Beginning Beekeeping &
Beyond
By Michelle Gasaway
So you want to keep bees…
Before you start taking notes or photos, this
presentation will be posted on our webpage:
www.mocobees.com
Reasons To Keep Bees
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Pollination•
Save the Bees•
Honey•
Beeswax•
Entertainment/Stress ReliefHow To Get Started
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Do your research•
Join a Beekeeping Club•
Get a Mentor•
Network at Beekeeping Conventions/Conferences•
Take some classes – Bluebonnet Bee School (Feb. 11, 2017) or Central Texas Beekeeping School (March 25, 2017)Beekeeping Equipment
• Bee Hive (Langstroth, Top Bar, Warre, Flow Hive, etc.)
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Smoker• Hive Tool
• Bee Brush
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Bee suit WITH gloves• Bee Feeders (Top Feeders, Boardman, Division Feeder, etc.)
BEES!
“no one teaches beekeeping quite as well as bees.” Listen to them and they will teach you. –
Michael Bush
•
Swarm•
Package•
NUCTiming
…when to get started?
•
NOW!•
Now is the time to order bees, or maybe last month would have been better.•
Now - buy or build bee boxes and obtain equipment•
Now - start reading books, join a club, talk to a mentorDECISIONS
–
What kind of Beekeeper will you BEE?
• Hobbyist – just a few hives (consider starting with 2)•
Sideliner – up to 300 colonies• Commercial – up to 50,000 colonies
• Organic
•
Chemical• Science vs Art
• Lazy beekeeper
All about the BEES
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Caste:• Queen
• Workers
Queens
• Queens are raised for:
▪ Supersedure
▪ Emergency
▪ Swarming
• Egg for 3 1/2 days
• Fed Royal Jelly ONLY
• Larva until Day 8
Workers
• Live about 6 weeks in summer & 6 months in
winter.
• Egg until day 3 ½
• Capped on day 9
• Emerge between day 18 and 21
• Days 1-3 clean cells and incubation
• Days 3-10 feeding larva
• Days 11-14 “house” bees
• Day 15 - end of life as foragers and entrance
Drones
• Live about six weeks in summer • Egg until day 3 ½
• Capped day 10 • Emerge day 24
• Fly to Drone Congregation Area about
Enemies of the Bees
• Skunks
• Mice
• Wax Moths
• Hive Beetles
• Varroa Mites
Learn the Lingo
• Apiary –this is your bee yard, where you keep your bees
• Bearding – when bees hang on the outside of the hive
• Brood – Immature bees not yet emerged from their cells, eggs, larvae, pupae
• Dearth – A time when there is no forage (winter, rain, drought, etc.)
• Honey flow - A time when enough nectar-bearing plants are blooming so that bees can store a surplus of honey.
• Propolis - Plant resins collected & mixed with enzymes from bee saliva and used to fill in small spaces inside the hive and to coat and sterilize everything in the hive. It has antimicrobial properties. LEAVE IT ALONE!
• Retinue - Worker bees that attend to the Queen (her court)
• Super - Boxes of frames used for honey production. From the Latin "super" for above as a designation for any box above the brood nest.
More on Learning
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#1-If you are not making mistakes, you are not learning anything•
#2-If you are not confused, you are not learning anything•
#3-Real learning is not facts, its relationshipsSo now you have Bees -
what’s next?
• Select a good location to place your hives – full sun, clean area, high ground, away from livestock
• Inspect your hives every 2 – 4 weeks
• Too much intervention causes stress on the bees
• Work calmly but with purpose
• Not enough and you can miss problems
• Find a balance
• Add honey supers when needed
• Make sure there is a water supply nearby
• Decide how you will deal with pests (ants, hive beetles, varroa, wax moth)
• Prevention is always preferred
Spring Management
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Check your weather, climate dictates actions•
Feed Your Bees• On a sunny warm Spring day, check honey stores
• Offer pollen supplements and sugar water inside the hive
Swarm Control
• Keep the brood nest open
• Add empty frames for them to build and fill
• Use the checkerboarding technique
• Splits
• May prevent swarming, but not foolproof
• Easy way to expand your apiary
• Add Supers
Realistic Expectations
• Research thoroughly before starting
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Let the bees teach you, they have survived for centuries without us!• They need less management than you think
• Be a responsible beekeeper
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You will make mistakes• You will lose hives and
Sit back, Relax & Enjoy
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Try not to bother your bees too much, this makes them angry•
From a safe distance, watch them coming and going from the hive• This gives you an idea of the size of your hive
• Tells you if they are bringing in pollen
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While in your garden, let them forage beside you, observe how they do what they doEverything will work itself out in the end
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"Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth." --Blaise Pascal•
"People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others."--Blaise Pascal•
The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale (Google it)DO’s & DON’Ts
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Listen to others then find what works for you•
Manage space in your hives•
Leave burr comb alone•
Look for signs of a Queen•
Plant for your bees•
Make it enjoyable, not work•
Don’t follow the crowd “just because”•
Don’t cut out swarm cells…Split!•
Don’t scrape off propolis•
Don’t look for the Queen•
Don’t pull up weedsA few words of advice
from Michael Bush
–
The Practical Beekeeper
Here, is the short answer to every beekeeping issue.
“Give
them the resources to resolve the problem and
let them. If you can’t give them the resources, then
Robbing or Wax Moth Issues
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Robbing: what they need is more bees to defend the hive, but if you can’tgive them that, then reduce the entrance to one bee wide.
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Wax moth issues in the hive: what they need are more bees to guard thecomb. If you can’t give them that then reduce the area they need to guard by
removing empty combs and empty space.
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In other words, give them resources or reduce the need for the resourcesQueen Issues
SOLUTION:
“It is virtually foolproof and does not require finding a queen or seeing eggs or accurately diagnosing the problem. If you have any issue with queenrightness, no brood, worried that there is no queen, this is the simple solution that
Stop Fighting with your Bees!
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YOU can’t MAKE them do ANYTHING•
You can only HELP them• By giving them more room in the brood nest
• By giving them resources to solve problems
MORE than just Bees
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DID YOU KNOW?• A honey bee colony is more than just bees. There are over 8,000 beneficial microbes
that live with bees (identified by Martha Gilliam’s research at Tucson Bee Lab)
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Macro and Microfauna• For instance, there are over 170 kinds of mites that live in harmony with bees.
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MicrofloraWhat do these Microbes do?
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What are Microbes?• Yeast, bacteria and fungus (Beer, yogurt, penicillin)
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Found mostly in the digestive tract of all bees• It is obtained from flowers then brought back to the hive
• Adult bees are inoculated upon emerging
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Active in the conversion of pollen to bee breadWhat happens when you limit nutrition?
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Colonies fed artificial pollen and sugar syrup ONLY for 6 weeks•
Colony will decline – due to lack of bacteria in the gut•
A reduction of beneficial microbes will cause nutritional deficiencies resulting in:• An Increase in Disease
• Supersedure of Queens
Upsetting the Balance
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Applying Anti-bacterial and Anti-fungal treatments, kill beneficials•
Essential Oils and organic acids are anti-bacterial and anti-fungal•
Kill off mites with poisons•
Contaminating the wax, then reusing it•
The bees are failing…why?Sustainable Beekeeping
• You CAN grow your apiary without buying bees
• Make splits into NUCs in late summer – re-queen them
• Overwinter those NUCs
• It makes sense:
• Bee populations decrease in the Fall and cluster in Winter
• They don’t take up as much room as a full hive so NUCs are ideal for winter
• Tips:
• Be sure to leave them enough honey to feed them over winter or feed sugar syrup, dry sugar or candy boards (you decide what works for you)
More Things to Ponder
• WE LIVE IN SOUTHEAST TEXAS!
• Beekeeping here is different than South Dakota or South Carolina or Nebraska or Maine
• Bees don’t read books, they live by instinct alone and do what is right for THEM
• We get very few days/nights of freezing weather
• What do bees do on a sunny warm winter day? They leave the hive.
• What are they doing? Cleansing flights and looking for nectar/pollen.
• What if they don’t find either? They have wasted energy and return to consume honey stores.
Bees will Change Your LIFE!
• You notice fears you never had before, then work to overcome them which in turn, builds confidence
• Bees change the way you think, breathe and move as you are forced to slow down
• You learn to appreciate the complexity of the hive the more you observe them
• You start to notice other kinds of bees; solitary bees and bumble bees and you watch them too!
• Hopefully you stop thinking in terms of the bees “doing the right thing” or “doing the wrong thing” but start to see that the bees are almost always doing the “right thing”. What
Speaking of Change
• The world around us is ever changing and so is the world of Beekeeping, as you progress with this journey you must be open minded to:
• New ideas
• New practices
• New solutions
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Einstein said, “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, is the definition of insanity”.Credits
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The Practical Beekeeper, Michael Bush, Bush Farms•
Sustainable Beekeeping, Mike Palmer•
The Hive and the Honey Bee, Dadant & Sons