Where to Start?
As I write it’s April of 2021, the trees and bushes are in blossom with lots of pollen for the bees to gather. The weather hasn’t been great with temperatures barely passing 10 degrees most days which means the bees haven’t been as active as previous years when we’ve had balmy bbq filled Aprils. It feels like a change is near though and warm days are ahead.
It’s at this time of year, as we start to venture out from our winter slumber and begin to recognise the rhythms of nature again, people often start asking about how to get into beekeeping. It’s a good time to think about the options as the season is beginning and there are several months ahead to learn and understand what’s involved.
Conversations with potential new beekeepers always start with “why do you want to be a beekeeper?”. If the answer is to help “save the bees” there are other simpler and cheaper ways than keeping honey bees - planting the right flowers, gardening organically without chemical use, creating wildlife havens and building insect houses are all ways of encouraging bees into your garden and helping to save them, but that doesn’t have to be the only answer. According to the BBKA (British Bee Keeping Association) there are c.25,000 hobby beekeepers in the UK all enjoying the ebb and flow of the beekeeping year and hopefully enjoying some of the delicious honey their bees have produced for them at the end of the season: I expect the reasons they became beekeepers vary and you can read about mine in one of my first blog posts - “Honey Bee or Not To Bee”.
The first step to understanding if beekeeping is right for you is to visit a beekeeper and their hives. Many of us run Bee Experiences where you can get a taste for what a hive of bees is like and what it might take to look after them, you can also enquire at your local BBKA group as many run apiary visits during the summer and welcome visitors.
When you’re ready for the next step I advise doing a course. An introductory course is helpful to give you an overview of what is involved as well as how much things cost and the choices available (what hive to choose, where to get your bees etc). In the winter months your local BBKA group will probably run a course which ends with some practical experience in the Spring but if you’re looking for something during the main season then many beekeepers / bee farmers like me, will be running one day courses that give you an overview and a bit of practical experience to help you really decide if beekeeping is for you.
I realise that I may be coming across as rather cautious - why am I not recommending that everyone becomes a beekeeper? Because it can be hard work; it can get hot in the suit, the hives can be heavy, you will get stung, it can be mucky, the bees never seem to do what the books say they will do and it can cost quite a lot of money - and even more money when you realise how much you love your bees, how you want more, how you yearn to sit with a cuppa and watch them coming and going from their homes, how the taste of your first honey harvest is so incredible it stays with you, how you wish for warm days in the Spring so you can go and tinker with the hives and watch the colony thrive.. .. ..… …
If I haven’t completely put you off and you’d like to learn more I’d love to welcome you to my demonstration apiary on the Suffolk/Norfolk border. We’re just over an hour from Colchester in Essex and half an hour from Norwich. .
