First of all “Why keep bees?”

Beekeeping is something you will either love or hate. You will either become extremely passionate about it or you will give up in a very short time. There are two things which may cause you to give up: Stings and impatience on you part.

Can you stand the stings? They say “No pain, no gain”. When I was a boy my dad used to say “It is a good thing that bees sting. If they didn’t, then everybody would keep bees and there would be nobody to sell honey to”. That may not be entirely true but he did have a point.

The second is also true. My dad gave me my first hive when I was about twelve. I was so chuffed that I looked in it almost every day. Needless to say there was (visibly) no more honey in the hive than there had been the day before. It wasn’t long before I lost interest and my dad incorporated ‘my hive’ in with his own. Every couple of weeks he’d give me a few bob for ‘my share’ of the honey.

He also made quite a bit by selling hives, with bees, plus a whole lot of the paraphernalia that goes with it, then, a few months later, buying it all back again at half the price.

Some very important considerations will be:
1. It will cost a lot of money to get started. This can be recouped within two to three years if you sell your honey, though it could also take longer, depending on the source of the nectar.
2. There will be w-o-r-k involved.
3. You will also have to learn about bees. It is not enough to get a bunch of bees, put them in a box then sit back and wait. You could have a hive with 100 000 bees in it one day and the next there may be only 10 000. Or worse still, it could be empty.
Bees require proper management to prevent, or reduce the likelihood of them absconding.
4. You will need a safe site. They must be safe from robbery, either by people or animals such as badgers. They must also be in a position where they will not be a nuisance to other people or animals (especially horses). Bees and horses really don’t get along and it’s usually the horses that fare the worse. And that will lead you into a lot of hot water.

In my next article I will deal with choosing a site and some of the ‘paraphernalia’ you will require.