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I act as some sort of apprentice for my grandfathers bees, were down to 30 this year  . we have 20 boxes coming at the end of the month, and we would like to get back up to around 100 hives by the end of the year, but im concerned that it's going to be an awful dry year. I can offer my 2c if anyone has a question. More just interested in watching everyone else get into bees while i try and get out of the bussiness.
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Mar 22, 2009 01:52
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 22:15 |
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Most of the time the bees spend around the farms and orchards in the area. During the late summer and over the winter they occupy not even a quarter acre. They're in Rural PA so they're surrounded by farms and gardens wherever they sit. A lot of the plants that they get their nectar from are the weed plants and trees. We do sell the honey at a few markets and festivals. We actually sell more honey than we produce at the moment so we buy from a few of the larger beekeepers in the area who ship their bees to Florida and California to pollinate the oranges and nuts respectively. It's not so much that it's a hard thing to sell (its sugar, who doesn't like sugar, but the markets that we've been using the past while are highly dependent on travelers. I'm not optimistic about people traveling this year. The more successful beekeepers I've known generally make their living off of leasing out their bees to pollinate crops. When you can get anywhere between 50-100+ for setting them in an orchard somewhere it turns into a business of scale. The difficult part of having so many hives is having to quickly take care of the individual hives. These beekeepers also generally have a few thousand hives, and maybe hire 2-3 others/involve family. Maintenance is fairly easy, we buy our hives un-assembled (guess who gets to do that bit) and we generally get everything put together this time of the year or earlier. Last week we went down through the supers and frames and pulled out the obvious bad ones so we can order what we need. My only real advice would be to see if there is a local bee club, and maybe even look into some of the larger groups. For example http://www.abfnet.org/ The American Beekeepers Federation. All i can think of off the top of my head.
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Mar 22, 2009 23:02
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Unless someone has a better reason I was always under the impression that white paint = cheap. Queen exploder sounds so much more entertaining. Nice hive!
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Mar 25, 2009 04:06
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If your willing to spare the window you could also bastardize a nook (4 frame hive for starting new colonies) to hang out of a window much like an air conditioner, though it will be a pain to work on. There's a guy that has a small hive like this that we supply bees to for bee sting therapy. I'm sure his nurses love him for that.
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Mar 26, 2009 05:14
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