura Corin said:

Ferraris?

Practically! But just one would do: 

https://beekeepclub.com/best-honey-extractors/

[Pam in CT]

16 minutes ago, madteaparty said:

Practically! But just one would do: 

https://beekeepclub.com/best-honey-extractors/

or... a couple Home Depot buckets, a couple sheets of mesh and some packing tape?

so many options really....