The bee keeper diaries

[Groves]

Roundup may be used as a herbicide, but let’s not pretend it’s harmless when ingested by bees or animals.

We only keep bees so our family has good lead-free honey not from China. We sell our surplus to locals. Only had 35lbs or so to sell. Gone in a day.




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[Giant Octopodes]

Originally Posted by Groves

Roundup may be used as a herbicide, but let’s not pretend it’s harmless when ingested by bees or animals.

We only keep bees so our family has good lead-free honey not from China. We sell our surplus to locals. Only had 35lbs or so to sell. Gone in a day.


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1) Those jars are indeed very pretty, and very nice composition and lighting in this and some of your other shots. Do you do photography on the side as well?

2) When you say "Only had 35lbs to sell", is that an implication 35lbs is unusually light, or are you just saying you have a small operation for personal consumption? If the former, what's a normal harvest? Regardless, what time period of harvesting does that represent? A month? A year? Or do you irregularly harvest based on personal need so it varies too much to meaningfully say?

[Groves]

Originally Posted by Giant Octopodes

1) Those jars are indeed very pretty, and very nice composition and lighting in this and some of your other shots. Do you do photography on the side as well?

2) When you say "Only had 35lbs to sell", is that an implication 35lbs is unusually light, or are you just saying you have a small operation for personal consumption? If the former, what's a normal harvest? Regardless, what time period of harvesting does that represent? A month? A year? Or do you irregularly harvest based on personal need so it varies too much to meaningfully say?

1. Those are Muth jars, based on a late 1800s design. I like em. I definitely do not do photography on the side, but you're very kind to think so.

2. Beekeepers have tended to lump themselves into one of three categories.

Hobbyists: Can have any number of hives, but don't rely on income. They're playing around, even if they're serious. This is me. I have between 1 and 8 hives at any given time, and even though I sell honey, it's not meaningful income. I just like my hobbies to pay for themselves!

Sideliners: These are people for whom beekeeping is a side gig, and quasi their second job. These are the guys still figuring out that a hobby that becomes a job is not as fun.

Professionals: These guys are all in. They make their living with bees. They could rent out their hives to almond or apple orchards, or they could just have a bunch of hives in a bunch of places. All types of people.

I'm definitely a hobbyist, and right now we have two hives. We run smaller hives than most people, so our "boxes" weigh less. My 35 lbs was taken from two boxes, one from each hive. The boxes weigh a bit more, but I do keep some honey. That's what I'm doing all this for. The excess is just a bonus.

A typical langstroth medium honey super might have 30lbs of extractable honey, where mine gave me about 18lbs. My old back appreciates the difference.

It is possible to harvest at many different times of year, but we harvest in the Fall. So that would be per year.

Once I had a hive blow over in February, so we "harvested" that one in February. Likewise I had a hive too small to defend it's considerable honey stores on some warm December days once, and so my boys and I retrieved it at night when the other bees "weren't lookin'!" That was a Dec "harvest" of sorts.

We follow the methodologies in this book. Here's the pdf if anyone wants it.
http://www.users.callnetuk.com/~heaf...ng_for_all.pdf

The hive is easy to build and relatively no-fuss. Here are the plans.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/395scssvk6...erial.pdf?dl=0

I've also been helped by this book which shares how to know what's going on inside from observation.
http://www.biobees.com/library/gener...20Entrance.pdf

I'm a big fan of freedom, which means I don't care how other people keep their bees. They can use common hives or weird ones. Traditional methods or new-fangled.

We don't treat with chemicals, but plenty of friends do. Their choice. I love this country. Winter is a great time to build a hive. Why not you?