Wednesday, February 23, 2011

On Beekeeping...

Beekeeping takes up all of the senses. It starts on the drive out to the hives - windows rolled down, the sweet scent of beeswax filling up the car. At the hives, your ears are filled with the simultaneous quiet and buzz. Your nose is alert to all the smells – sometimes the scent of the wax is really strong, and you’re always smelling to make sure things are right. There’s also the burning of twigs and burlap in the smoker, which sometimes you accidentally inhale and it chokes you up like you took a big drag of your first cigarette. Then there’s the rush of having thousands of bees humming and buzzing in the hive, flying up and out, and crawling on you.

There’s always lifting involved, too, and honey’s heavy. If it’s hot, lifting a box off the hive can put me into a terrible sweat, and I’m standing there, bees getting louder, and time shortening. My dad, who has been known to wear a veil but forget to close it and therefore get stung on the neck or the face, has taught me to work through the panic I feel sometimes, and basically trust the bees. Last season I was only stung once, at the very beginning of the spring. It’s a wonderful feeling to get through a hive check, or having to do a bunch of cleaning and pulling apart the hives in the spring or something, when the bees are all around you, and to feel calm.

2 comments:

  1. How wonderful. Life is very synchronatic (is that a word)? My son wants to get into beekeeping. I have never met anyone as crazy for honey, bee bread, propolis, and such than him!!
    We have quite a few bee keepers on the island here. One, Fredrich's honey has been in business for years.
    What would you suggest as to getting started?

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  2. That's cool! Honeybees are so interesting!
    Getting started can be the more expensive part. The trouble is that it is hard to find the right info for Canadian climates in books. I have gotten into trouble following advice in some books, when they aren't meant for my climate.
    Anyway, BC is an awesome place for keeping bees. My biggest suggestion is to find and talk to a local beekeeper.
    You can buy nucs (hives of bees already started, with eggs and brood), or you can order your bees from out of country BUT I think there was a quarrantine on the island not allowing bees or equipment to be imported due to disease.
    If it were me in BC, I would buy a nuc from a local, small scale beekeeper on the island, and start with new equipment and boxes of my own. Buying used is always a risk when it comes to disease, so I would steer clear of that, unless you trust that the beekeeper has not had any issues.
    I am actually very enthusiastic about helping anyone who wants to start beekeeping, so I could facebook you my email if your son has any questions he would like to ask me!

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