New Venture

[John1982]

Just give them lots of honey (or brew them some mead) and they'll probably forgive you….

You'd be surprised how many urban beekeepers there are

I'm fitting 2 hives in the backyard, in addition to the Falconry Mews and the swimming pool, so I'm sure you can do it too Doolittle

I want to see the mews when it's done! One of my childhood friend's dad was a falconer and he'd take us hunting sometimes - amazing stuff.

[John1982]

Awesome! My mom had two hives in the back yard before she passed away. I don't know how much the hives produced, but I do know that she was always giving us honey.

Apiculture is much more popular than I expected. I learned my father's father kept bees when he was living too. When I went to pickup my hive there were at least 30 other folks there doing the same thing. Apparently, one hive can produce several hundred pounds of honey in a season - so many factors involved though, it could also produce zilch.

[John1982]

Nice! I've always been curious about beekeeping. I'm just a bit jealous that you're getting to live my pipe dream. Maybe someday I'll be brave enough to 1) bring up this topic to my wife, and 2) put this curiosity into an actual plan. I'd like to have something similar to one of these:

I've never seen one of those, pretty cool!

[John1982]

I'm super jealous! I have wanted a bee hive and honey for quite awhile. Unfortunately my yard isnt big enough and my neighbor's are all too close. Please make sure you post lots of pics and stuff! And if you ever get too much honey....

I've been told bees tend to fly level once they get going so if you put a privacy fence around your hive they should be high flyers and not a nuisance to your neighbors. Hives are kind of like snake/rat racks in that they use a small footprint, packing a lot of action in a little space.

[BFE Pets]

surprisingly I was just speaking to Aaron Pauling about this very same subject last night! he's been doing it for years and seems very knowledgeable on the subject. hit him up if you have any questions being a new beek. He even has 3 hives of africanized bees lol.

[Mike41793]

This is really cool. Beekeeping has always interested me too.

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[Pampho85]

Nice to see someone else in the hobby! By that, I don't mean I'm currently in, but, I was in charge of taking care of three beehives at a nature preserve for three years. And while researching in Peru, I helped to take out two wild hives.

Keep us updated!


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[ChrisS]

How's the bees coming along?

[John1982]

Had some family over today and got a few pics while I messed with the bees so thought I'd update. Overall, I tend to neglect my hive and let them do their own thing. With so much rain this year we never got a strong nectar flow and they were looking on the barren side all summer. I was going to feed them today but it seems the last month has been dry enough; the fall flowers have been able to provide plenty of nectar. They hive has basically tripled in size since my last check a couple weeks ago and I ended up with 3 jars of honey just from the burr comb I had to remove.

Looking for the queen on one of my brood frames:

There she is, always easy to spot this big gal:

Inspecting some fresh drawn comb. You can also see some of the burr on the wall of the top deep sitting on the table and what was left after I removed some from the top of the bottom frames. It was a mess but I enjoy playing with my bees so it was a good time cleaning them up - tastes good too:

Bees capping off some honey, had several frames full of this liquid gold:

[Reinz]

Very interesting, I enjoyed your post and thread.