Taking On Livestock, Part I
(Page 2 of 8)
March/April 1987
By John Vivian
And managing a hive takes very little time, only about five to 10 hours a year (see Fig. 1). The bees take care of all their breeding, feeding, and watering needs, except for the occasional early spring when their own honey stores run short and you have to supply sugar water for a few weeks. What's more, in most places, the state bee inspector will give your colonies a free annual check-up for disease-whether you want it or not.
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You may consider an individual bee to be nothing but a loud buzz with a sting attached, but a healthy colony is a warm (90°F or more in the middle) and vibrant community of up to 100,000 individual creatures. Its intricate workings are more fascinating than the behavior of any poultry or four-legged stock.
And there's a satisfaction to keeping bees that's lacking in most other animal husbandry. You'll experience an altogether different thrill from handling frames of comb covered with thousands of bees. They are gently humming insects pacified by the fumes from your smoker, to be sure (Fig. 2). But almost every one comes equipped with a stinger, and it is your beekeeping skill and patience that keep those stingers sheathed. There's a stimulating sense of risk to working bees-just enough danger to spice up the day.
Then, of course, there's the reward of your own golden and flower-scented honey, pooling with butter on a fresh-baked bran muffin. While a good hive in a good location can produce over 100 pounds of honey a year, even an average colony should give you at least 20 to 30 pounds (unless the weather or bees fail completely).
What are the drawbacks to beekeeping? Stings, of course-even the best hive tenders get stung. But an experienced backyard beekeeper can reduce the occurrence to a rarity, scrape that occasional stinger out quickly to practically eliminate venom intake, and actually develop an immunity to bee venom. (Note: A small proportion of the populace is allergic to bee venom. If anyone in your family has allergy problems, take a trip to the physician for a stinging-insect sensitivity test before you take up bees.)
Differentiate early between pets and beasts that will be food.
And while small-scale beekeeping doesn't take much time once you know what you're doing, it does take some skill. (And it takes considerable time those first couple of beekeeping years to gain those skills.) You have to know what to look for in a hive (and how to do it without upsetting the inhabitants), how to reduce swarming (the tendency colonies have to split in half in spring, with one half leaving your hive), and several other tricks of the trade (such as harvesting honey without harvesting bees). Your management skill is necessary to a colony's health, growth, and production. Without it, your colonies may, in time, dwindle and die.
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