Question: Bee Keeping

Posted on 25 Apr 2013 18:03

Margaret and I have many hobbies which we now have more time for as we are both retired. One of our hobbies is beekeeping which is not to everyone's taste as it can be very costly.

Time wise we spend less than 1 hour per week checking our 6 x hives of bees.

It is generally considered acceptable to have up to 2 x hives in a suburban garden, but we have a big garden so we keep them all at home.

If you want to start keeping bees you should try and attend a beginners course, these are readily available. Courses normally run over 6 x days (in our case consecutive Saturday's) for about 2 hours per session.

The next thing you will need is a hive and some basic equipment including a bee suit or upper body smock with veil and a smoker. This little lot will set you back about £600.00

Now you need some bees and beginners normally purchase these as a "nuclei", anything between £50- to £200- is the normal going rate for a nuclei.

Each additional hive will cost you around £400- plus the cost of the nuclei. You can of course try and capture a swarm, which will cost you nothing but check carefully that they are in good health before introducing them to your colony.

Of course if you know a friendly bee keeper (or in the case of our son's friend you have a friend whose mum and dad keep bees) then you may get them a lot cheaper (or in the case of our sons friend you might end up getting a hive full of bees for nothing). Well to be fair he has volunteered to help our son look after "Gromit" (our Border collie) when we go on our long holiday later this year.

The first year there is not a lot to do other than keeping them dry and giving them their medicine at the end of the year (around £5.00 per hive) and some sugar syrup to last them through the winter (around 5 kg of sugar per hive).

You should also register with the local bee inspector who will pay you an annual visit and check the health of your colony

The second year is when it all comes together and the regular checks begin. Ideally you should check them every 7 days through the summer months, under certain circumstances you can leave them for 12 days. The main problem with not checking is that they may swarm and the majority will buzz off.

We tend to limit our summer holidays to up to 12 days at a time and have our longer holiday towards the end of The year.

Hopefully in the second year you will get some honey We got 180lbs of honey off our 2 original hives in the 2nd year but that amount is exceptional and about 50lbs per hive is more the norm these days.

Now you have to decide how to extract the honey from the honeycomb. We went mad and bought a cheap honey spinner (£150-) but you can manage without one if you mash the honeycomb and let it drain through a double sieve (£10-) to separate the honey from the wax, which it does quite quickly. You can use the wax to make other things. The downside to this method is that the bees will have to make new honeycomb the following year which will detract from their honey production.

So to summarise! If you are away for more than 12 days at a time then beekeeping is probably not for you. However it can be a labour of love that is very rewarding.

A lot of bee keepers make their hobby pay, but we tend to give our honey away to family and friends (no we don't need any more friends thank you).

Please let me know if you decide to take up this hobby.

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alan Myland

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