Homestead Handbook Beginning with Honeybees

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Homestead Handbook

Sheep, chickens, horses, pigs . . . if I could have only one kind of homestead livestock, I'd choose honeybees. You never have to muck out stalls of bee manure. You don't need to keep their water trough thawed in subfreezing weather. And — thank God — you don't have to get up in the dark every morning before even a rooster goes off and go out to pull on some bee udders. Members of Apismellifera can clean themselves, fetch their own food and water, and store your harvest. They'll even patch their home's leaks!

The fact that honeybees practically take care of themselves is really only a small part of their appeal. Even the golden sweetener they provide (which, like every other homegrown product, is worlds better than its oversanitized store counterpart) isn't what makes them irresistible to me. The plain truth is I can no longer imagine my life without those creatures and the fascination and respect they engender. A honeybee colony is a mysterious and independent creation. Bees haven't been bred and rebred into docile egg machines or walking meat racks. They are as wild today as when they were first imported into this country. As a consequence, working with bees is a challenge (and lesson) in cooperation, not domination... a rare human-to-nature experience these days.

But enough rhapsodizing. If you now keep bees, you're probably already stricken with the obsession known as bee fever. I'm going to address myself here to those who might be considering beekeeping. If you're like I was a few years ago, the two things holding you back are ignorance and fear (nobody wants to get stung, right?). Well, I'll try my best to help you start dealing with both those factors. The books and the bees will teach you the rest.

Facts of Bee-oIogy

Honeybees live in complex communities that may contain as many as 100,000 members. The vast majority of these are the unfertile females known as workers. And do they work. They run the hive . . . feed and clean the queen . . . gather nectar, pollen, and water (nectar gets converted into carbohydrate-rich honey; pollen is used as is for protein-rich "bee bread") . . . cool or heat the hive, as needed . . . feed developing larvae . . . and make the beeswax they use to build all the hive's cells. During the peak of the season, a worker will live only six weeks before she dies from exhaustion. She'll have gathered enough nectar to make 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey.

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