Did you know that bees take care of approximately 30% of our food? Neither did I, the more you know.

About a week ago from this writing I decided that I wanted to become a beekeeper. The other day my equipment arrived.

‘But’ you ask yourself, why on earth would you make a decision like that so fast.

Well! Let me tell you a little story of how this came to pass.

A couple of years ago I first started hearing about the whole “bees are dying” thing and that we need to help the bees more. I read that there were beekeepers out there that if you pay them a little bit for a hive setup, they would LOVE to use your land to keep their bees. So I set out to find someone that could do this for me, seeing that where my parents live there was a huge swat of farmland we don’t actually use so that seemed perfect.

Easier said than done though, most of these kinds of beekeepers would rather do this with a company that is able to pay a little bit more and give them some exposure for more potential clients.

As I’ve already kind of explained in my previous post.

About a year ago a friend of mine had finally finished building his house, and knowing what I wanted to do he was like “well lets just put it on my company, have them do it in our backyard and boom”

We found a beekeeper who does this for a living, “renting” out his hive, bees and skills for a monthly fee. He comes to take care of them and you have bees in your garden that you can watch and relax with. And by the end of the season, you’ll even get the honey they harvested.

Sounded awesome so we did it!

Now we’re a year later and despite it being a very cool thing, it was a bit expensive. We were paying about 80/month for this. So, what’s the next step to take when you want something but don’t want to keep paying for it?

You do it yourself!

And thus, my new little adventure started, I bought myself a book “Beekeeping for dummies” and within 2 days I have become an expert!

The joys of youtube!

That’s a big fat lie of course, I am nowhere near being an expert on this subject but at least I know more now. I’ve watched countless movies and I was thinking to myself “Yeah this seems fairly easy I’ll give it a go”

One more day and everything was ordered and I even found a local guy that was willing to sell me a colony, including a small 6 frame “hive”.

In a couple days I will be going to collect them and start my little adventure.

Tomorrow I am going to take a brush cutter and a chainsaw along with my buddy and clear a bit of land so that I have place to actually put the bees, because the land is a bit of a forest right now.

This used to be a potato field, now it’s brambles and trees

I’ll also be painting the hive, I ordered paint for the outside of it and a thing called Propoleum, which exists of 70% alcohol and 30% propolis, for the outside. The paint is obviously all natural so that the bees won’t get any effect from it, and the propoleum on the inside will make it easier for them to isolate their hive.
Yes, they isolate their hive, bees are incredible little creatures and I shall try and take you along on my adventures with them!

The first steps of which is taking those 6 frames and bringing them in the new one I ordered, feeding the bees and then making sure that they have enough to survive the winter.

Aren’t they the cutest?

Sounds easy enough, but as a newbee (see what I did there) the challenge is there.

But I’m super excited about it! A new hobby! We’ll see what happens

Stay tuned