Bee Keeping

[HOSS]

I've been interested in trying to set up 2 or 3 hives to see if it would be something I want to get involved in. Is anybody on the boards active in bee keeping and if so is it expensive to start up. I know that hive boxes can be bought for about 100.00 off of ebay. I am more concerned with bee cost and the cost of the honey collection eqiopment.

Thanks

 

[hillsdown]

PM Rockridge ,or read her extensive posts about it.

 

[rockridgecattle]

Thanks HD,

Hey Hoss,

Beekeeping is a cool and adictive hobby that can get out of control. I also says, a the price of honey right now, it pays for the bad habit of cows LOL. However, cow prices are up a bit
In bee keeping you need a strong back. I and many other beeks recommend a newbee starts with no more than two hive. The reason behind this is, what if you do not like it...then easy to get rid of and not alot of capital costs. The other reason is, the learning curve, and the ease at which a hive or two will die in through the winter.
Beekeeping like cows requires management, and i personally believe that we can look at management issues to account for alot of the hive deaths. (not all believe that, they would rather blame the ag industry but...)
I have also taken alot of what i learned from cows to heart where bees are concerned.
For example, culling unproductive hives. That might be as simple as requeening or as extensive and tearing down a hive and starting fresh. Feeding proper nutrition helps to fix many a woes, pencil to the paper, etc
The need for a mentor is great, as much as us cow producers need the advice (even if we do not pay for it) of a vet or ag extension office.
Get involved in your local beekeeping organization, check out the ABJ---"American Bee Journal", "Bee Culture". Check out the forum Beesource.com Alot of hobbiests there with interesting ideas, glean from it what you can.
Since you are just starting out, go all new. Do not buy from E bay. Go to dandant, Maxant and Mann lake. There is also Glory bee and Better bee. I recommend buying either Nucs ( 4 frames of bees which include 1 frame of feed, and three frames of eggs and larva, and brood, covered in bees w/ a queen) or a package. A package is usually about 2# of bees with a queen. You are further ahead with a nuc but a package is cool to watch get going.
Well, I have alot more info to give if you want it, just ask away. By the way, if you go to beesource, my sign in is honeyshack
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=60826&start=15&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

 

[HOSS]

rockridge,

Thanks for the info. I have a couple of guys I know that are into it pretty heavy and they have been trying to recruit me. If I get involved I will go through our states Master Beekeeper program. My county does not have an association but the next county over does and I have been invited to attend their monthly meeting. They also do training classes. Homegrown honey here is bringing $9.50 per quart and the guys I know sell out everything they have in a short time period. I though it might be a nice supplement to cattle if it is not too labor intensive.

 

[rockridgecattle]

The best way to describe bees in labour intensity.
Two to three hives, not so bad. Once a week check, as a beginner, 20 min per hive. This includes suit up time. A bit more time during the times of disease monitoring and swarm prevention or requeening, maybe 1/2hour per hive when going through the boxes.
Adding honey supers during the flow, and where from 10 minutes to 1/3 hour per hive...might notice a problem.
Pulling honey can happen 2-3 times during the flow. Allow an hour per hive. Spring feeding and fall feeding and treatin during those times, anywhere between a 1/2 hour and an hour per hive especially if you have to mix sugar syrup. And that could be 3x a week for a couple of weeks.
Extracting...If you are sure your friends have no AFB and they have been tested to be clean, I would say extract at their place. But you have to be carefull of disease since it lives in the wax. This would save you $ for extracting equipment, and you can pay them a bit of money for electricity to keep the hot room hot, and rental of equipment...or work out a plan with them.
If they have some AFB, look for your own equipment. If you get AFB the only cure is to burn the infected comb, and destroy the bees, and scorch the wooden ware.
Depending on the type of extracting equipment you get to use and the # of boxes, could be anywhere between 18-30 hours to do total time + clean up. If your friends have a cool inline system, you could be looking at an hour or so.
Now if you have more hives, spring work up could seem like a tight fast and furious calving season, especially when the swarming time descends upon you. If not watching and checking the hives for room, late spring, you could be out catching swarms, and think calving was way easier.
After your first year or two, your time working is the hives will decrease with experience. Then, once you get the hang of it, watch out. You say now 2-3 hive. In 5 years you will be at 100 + hives...

 

[Lammie]

I wanted to start doing that myself a couple of years ago and I trouble getting bees at the time. Something about a virus they were getting.

 

[rockridgecattle]

I have 9 bee yards with 20- 40 hives per yard. Starting in early April (late march if the weather allows), the intial check of the hives and feeding will begin. About 30 man hours there. Then starting mid April to the end of April rechecking feed and assesing colony strength about 50 man hours, Then starting May 10th spring work up begins. It will take me about 60 - 70 man/woman hours to do the inital spring work up of all yards. This includes, unwrapping from winter, folding the wraps, rotating the brood boxes, cleaning the bottom boards, swapping out old comb for disease prevention, hopefully final treating, feeding, combining weak hives, checking queen strength and possibly requeening, and cleaning up the yard. Then add in treating to knock back mites, another 40 man hours, plus checking feed if the dandylions are late . With three trips per yard, that is about 200 man hours too complete spring work up. Add in that mowing each yard and whipper snipping around our fences and testing the battery of each fencer (need 6000v to keep the bears out). Mowing is done at least once a week.
From June to July 12th there are the splits to prevent swarming, and maybe some requeening of the hives, and mite monitoring. From there we go into addind brood boxes on single hives, and again checking how the requeened queens took, maybe some more splits. Again about 50 man hours to complete the cycle. Not to forget, disease and mite load monitoring. It takes 46 days from the time a worker egg is laid until it is ready to be a forager for the hive. The goal is to keep the hives rearing bees to take advantage of the flow.
Starting June 30th the addition of honey supers. About 2 hours per yard, plus traveling, loading and unloading time. This is done weekly depending on heat and flowers in bloom. And again checking on disease and mite loads
Our first pull starts July 30th, again depending on the weather and the blooms. Pulling honey supers and re supering hives takes about week of full time work for me. We do not have alot of fancy booms and stuff so everything is done by hand. Each day, if I pull 2 supers per hive at 60-100 pounds each, any where from 20 to 40 hives per day. That is on average liftin about 5000 pounds a day. This routine will carry on until the end of August when we pull the final honey, and start fall work up. When not pulling honey, 10-12 hour days extracting. Starting August 15th i start to assess hives for winter success. This is when some hives get marked to be combined or torn down depending on their strenght of numbers and health.
During the months of June to August, I drink so much water due to the heat in the suits and the heat in the honey house, I could float away. Easy to drink about 5 litres in the morning and 5 in the afternoon when in the bee suits.
September 1 begins feeding and fall work ups. This includes the usual disease and mite monitoring, combining hives and feeding hives. By October 1 the hives should be ready for winter, October 15th the latest to get 5-7 gallons of feed into them. Then it is time to wrap the hives for winter and have that done by the 31 of october. During these times, the extracting of honey continues. Wish we could afford an inline system...but all in time. Once the hives are wrapped, we leave them alone until march/april of next year.

Now this cycle is for our area. In your area, your flow might be longer, and you can start your spring work up earlier. Remember, just like cattle to look at the big picture of down the road when you work a hive. The end goal is to get that hive to be a producer of honey during the flow, and to winter well so you might be able to make a split next year. Just like cows, you need to plan and cost out wht you do. One example I could give is, we watch nutrition and BCS of the cow, for calving, breed back, raising a calf and maintaining a good BSC all year. We vaccinate cows early spring to offer fetal protection to the calf that has not yet been concieved, as well and to keep her Immugloblulins up in the colostrum 10 months from the time the cow gets vaccinated. It is the same for bees. What we do in the spring will affect summer honey production and winter survival.

We could stream line abit more if we had some booms and some other heavy equipment, but that is not yet. Maybe someday. My husband would help me in the yards, but he is busy seeding, fencing, fertilizing. There are days when he does help me, but only as he can. In the summer when we are supering and pulling honey, he if he can, helps in the morning when the dew is on the hay fields. Otherwise he is haying. In the evenings he uses the wheeler and unloads the trailer with the full supers cause I am plum wore out. I pretty much take over the farm truck and cattle trailer during the honey season. It is amazing how clean you can get that trailer when you really want to. When we had a couple of hives, our wheels were the 4 wheeler and a trailer.

 

[HOSS]

Man! I am tired just reading your post! If I get into it it will be small because I think over so many pounds of honey you have to have a USDA registered facility.

 

[alisonb]

Man! I am tired just reading your post!

Hoss, RR gave me a whole lot of excellent advice when I started off with my two hives a while back. Don't be put off, I reckon she has the energy levels of 10 of us and I think she may be a bit of a perfectionist aswell ;-) , those are qualities that are needed to successfully run a show the size that she does. :tiphat:

I started off with two hives and now have four. It was basically to clean up the place (had a hive in electrical box and one in the ceiling) and for my own use.
I have far too much honey for my own use and have started giving it to friends etc. But thats where it ends-I don't think I'm going to take on any more.
The hives take very little of my time and I absolutely enjoy working with them.Why not try 2 or 3 and see if it will work for you-you could increase gradually.
I have the African bee here and they are very unpredictable. Have been zapped rather often and am now working up an allergic reaction to them so keep the antihistamines close at hand.

Finally, there is nothing quite like eating your own honey. I put it on just about everything .