Wife wants to raise bees...any advice

[tacklejunkie]

I don't know if there are folks here who raise bees but my wife is bound and determined to raise bees for honey. Any advice would be helpful

[dnice1707]

Honey Bees are relatively easy to take care of because they basically take care of themselves. The advice I tend to give people when just starting out is to start out small. get 1-2 hives to start out with and see how they work for you and your lifestyle. Don't worry to much about where they will get there pollen since they will fly 3-5 miles circumference of the hive to find the pollen, and join a local beekeeper organization, by doing this you can get advice on your hives, and even some beekeepers will allow you to join them for a day in working their hives to see how you like it and help you learn to work yours. Good Luck and have fun!!!!

[Dotch]

Good stuff dnice! Will add one info sheet found on the U of M's Extension HSOforum. It gives several sources of info including lots of fact sheets, etc. The U has some pretty good researchers working with bees including people like Marla Spivak whom I've heard speak a couple times. Not a beekeeper myself but recognize their importance to all of us.

http://www.extension.umn.edu/Bees/about.html

[CANOPY SAM]

We are friends with two of our local bee keepers. We have one of them bring us two stacks of hives each year to ramp up our truck garden pollination. The difference in production is astounding!

One of our sons is a little allergic to bee stings, and they seem to hunt him like he's covered in honey, so we have to keep the hives down by the river behind our place. This also helps to give the bees a close source for water. That way they're not always buzzing around the house whenever we hit a patch of dry weather. Having the hives several hundred feet away from the house means we rarely have any problems with them what-so-ever. Hornets and yellow-jackets are another story entirely.

I'd recommend contacting a local bee keeper, and see if you can simply "tend" one or two of his boxes on your place for the summer. They're typically pretty happy to have a new place to put a few hives, and will often simply give you some honey for your help at the end of the year. They're also obviously a wealth of knowledge when it comes to caring for bees.

[pushbutton]

I don't know if there are folks here who raise bees but my wife is bound and determined to raise bees for honey. Any advice would be helpful

Read through this bee thread

[BLACKJACK]

The U of M offers a short one day course on beekeeping, I highly recommend it, I took it before I got bees.

Its kind of a spendy little hobby by the time you buy hives, tools, bee suits, helmets, extracting equipment, sugar, meds. Also time consuming, to do it right you should go thru your hives once a week.

Consider the whole extracting process, where you're going to do it, it takes a warm, clean location, with lots more equipment.

Those are some of the cons.

The pros of beekeeping is that you get lots of honey, plus its facinating, I used to sit on a bucket by the hives and watch them come and go. When I moved I didn't start up my hives again, but I kept my equipment, maybe some day I'll start up again. Plus I found a local guy that would sell quarts of honey at a good price, no sense in my spending my time and money doing it.

Have fun!!

[grapeapplepie]

I agree with Blackjack, the short course is a fantastic way to introduce yourself to this great hobby. The upfront costs to beekeeping can be pretty expensive but in my opinion well worth it.

I don't want to discourage you from starting, but it may be just a little late to start this season. Typically orders for packages of bees are finished by now. Generally speaking, you want to place "packaged" bees into your hive a couple of weeks before the first plants start to produce pollen. Starting from scratch, the bees will need time to "draw" out the foundation into actual comb where the bees can manage their brood, honey, and pollen stores.

Since, a newly started hive doesn't have stores of honey and pollen a new colony needs to be supplemented with sugar-water and pollen substitute. This will allow your hive to sustain itself until Spring actually arrives and they can sustain themselves with natural pollen and nectar. As a general rule, a beekeeper should be going into each hive roughly every week or two to inspect it. A bit more often when feeding sugar syrup.

Generally speaking, honey isn't harvested the first year a colony is established. You want to make sure the bees have plenty of honey to survive the coming winter. If everything goes well, your starting colony will survive winter and then you would end up "dividing" the overwintered colony next Spring. The parent colony would end up being your honey producer the following Autumn.

If you're still interested in giving it a try I HIGHLY recommend you get "Beekeeping in Northern Climates" it's an inexpensive publication produced by the University of Minnesota that will give you everything you need to know on keeping bees in Minnesota. I believe that book is given out at the short course as part of the fee you pay in attending the class. It can also be purchased here...

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/horticulture/DG7553.html

I hope this helps!

Grapeapplepie

[tacklejunkie]

Thanks all for the tips. I had my wife read through this. :