Beekeeping is a noble practice that deserves to be fully appreciated. As bee populations continue to decline at a rapid pace, people are drawn to learn beekeeping and apply the best practices in order to keep them safe. Managing hives in efficient ways so bees can successfully thrive has become an important mission in every beekeeper’s life, alongside the satisfaction of honey extraction.
What better hobby is there other than tasting that delicious honey at the end of a glorious season while keeping bees protected? Beekeeping is definitely worth a try in the long run, to practice either as a hobby or as a professional career in this field.
One thing is for sure! Passion, motivation and hard skills are at the heart of successful beekeeping. If you wish to bring a positive impact on the environment and live a more sustainable life, then beekeeping is the right path for you.
Before taking the jump, you have to make sure you have by your side the proper knowledge of what beekeeping implies.
When considering building your own beehives, you must choose the space where your bees are going to live. Before doing that, check the local rules and regulations in your own city. When it comes to laws regarding keeping bees, in some cities you must comply with getting permission or a license while in others there are no requirements. It is much better to ask your beekeepers’ association and find out all the necessary conditions for setting up your first hive.
First and foremost, a brand-new beekeeper has to be packed with the right equipment. Just like an astronaut can’t go into space without his protective suit, nor a beekeeper can step into the backyard without his beekeeping kit.
Managing apiaries is not an easy job. There are plenty of tools that need to be used as a new beekeeper, each one of them having their own important purpose.
One of the most important tools is information. Knowledge is power so learning as much as possible about beekeeping will only bring great benefits to you.
For thousands of years, beekeepers have loved to put their hands at work. Generations of beekeepers have witnessed big revolutions regarding the way beekeeping is practiced. From the invention of Langstroth hive, which made inspections easier to handle, to innovative devices such as the Flow Hive for harvesting honey and hive gadgets with infrared technology for winter monitoring.
Nowadays, innovative technologies such as apiary management software or beekeeping apps continue to make waves in the industry and set a new standard for recording data.
Studying and analyzing your hives is an ongoing process and the information you can draw out from them is limitless.
For a long time, notebooks have been the first go-to support in keeping records about the work done in the apiary.
Modern beekeeping comes in full swing with innovative apps meant to help beekeepers track their activities more efficiently. There are many apiary management apps on the market. As long as you have access to a smartphone, you can download the app and get ready to set up your tasks.
Apiary Book is one of the solutions that really practices what it preaches. All the important activities done in the apiary can be logged into the app with the help of user-friendly features designed to record all the important information that is easily accessible.
The first year of beekeeping is quite difficult until you gain the right confidence.
As a newbie, you will want to ask various questions about the complex world of bees. Even experienced beekeepers still have a lot to learn because there are still undiscovered territories that need to be explored. One thing is for sure, the more we learn about bees, the more we realize that we still have so much to learn about. To bond with your bees, first you must get to know them.
Hive robbing, bee bearding are some of bees’ different ways of testing your beekeeping skills.
In a hive robbing situation, your hive is about to be invaded by another bee colony from another hive to steal stored honey. It’s a battle that can have deadly consequences for your hive because the invaded colony will leave your hive without any source of food.
When you notice your bees are hanging in front of their hives, they are bearding. It is a natural behaviour that usually happens during the hottest days of summer. To cool their hive interior, bees gather in front of the hive in a beard-like shape and flap their wings to pull the cool air inside the hive.
An exciting profession like beekeeping also comes with a lot of challenges, questions to be answered and valuable advice from experts.
Discover on porch.com a whole guide that contains expert advice about the pros and cons of open feeding, how to handle hive robbing, bee bearding, how to protect your bees from pesticides or understanding Colony Collapse Disorder. In a nutshell, everything you need to know to start off on the right foot as a beekeeper.
