My beekeeping adventure

I decided to keep bees in June of 2013 and started reading everything I could. I poured over the books and magazines and spent countless hours watching YouTube videos. I joined both the Tennessee Beekeepers Association and my local Rutherford County Beekeepers Association. Once I determined what type of bee and hives I wanted, I ordered everything online. Everything but the bees arrived in November.  I wasted no time and started building.

Now to paint

All Finished

These are call Langstroth Hives. I'm using all 8 frame medium hive bodies, Ultimate Hive Stands, solid bottom boards, slatted racks, foundationless frames, wooden hive top feeder and the English Style Garden Copper Tops. These two hives will go in my backyard.

Because I have a dog and I don't want to mow right up to the hives, I decided to partition a section of my yard with wood pallets to give the bees their own area. Notice it's proximity to my garden to the right.

The apiary is 24 feet by 24 feet. I then laid down weed fabric to suppress grass and covered that with 4 inches of crushed limestone. The plastic tubs will be filled with water for them to drink, complete with rocks large enough so that the bees have something to land on and walk down to the water. Otherwise they can drown.

Now everything is all setup.

Even the dog approves :)

I also decided to build my own Top Bar Hive

It has a glass viewing area so I can watch them build comb without disturbing them.

This is a top bar that the bees will attach comb to. There are 37 of these.

I'm putting this hive on my front porch so I painted it white to blend in with my railing. I don't get many front door visitors so hopefully this won't be a problem.

I decided to install handles on all of the top bars for easier handling.

Here's me and my dad at a Beginner's Beekeeping course.

Finally on April 1, 2014, I get the call to come pick up my bees. I've ordered three 3 pound packages of bees that are raised on smell cell (4.9mm), treatment free (no chemicals used for pest) and they have combination of Italian, Carniolan and Russian genetics. Above all, I just hope they're gentle bees. Each box or "package" has about 10,000 bees in it. They should increase this summer to about 50,000 per hive.

Here we go with the installation

I think my bees will do well because being a good steward of nature already, practicing good bee husbandry should come easily to me (plus I have a lot of free time to devote to this). In addition to providing lots of fresh water, I'll also be providing many things for them to forage on (all neonicotinoid free). Bees can fly up to 3 miles to find food. In my yard alone they'll have dandelion and clover (80% of my yard is white clover).

Plus these perennials:

Globe Thistle

Sedum

Lavander

Bee Balm

Asters

Hollyhocks

Hyacinth

Crocus

These annuals:

Borage

Cosmos

Calendula

Sweet Asylum

Poppy

Zinnia

Cleome

Heliotrope

Sunflower

And these edibles:

Almonds 

Apples 

Basil

Blackberry 

Blueberry 

Cantaloupe

Corn 

Cucumber 

Mint 

Plums 

Pumpkin 

Raspberry 

Strawberry  

Watermelon

Check out my boring bee videos on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqVfD297pyRWgjSNKPkgAUg/videos

and

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQaLOM1PDqEqoavdaU7tOpA/videos

Bees

Since I have a decent size garden (it will be even bigger in 2014) and lots of  fruit trees and almond tress, it only makes sense that my next step in the self-sufficient lifestyle would be to start beekeeping.

Why beekeeping? Lots of reasons.

1. To pollinate my crops. Some fruits and veggies don't require pollination but a lot do. Including about 30 things that I'm growing. And nothing pollinates better than the honeybee.

2. To help the bees! Bees are disappearing in record numbers across the planet for various reasons. As an animal lover, I want to do my part to help keep these little guys (gals) around.

3. Honey!

4. As a homage to my late grandparents, Jack and Ann, who had about 5 or 6 hives during the 70's and 80's. Fun story: When I was 3 years old, me and my cousin (also 3) snuck out of my grandparents house and walked about 150 yards to their beehives that were nestled on a hill by their garden. One of us thought it would be a great idea to put a stick in the entrance of a hive and rattle the stick back and forth. Obviously this was a bad idea. We were both stung over 100 times each! Our screams brought the adults running to us. They got stung pretty good too as they brushed the bees off of us. We hauled butt to the nearest hospital which was 30 miles away (we were in nowhere Mississippi). Thankfully nobody died. I never blamed the bees for stinging us. They were just defending their home and doing what comes natural. But I did give those hives a wide berth for a few years afterwards.

5. To share a hobby with my dad. At 65, he's retired and needs something to do. Here's a picture of my dad. Handsome huh?

6. Just to enjoy the bees company. One of my favorite places to be is my backyard. Now I'll have something really cool to watch.

There are other reasons but those are the highlights.

Now Dad and I have to decide what kind of hives and bees to get. We want at least 2 hives. We are leaning towards getting either Russian or Italian bees. Both are good bees known to be gentle, productive, etc.

As far as hives go, we are leaning toward the 8 frame, medium super, Langstroth hive.

There's also the standard 10 frame deep hive. But when full of honey, this weighs a lot more.

Another type is the top bar hive. They look like this.

Part of me wants to have 3 hives. Two for the backyard (where the garden is) and one for my front porch. My porch is pretty long and I think a top bar hive would go nicely where that red bench is. Plus I'll be growing 5 different varieties of gourds next year in my front yard. They require pollination too.

What do bees like to gather nectar from? Here's a partial list.

I already have most of these things growing in my yard and I plan on planting a lot more this fall and next spring. 

Besides subscribing to Bee Culture magazine and American Bee Journal magazine, I've bought and read the following:

Beekeeping For Dummies

The Backyard Beekeepers Honey Handbook

The Complete Idiots Guide to BeeKeeping

From A to Bee: My First Year As a Beekeeper

The Barefoot Beekeeper 

Honey Bee Hobbyist: The Care of Keeping Bees

Keeping Honey Bees

Build Your Own BeeKeeping Equipment

Robbing the Bees

ABC and XYZ of BeeKeeping

Natural Beekeeping 

The Thinking Beekeeper 

Top Bar Beekeeping 

From A to Bee: My First Year as a Beekeeper 

The Hive and the Honey Bee

I figure between all those magazines and books, along with YouTube videos and monthly meetings with the local beekeeping association, I should know what I'm doing. But like most things, experience is the best teacher.

So the next time you see these guys...

...ask us about our bees.