Keeping bees

sanderson wrote:I read this article this evening, and thought about the beekeepers of the Forum.  Is this a fairly realistic article? 

Interesting and amusing article. I loved keeping bees for many years, starting from the time I was a young lad in 4-H, up through the 1970's when I had a commercial apiary for 7 years. I hated giving up bees, but a back injury made it impossible to continually lift the heavy supers full of honey.

The biggest problem with new, novice beekeepers if being over-attentive of the hive. The bees do better when left alone as much as possible. The second biggest problem, which is related to the first, is that new beekeepers tend to remove too much honey in the fall instead of leaving adequate stores for the bees to survive the winter.  Side note: I replaced queens every 2nd year to ensure there was always a young, strong queen to keep the hive active.

On a side note, I heard on one of those science podcasts that nearly 100% of the commercial bees in the U.S. are sent to the almond farms of CA every year. The guy said it was about $300 per hive. I wondered if that covered transportation.

It must be confusing to a bee. You went to bed the night before dreaming of that new patch of hibiscus you discovered yesterday. You had joined in the bee dance where you learned there was a new field of clover that would be blooming at 7am tomorrow. You've memorized all the water sources. Big plans. Big plans.

And then you wake up and you can't get out of the hive. There's a huge growling sound. There's whizzing and whooshing sounds as if your hive were suspended over a waterfall. There's a burning, oily smell too, and you worry there might be a forest fire. You're trapped this way for a week. Then one morning you wake up and the noise has stopped and the hive is open. But there's no hibiscus. There's no clover. Darn, Bea, the bee! She must have danced 30 hertz northward when she meant 20 hertz southward.

Eventually you work out that there's some other stuff that's in bloom. Up in trees. Well, any port in a storm. Well, gotta buzz. But Bea is going to get an ear-full.

markqz wrote:On a side note, I heard on one of those science podcasts that nearly 100% of the commercial bees in the U.S. are sent to the almond farms of CA every year. The guy said it was about $300 per hive. I wondered if that covered transportation.

Fortunately, it is only 80% of the commercial bees that are moved to that Almond orchards, and those mostly are from west of the Mississippi. They require approximately 2 hives per acre of Almonds, so that is a lot of bees! I used to move mine to fruit orchards in the spring, and hay fields in the summer, and back to their "home" for the winter where they had plenty of Golden Rod.

But, now that I am old and retired, I just have native bee houses....

markqz wrote:. . . It must be confusing to a bee. You went to bed the night before dreaming of that new patch of hibiscus you discovered yesterday. You had joined in the bee dance where you learned there was a new field of clover that would be blooming at 7am tomorrow. You've memorized all the water sources. Big plans. Big plans.

And then you wake up and you can't get out of the hive. There's a huge growling sound. There's whizzing and whooshing sounds as if your hive were suspended over a waterfall. There's a burning, oily smell too, and you worry there might be a forest fire. You're trapped this way for a week. Then one morning you wake up and the noise has stopped and the hive is open. But there's no hibiscus. There's no clover. Darn, Bea, the bee! She must have danced 30 hertz northward when she meant 20 hertz southward.

Eventually you work out that there's some other stuff that's in bloom. Up in trees. Well, any port in a storm. Well, gotta buzz. But Bea is going to get an ear-full.

This is the first time I have read about bees, and now I am going to ask my family in England with  their two and a half acres of old farmland  if they are going to consider including bee-keeping in their new place.  They are already ordering a variety of fruit trees. fruit bushes and wild flowers.  Bees must be on their agenda.