I am a hobbyist beekeeper in west Florida and have made this sight to help educate others interested in the avocation of beekeeping or wanting to practice it. I feel that I've experienced many sectors of beekeeping given I have harvested honey, propolis and wax as well as helped others by removing feral hives from their property and had to market honey. This coming summer, I'll be establishing a TBH (Top Bar Hive), which is commonly used as an easy to assemble hive in developing contries.
Probably the first question Iâm always asked when I mention that I keep bees is, âDo you ever get stung?â. To that I respond, âOf course.â Being stung is not something to be feared, but I, like every non-beekeeper did before I kept bees. Itâs really just part of the hobby or, if I may borrow a phrase from one of my favorite books, ââ¦an initiation into the beekeeping fraternity.â While it may cause momentary pain, the average person is really in no danger. Bees evolved their sting to defend their hive both by inflicting pain and creating fear. I have to say that I probably canât think of a better mechanism to accomplish this.
The Langstroth Hive
A beekeepers list of tools will include:
To light a smoker, take a small about of a flammable material that wonât produce harmful vapors or gasses. I prefer to use pine straw. Light this and gently place it inside the smoker, lightly pumping the bellows. Gradually, add more âsmoker fuelâ and pack it down tight and full as the smoker will take. If this is lit correctly, when you pump the bellows with the top open, you shouldnât see flames coming out the top and the smoke will be very dense. Snap on the cover to the smoker and youâre all set for at least an hour.
The hive tool is a âminiature crowbarâ that is used to pry apart the supers, hive bodies and frames (Supers and hive bodies are the boxes into which the frames go. Supers are used for honey collection, while hive bodies are the honey left to the bees to use and where they make their brood.) Everything in the hive is coated with propolis as the beesâ primary disinfectant and it seals out unwanted moisture and drafts from the hive. Propolis is a gummy resin gathered from pine trees and flower buds by the bees and mixed with saliva and wax. It actually has a powerful disinfecting quality. The hive tool is also used to scrape off the propolis to make hive manipulations easier.
Bee Brushes are sold by beekeeping suppliers and have soft yellow bristles to gently âbrushâ bees off honeycomb either to get a better view of it or to separate them from it to be harvested. The brushes also come in handy for removing any âstow awaysâ, basically bees that stayed on the back of the veil or on my back, which I canât see.
Gloves provide an extra bit of protection for ones hands but, can trap alarm pheromones from being stung, making the bees slightly more inclined to sting. For sting protection, leather is the best as the bees can easily sting through the cheaper, canvas models. Gloves do, however get uncomfortably warm and are abandoned by most beekeepers. I however, use them given they make me more comfortable around the bees and less likely to slip up and do something stupid.
The veil is probably the one piece of defense against bee stings, which everyone uses. It is basically a wire or cloth net put over a hat or helmet so as to protect the face and head from stinging. Being stung on the face and scalp are some of the most painful experiences. The veil comes in many models from the flimsy Tulle veil to the rigid, and my favorite, Square Folding Veil. The veil also protects against angry bees, which will actually âhead buttâ or impact at high speed to the point that they actually feel like wood chips flying at you. You can actually hear a loud crash when they hit you that sounds like youâve just been hit by a stick.
Honey is probably one of the main allures into beekeeping. It was manâs first sweetener and he has had a fascination with it for thousands of years. Rock paintings have depicted people climbing cliffs and trees, risking maiming and even death, for that very sweetener. Granted, harvesting honey has become less dangerous and more profitable in the last 200 years with the creation of the hive that uses âbee-spaceâ. From the Langstroth style of hive (the industry standard varying in only very minor dimensions, and in many states, the only legal hive) honey can be âextracted from the comb and the comb returned to the bees, saving them the honey it would have taken to draw more comb. Honey is composed of water, glucose, fructose, trace minerals, vitamins, and natural yeasts. Glucose, being the bodies only carbohydrate, is absorbed into the blood stream almost immediately and, in the case of experiments, within 15 minutes! Honey will be stored in cells covered with a cap of wax when it has reached the ideal moisture content of 18%. Then, it is removed from the bees by the beekeeper and the wax covering the honey is cut off to be drained of the honey that stuck to it and melted into just about anything imaginable (candles, figures, soap, etc.) The frame with the comb full of honey is then placed in an âextractorâ which looks like a giant âsalad spinnerâ and centrifugal force is used to fling the honey out of the cells. The honey, next, pours through a valve in the bottom through a filter and into a bottling bucket where it is poured into individual bottles for gift or retail.