So You Think You Want Bees?

We have had bees for a few weeks at this point, after years of talking about them, planning, discussion, changing plans. There are a few tips I have for anyone who thinks they may want to get bees.

Tip #1, Get bee's, seriously they are a wonderful resource to add to your homestead. Do not let all the scary bad stuff you will read online discourage you. Yes, it can be hard work, you may struggle with diseases, mites, and all manner of catastrophe but it is worth it. The rest of my tips are aimed to hopefully make it a bit easier for you.

Tip #2, Join a local beekeepers club. Call your county extension agent, contact your state beekeeping association to find an organization that meets near you. When we finally decided to get bees and joined a group the closest bee group was the next county over from us, just a short drive for monthly meetings and we have found a wealth of support and information. Many groups will also have equipment like honey extractors that you can rent and may be able to get you substantial discounts on your first nucleus colonies of bees. We learn something new at every single meeting we attend.

Tip #3, YouTube can be your best friend and worst enemy. We posted the videos of our installs on youtube. We have also watched countless hours of video on everything from different hive designs, to how to kill off all your bees (sometimes that is necessary). We have watched more videos on how to install your bees, and how to catch swarms than I can count. Sometimes we get sucked into the rabbit hole of videos. We have watched lectures from some of the best beekeepers from around the world, and we have watched a lot of videos that made us want to hang it up before we even started. One guy pretty much assured everyone that all their bees were going to die, everything was going to die and that was just how it was. We also have gotten hours of entertainment from the Bush Bee Man.

Tip #4 Books, books, and more books! We are big readers, I cannot recommend enough finding copies of Backyard Beekeeper, the Beekeepers Handbook, and the Beekeepers Bible. Great reads. Backyard Beekeeper was actually our first official foray into bees, we both devoured that book and knew that we were making the right call in adding bees to our little homestead.

Busy Bee's

Way back in February of this year I made a post about adding bees to the homestead. Over the past few months, plans have been made and changed a few different times. We researched hive designs, settled on a few we liked and bought materials. We even made a few hive bodies. We cost wise it was definitely going to save us a few dollars per box and a few dollars does add up over time.
During this time we also joined a lot of bee groups on Facebook. A few of these groups were buy, sale, trade pages for bee equipment. Late one evening the Wanderers momma found a post by a guy who had decided to sell out of the hobby, he was getting rid of everything, about 8 complete hives (no bees), a 6 frame extractor, smoker, suit, and tons of assorted beekeeping tools. Arrangements were made and the Wanderer and I loaded up the truck and took off early the next morning for North Carolina, a good 250 mile, 5 hour trip from our homestead in the hills of Kentucky. The man lives in the orchard area of North Carolina, a stone's throw from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm, where most of his equipment came from. It took us almost an hour using our Tetris honed skills to load each item into the bed of the Dodge Dakota, but we made it fit. This was officially the trucks furthest trip from the homestead.

Looking over the hives we realized quickly why he lost all his bees, he had pretty serious mite and wax moth infestations. When we got everything home we took metal paint scrapers and cleaned each piece, then tossed them in a deep freezer to ensure that everything bad was killed off.

Now we just needed to find some bees. Did we want to go with packages, nucs, wild-caught swarms? We decided we needed help and guidance so we joined a local beekeepers club and found out that a member sold nucs, we put our order in for 2 nucs (nucleus colony).

We filmed our first bee install. Did I just say first? Yep. Because a week after we picked up nuc's 1 and 2 we decided we wanted a 3rd so we bought another nuc.

Initially when we decided we wanted bees we thought we were going to put them up on the hill, somewhere near our barn. Then we started seeing so many people having great results with bug/mite management by allowing chickens to free range around their hives. We have placed our hives inside our chicken and duck lot.

Starting the smoker

First Inspection

Bees at the entrance

The 3 Hives set up.