Acquiring the Bees

As long as you aren allergic to bee stings beekeeping is a way for someone who doesn have a great deal of money and acres of land to take an active role in agriculture. Once you have purchased a hive it can be kept in a remote corner of your back yard, it is not uncommon to see some suburban homes with a bee hive.

Beekeeping and the Apple Orchards

The country is full of apple orchards. Apple orchards are where the apples you buy in the supermarket come from. Applesauce is made out of apples grown in orchards. People who drink apple juice and apple cider enjoy the produce provided by the hardworking orchard owners. Without apple orchards there would be no apple pies. The world would be a sadder place without apple orchards.

Bee keeping Equipment

Like all hobbies, beekeeping requires some basic equipment before someone can establish a successful hive. This equipment should be bought before you get a call from the post office asking you to come pick up bees.The most obvious piece of equipment you will need is the actual bee hive.

Beekeeping in different areas of the world

Many areas in the world are producers of honey and beeswax for medicinal and food purposes. Youll find a lot of beekeeping in the United States, Asia, Africa, and some parts of Europe.

Curbside Honey Sales

The roadside stand is as common a site in rural America as the lemonade stand is in the city. Whenever a someones garden produces a surplus of produce the farmers drag out an old card table, load it down with baskets of fruit and vegetables and slap a for sale sign in front of it. The same roadside stand that you use to sell your extra fruit and vegetables can also be used to sell your excess honey that youve collected fro, your bee hive.

Family owned beekeeping companies

Beekeeping isn just something you go into its something you e raised and brought up in. Most companies that deal with beekeeping and providing beekeeping supplies are family owned. Dadant and Sons, a company based out of Hamilton, IL has been in the business of providing beekeeping equipment and attire for the past 140 years. They sell everything from beekeeping attire from the head to the torso, and even full body suits with headwear. They also sell journals that are published about beekeeping and also selling copies from the archives as well.

Harvesting the Honey

Obviously the whole reason to set up, maintain, and stock a beehive is to harvest honey. You will know that it is time to harvest the honey when you look in one of your hives supers and find that the frames are full of honey combs that your bees have covered with wax caps.

Bee Honey

Honey bees spend their entire life pollinating flowers and making honey. Bees use pollen that they gather from flowers to create honey that the bees use to feed themselves. Beekeepers are responsible for removing the honey from the bees and using for human consumption.

How to Make a Honey Extractor

In order to get honey from your beehive you have to be able to extract the honey from the honey comb. In order to do this you have to have to have a honey extractor. If there is a group of beekeepers in an area they will sometimes pool their money together to purchase a honey extractor that they share. If you are not in a large beekeeping environment and do not want to spend a few hundred dollars on a manufactured honey extractor you might want to make your own.

How to market your honey

Marketing honey in todays market is going to pose a bit of a challenge since you have so many commercial level sellers doing this with the resources to promote and market the product since not all places will purchase and carry your product. This is why many small businesses who do this sell to lower end stores and mom and pop places because when they get people buying thats how many of them end up in large scale stores like Whole Foods Market and other stores that carry name brand organic food.

Packaging Your Honey

Large beekeepers can not turn a profit if they limit their market to their local community. Beekeepers who have several colonies must be able to sell their product at larger grocery stores and supermarkets if they want to remain financially solvent.

Processing Raw Honey

After the beekeeper collects the honey its processed immediately after harvesting because it crystallizes when its allowed to sit. It has to be heated up between 150-170 degrees because it carries the bacterium that causes botulism, which can be dangerous since this is the very bacterium that causes food poisoning. Honey is actually sweeter than table sugar, but the problem with table sugar is that its bleached white since actual unprocessed raw sugar is brown. Honey is pasteurized to kill off the bacteria like botulism to make it safe to eat and to put in food.

Selling Honey to a Local Market

One of the reasons people become involved with beekeeping is so that they can market the honey. Many beekeepers chose to sell their honey to a local market.

Starting your own beekeeping business

Starting a beekeeping business may sound exciting and fun, but in all reality its a lot of work and is time consuming. Most people who are in this are actually doing this as a hobby. Having a hobby and a livelihood are two entirely different areas since one is something you invest time and in some cases money and one is when you e trying to make a living at. Beekeeping is like farming you have to stay on top of the market demands and be technologically savvy because much of the business is going to depend on how fast you can produce a single product.

Swarming

The springtime is the time when honeybees reproduce. The natural means of reproduction for honey bees is called swarming. The springtime swarming period typically last about three weeks. Normally a single swarm of honey bees divide and becomes two during the swarming period.

The Biology of Bees

Theres approximately 20,000 species of bees throughout the world making them the interest of beekeepers who rely on them to cross pollinate because when bees do that it changes not only the flowers they collect pollen from creating new species of flowers, but it also changes the consistency of the honey the produce. Beekeepers also track bees when they cross breed with other species of bees and thats how they track their habits from mating to origin of where they come from. Beekeepers will also track their honey production since different species of bees will also produce different consistencies of honey.

The Life Cycle of the Honey Bee

A beekeeper, whether a casual hobbyist or a large commercial producer, can not be successful unless they fully understand the life cycle of the honey bee.

The Queen Bee

The survival of a colony of bees living in a bee hive depends on the queen bee. Without a queen bee the hive will eventually die. The hives queen is the only female bee in the hive that has fully developed reproductive organs. The queen is not in control of the hive. Her soul purpose is to lay eggs that will develop into bees that will fill other roles in the hive.

The Science and Technology of Beekeeping

Modern science has allowed us to cultivate a food product that works much better than sugar and is readily available, but the issue is that the production element is seasonal unfortunately. Thats because bees are less active during the cold months and that can slow production down until around late March early April when the flowers officially bloom which makes pollen the plentiful for bees to feed on. Science is a mystery for bees because in some ways they resemble humans by how they sense changes in weather, environment and the organization of how they live resembles a lot like humans.

The things a beekeeper uses

When beekeepers go to work they have essential tools needed to keep themselves safe because having a couple hundred beestings can be fatal. This is why its important that beekeepers practice and exercise safety. First and foremost beekeepers wear protective suits that are supposed to be puncture and sting proof because there are cases where the bees will swarm and have covered beekeepers from head to toe. They wear a mesh screen face protector to protect their face from the bees when they e flying around. They also use a smoker to calm the bees down.

Transferring Your Bees to Their New Home

Youve done your beekeeping homework. Youve chosen a site for your beehive where it won be knocked down in a strong wind, or be bothered by pets and humans. Youve purchased all the right equipment and are comfortable using it. Youve tried on all your beekeeping gear and are comfortable that it fits you properly and are confident that you are reasonably protected from bee stings. During the cold winter months you placed an order for your bees and were notified that your bees were successfully shipped.

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