Homestead Handbook Beginning with Honeybees

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How do you get bees? There're three ways. You might catch a wild spring swarm (a cluster of bees that have left their hive and are temporarily hanging from a tree or bush). Hiving a swarm is an exciting, glamorous beekeeping adventure consisting of setting an empty hive under the clustered bees and shaking them down into it. But most folks would find that a bit unnerving for their inaugural apicultural experience. (Psst: It's easier than it looks. Swarms, being homeless, are often quite docile.)

You might be able to buy an established hive from another beekeeper. This can be a good way to start out (it'll probably cost from $50 to $100) . . . but don't buy a colony that hasn't been formally inspected either by an apiarist from your state department of agriculture — it's free — or by someone you know who knows bees. I did once, only to learn later that the bees had American foulbrood, a contagious disease so dreaded I had to kill all the bees and burn out the equipment!

The most common and reliable way of starting out is to simply order your bees by mail. (That's right, the postal service ships bees!) A three-pound box of packaged bees will contain about 10,000 workers . . . one mated, ready-to-start-laying queen . . . and some sugar water to feed the small colony en route. (It'll set you back around $30.) And if you give the folks at your post office your phone number, they'll gladly call you when the shipment arrives so you can promptly pick the bees up.

Installing the little crate of bees in an empty hive is a simple operation that even a novice can handle. (I did it my first year . . . and, believe me, I was a novice!) Essentially — any beginning beekeeping book has all the details — the procedure involves setting the separately caged queen in your hive and then pouring the other bees over her by shaking them out of the crate like marbles! You won't get hurt (honest!) . . . the travel-weary bees don't have a home to defend and are flat-out discombobulated at this point, anyway.

A package colony will devote most of its energy during its first season to building up enough numbers and stores to last through the winter. So you probably won't get your own honey harvest from it until year number two. That's the disadvantage of starting with a package. One nice advantage, though, is that you get to learn with a less threatening number of bees. Your experience grows as the colony does.

Working Bees

Have some of you been reading this article impatiently . . . wondering when I was going to get around to the real meat of the matter: going out and facing 50,000 armed insects alone? If so, your wait is over. It's time to talk about working bees.

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