Advice for New Beekeepers

What advice would you offer a new beekeeper?” Seriously……. I don’t like this question – it is usually very polarizing and full of imagined pitfalls.

Yet…. I will attempt an answer!!

On Your Marks!

To start with,  I offer a pair of do-nots. Don’t spend your first year worrying about which type of hive to use (KTBH, Langstroth, Box Hive) and “flow hive” for the well-heeled. Do not spend your first year worrying about the hive management style (conventional, traditional, commercial, hobby…..) and defending your choice. You will develop your own thoughts on these issues as you gain experience, and you can always alter those early choices. A writer doesn’t develop style until they know grammar, punctuation, and spelling. A beekeeper doesn’t develop style until they know bees, or do they?

Get Off the Starting Blocks with the Basics

Instead, spend your first year learning everything you can about the three types of honeybees you will be raising in your hives – queen, drones, and worker bees. By “everything” I also mean biology, life cycles, bee population dynamics, and the interaction between these housemates. Most new beekeepers make the mistake of underestimating the impact of drones on their colonies. You can’t know too much about the three.

Second, learn everything you can about flowers, pollination, and the relationship between bees and flowering plants. If you don’t understand pollination ecology, blooming cycles, flower morphology, and plant-pollinator, you cannot be an effective beekeeper. New beekeepers often have no idea when nectar flows occur in their area nor when to expect a dearth, let alone how to prepare for them.

Beekeeping is not a secret society with veils and white gowns, chants, handshakes, and passwords. Advice should be transparent and logical. If it’s not, forgetaboutit!!!

Learn the language

When entering any hustles – whether fashion designer, hair stylist, IT geek, ndudhi taxi, or a beekeeper, you have to learn the words – the jargon – that go with it. Beekeepers waste a lot of time miscommunicating with each other. Some use words without knowing their meaning, they say one thing when they mean another, and they use seven different terms for one item.

The more they flexibly use words in beekeeping – knowledge, the more their words devolve into mushy unclear thinking and miscommunication in the world of BEEdom.

No wonder it appears that ten beekeepers have fifteen answers to the same problem—since no one understands what anyone else is saying, everything sounds like a new idea. You will get better answers if you ask the right questions using the correct words.

Develop Confidence in yourself

Am greying slightly of late, perhaps license for me to conclude that we all know lots about the world around us because of our own life experiences- right?. In other words, even if you didn’t study science in school, you understand certain physical, chemical, and biological properties because you see them every day. You step out of the shower and shiver. You boil water and the steam goes up, not down. You set a cold drink on the table and it leaves a wet ring………

For some strange reason, however, most of us forget everything we know when we open a beehive. We forget that warm air rises, we forget that living things respire, we forget that more mouths require more food,….. Most of the “mysterious” things we see in a beehive can be explained with everyday knowledge. They’re just bees in a box, dude, not extraterrestrials.

Listen – If someone gives you a piece of advice, and it doesn’t feel right, or it doesn’t make sense, ask for an explanation mama my first beekeeping mentor always said. If they can’t explain their reasoning, move on. Over the years, I’ve concluded, Beekeeping is not a secret society with black gowns, chants, handshakes, and passwords. Advice should be transparent and logical. If it’s not, forget-about-it!

Play with your bees

For some of us, bees are insects you are to be scared of, that need not be the case especially if you take appropriate care.

…….Watch your bees. Enjoy them. Talk to them. Delight in their being…….

We can learn much by simply observing them in the hive, in the field, in a flower. Feel the tingle as they stroll up to your arm – and not instinctively swat them – please!!. Revel in the power of their sting – of course not too many stings at a go. And should a bee headbutt you….get the hell out of there!! ….I know of no better way to learn about bees than to watch them do what they do!!

Don’t Aim for Perfection at the Beginning

Just like no one expects perfection the first time you make ugali or balance while riding a bike on your first day. Yet some new beekeepers often expect to harvest kilos of honey on their first season without a hiccup – and of course, having been sold a hive/beekeeping equipment with a three (3) month harvest promise!.

Put aside the idea of perfection and concentrate on learning. Beekeeping is a process. You learn as you go. You try and fail or you try and succeed. And then you try something else. Enjoy the process and don’t worry about the end. There is no end.  As you grow in it, yes you could enjoy some returns that’s for sure!

All beekeeping is local

This is probably the single most misunderstood fact in all of beekeeping.   Plants that grow in your region are different – or bloom at different times – from those in another geography or county. Your seasons change at different times, you have different strains of bees, different pesticides in your environment, and different amounts of rain, noise, humidity, habitat, and agriculture.

Besides, “Every colony is an individual.” Each colony has unique characteristics that affect its ability to survive in an increasingly dangerous world, a world overflowing with the unexpected.

To become A BETTER beekeeper, I’d encourage you, to learn to recognize and celebrate the subtle differences among colonies, beekeepers, and environments even as we aim to share knowledge, and ideas and create linkages and friendships.

The rest will fall into place.

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