This will be our first year to keep bees! We’ve been thinking about it for years, but we were kicked into gear by a friend mentioning a beekeeping class in town (by the Bee Girl). We went. We played with bees. We’re hooked.
I got my hives in – ordered from the Ohio Bee Box Company – yesterday, and I’ve unboxed and played with those. But I’m DYING for the end of March, when I can pick up my bees!
In the meantime I’m reading*, watching YouTube videos, and obsessively checking the Reddit Beekeeping sub. Here’s your picture for the day, courtesy of user doe-het-zelf:
Things to remember:
- The slang for beekeeper is “beek”.
- Skeps are illegal in places, because you can’t check the health of the bees, or harvest honey without destroying the hive. (The picture above is a sun hive, which is different.)
- The Beekeeper’s Handbook has tons of really cool info about the private lives of bees. E.g., bee jobs are partly dependent on the bee’s age, but they’re really flexible according to the needs of the hive. Nectar flow on? More bees will become foragers. And so on.
- Edit: I just found the Texas beekeeping laws, and am reading them. Damn, I’ve got it baaaad…
Books: Beekeeper’s Handbook, Top-Bar Beekeeping, Home-Grown Honeybees.
We Owls 