To Bee or Not to Bee a Bee Farmer

This introduction section is for the individual interested in tending bees or for a student who is doing a report on honeybees and beekeeping. To be honest this can be a fascinating hobby or a thriving business with a lot of side benefits but there is a lot of knowledge that will be needed so let's get started. There are three bee entities here, the queen whose job is to procreate the hive through egg-laying, the drones which tend to the queen, and the workers who gather the nectar and make the honey and boy do they work. If human beings worked as hard as they do productivity would be through the roof. Now beekeeping is not as simple as throwing a wood box in the back yard and hoping the bees will move right in there is a lot of thought as to how the box or hive is to be constructed, how to entice bees in when you find a swarm or when you purchase a hive, how to keep them and keep them happy, how to protect, how to extract and process honey, so you see things are starting to get complicated.

And there are pests and diseases that can attack the hive also so you will need some up front knowledge here. As a plus when you keep bees and a garden you will have a better garden with more produce because of better pollination and if a flower garden more bountiful flowers. Bees are similar to people in that if they are happy and satisfied they stay, if not they leave so making them happy is important. The hive structure must be such that the bees can maintain for the building of their combs for honey storage and the queen chamber for egg production, it must be expandable as the honey volume and hive population increase, capable of ventilation (bees set up their own fan system) and protected from weather extremes of hot and cold.

Knowing how to protect yourself and how to keep the bees docile when servicing the hives and knowing when to service the hive goes far in whether you are successful or not. Do the bees have a large enough foraging area like a flower or vegetable garden, clover fields or flower bearing trees? For an experienced beekeeper there is always room for improvement. There can be new ideas in honey processing and hive construction, new pest and disease detection and how to control procedures. What about new research in bee behavior and the work being done about routing out the bad or aggressive breeds? Then the new products being derived from honey, beeswax, bee pollen and propolis wouldn't you like to know this? Probably a lot of your knowledge was derived by trial and error, so for more profitability one can learn the successes of others who have overcome the problems associated with bees and beekeeping.