Wondering if any others have tried their hand at bee keeping. This year, one of the couples from of our group started up bees. It has been informative and extremely beneficial both for our garden, fruit trees and bushes as well as our opportunities for a additional prep. Here's your opportunity to have an abundant supply of sweetener for your preps.
My huskup bushes (Russian blueberry) have never been this productive. My apple trees fuller than ever. They are docile-We put them in with my fenced garden and no one has been stung even with all the activity in the garden with watering, gathering, tilling. They're awesome!! We've increased the amounts of hives successfully and hope they will thrive thru the winter. We are all learning lots!! I suggest anyone who can...do it!
Yep - we have bees. They're pretty cool.
We also start early with mason bees. These lil guys stay close to home and land on everything. 100 times better pollinators than the honey bees and you don't have to do anything for them.
We will be winterizing the honey bees next week. Starting to get a bit wet right now for them 😛
So - the bees made it through the winter.... Until last weekend. It's time to check them ( on a bright day once the temp exceeds 12 degrees) and to feed them, so we went out to do just that. The lid was off and several frames removed so we think it was a bear. Newbie mistake - we forgot to strap the hive down or weight the lids with rocks! Bah!!
So we've been hearing about the loss of bees for a while now, and although we were concerned, something hit us last week and DW piped up and said "I want bees...we need more bees".
So, being a complete nincompoop about bees...someone clue me into what we need and how to get started.
I'm sure you don't want to wait til our meet in august but oddmott will be doing a presentation on bee keeping. He is quite well versed on the subject. I only spent one day with him at his hives last fall and I learned so much. He might be able to provide some insight on what you need to get started.
Denob, your greatest resource is a local bee keeping club. Wealth of info and also access to hives, nucs and packages of bees. We started with two deep dadants and two shallows ( brood chamber and honey stores). We ordered a Nuc ( bees plus a queen). Since then we have upgraded to two hives, bought protective headgear, gloves and a smoker. That said - they are difficult to keep alive through wet winters. This will be our third attempt but we did get some honey last year. We made some stoopid noob mistakes but now we are confident of getting through a full year unscathed. Third time is the charm. April is a good time to order a Nuc. Choose local if possible.
Thanks all for the replies.
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a bee club anywhere around us.
We found a supplier in Quebec and thought we would take the trip next Saturday to check them out, see what is involved in regards to equipment and cost as well as time and risk.
If we feel we can pull it off, we'll give it a shot.
And yes, for sure we will be very attentive listeners at the meetup this summer!