Amateur Bee Keeping

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Any of you pistonheaders keep bee’s? I have an obsession with honey and a big interest in bee’s. I have a nice area in my garden for a hive and so looking at having a go at bee keeping.

Can anybody here share advice and where to start etc.

Many thanks

[Huntsman]

As soon as we've bougth a house, I'm having a couple of hives.

Fascinating subject, lots to learn.

My mum has a warre hive, she just lost her bees, no idea what happened, they just buggered off!

Bought some homey from a chap this wekeend, he has 35 hives, could have talked for hours.

[daved]

I think there are a few beekeepers on PH, or people who are knowledgeable on the subject so I'm surprised you haven't heard from them by now. Maybe they're too busy getting their bees ready for winter?

We have three hives at the moment and have been beekeepers for 4-5 years - some years more successfully than others. I'd advise finding your local beekeeper's association and get on a beginners course with them. The course we went on began in January so I'd expect similar start dates for other parts of the country. You'll get invaluable training and advice and hopefully a mentor to help when the bees don't do what they're supposed to do. On the flip side, you might decide it's not for you before you spend too much on getting started. It's not cheap to get going and there's a risk that despite all your hard work and effort, you could lose all your bees - been there and done that several times.

We thought it would just be a case of buy a hive, buy some bees, put the two together and let them live happily ever after. You could do this and you might be lucky, but we've found that there's a bit more to it than that. Feeding the bees, keeping pests out of the hive - wasps and mice mainly, treating for disease and mites, swarm prevention, and if you're lucky, taking honey off. That's a few of the jobs I can think of. We're in West Wales so I think we're on the edge of successful beekeeping given the lack of decent weather so our expectations are quite low but I know friends near London have much more success but they also have to put in more effort.

Hope this is a start so if you have any more questions ask away and I'll do my best or wait for someone else to come along with an answer.

dd

[hyphen]

This thread maybe of interest: https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

[monoloco]

ditto what Daved says above -just about every local beekeeping association will be running courses starting with the classroom bit in Jan/Feb then moving on to a practical sessions when the weather has warmed up enough to open the hives in the spring. Courses are usually fairly cheap and you'll get to meet and chat to loads of other beekeepers -both beginners and more experienced ones ( us beekeepers are a friendly lot and always happy to talk bees!) Look at www.bbka.org.uk to find your local association ( although one or two such as Bedfordshire are not associated with the national association)

Before then though buy yourself a book -have a look at :

http://www.northernbeebooks.co.uk/newbooks/complet...

be warned though -bees are very clever and whatever book you read you can guarantee your bees will have read another and do things differently!