Guest Blogger: Andy Putnam on Bee Keeping Exploration
This week I’ve invited my husband to be my guest blogger and share his recent exploration into Bee Keeping. So, without further introductions I give you our future Bee master!
Given Kim’s plans for the Palisade Posh Boutique farm, I thought it might be interesting to see what it will take to bring bees to our future property as they are important pollinators. I started by purchasing a book on Amazon called Beekeeping for Dummies and then signed up for a class at Arapahoe Community College called Beekeeping for Newbees.
What I’ve learned thus far is, Honeybees are not native to North America but many of the things we can do to support them also support the native species of bees. Given that I’m thinking of taking up beekeeping, I’ve decided to focus on honeybees. There are several races of honeybees but for a beginner these four may be the best place to start.
The first is the German Honeybee, it is brown and black and comes from Northern Europe. These were the first honeybees brought to the U.S. The second is the Italian Honeybee, it is yellow and comes from Italy, surprisingly. They are generally docile, overwinter well and build the colony back quickly in the spring. The Caucasian, or Russian, Honeybee is the third type of bee and it originated in the Caucasus Mountains. They are dark gray in color. Finally, the fourth race is the Carniolan Honeybee which comes from the Austrian Alps. These gray and brown bees are gentle, overwinter well and build up quickly in the spring. They do tend to swarm frequently. Given that we are in Colorado where we get a bit of winter, and I am a beginner I will likely start with either the Italian or Carniolan bees.
There are three types of bees in a colony, the queen, the drones and the worker bees. The colony as a whole is made up of 95% females. Generally, there is only one Queen in a hive. The Queen's job is to lay eggs. She flies out of the hive once in her life to mate and then spend the rest of it in the hive. The rest of the bees are absolutely loyal to her. The drones are the only male bees in the hive. They are created when the Queen decides to lay an unfertilized egg. Their one job is to fly out and mate with other queens. Each day they fly out and wait for a queen from another hive to fly by. They will then attempt to mate with her. This guarantees genetic diversity in the colonies. A successful drone will die after mating while the unsuccessful ones will return to the hive and try again the next day. All the worker bees are female, and they make up most of the colony. They live six to seven weeks in the summer and four to five months in the winter.
The worker bees’ job varies depending on where they are in their life span. After hatching, they start life doing house cleaning and then move on to being undertakers. Both these tasks are to keep the hive clean and healthy. After that, they move on to working in the nursery and some may be tasked with taking care of the Queen. The next set of tasks are taking the nectar from the foraging bees into the hive and fanning the hive to control the temperature. They can then take up the roles of building out the hive or guarding it from intruders. Finally, near the end of their lives they go out into the world as scouts to identify the sources of pollen and field bees to gather the pollen and nectar and bring it back. A worker bee will progress through each of these different tasks or may skip a few jobs if the colony doesn’t need them done.
There are several different types of hives including the Langstroth, the Top Bar and the Flow hive. The Langstroth is the most common and has been in use since the 1800. It is made up of one or more deep supers (rectangular boxes) where the bees lay and raise their eggs, and one or more honey supers where they store their excess honey. The Top Bar is a trough with bars of wood across the top. This is an older style and is believed to be a more authentic recreation of a natural hive. Finally, there is a new style called a Flow hive which is designed to help the beekeeper more easily harvest the honey without disturbing the bees.
In placing your hive, it is best if it faces southeast. There are not a lot of physical rules to go by, but there may be legal limitations depending on where you live so if you are planning on raising bees make sure to check that out. It is also important to provide a wind barrier and a water station nearby. You also want to give yourself enough space around the hive so you can work easily without disturbing them. If bears are a concern, you will need to build a bear fence. I’ll need to check into the bear population in Palisade and see if this is something we need to do.
Another area discussed in class was planting for bees. This was a diverse enough topic that it might be worth doing follow up post specifically on it.
So, with our boutique farm in mind this is my take away;
I’ll likely go with Italian or Carniolan bees, right now I’m leaning toward Italian
I’ll start with the Langstroth hive; however, I am very interested in the Flow hive for easier honey harvesting.
I need to start the colony in the spring so it is likely we will have to wait at least a year to start this part of the Palisade Posh adventure.
If you are looking to be a beekeeper yourself, Andy recommends a class or joining up with your local beekeeping group. To read more of Andy’s writings, he hosts his own blog on his family history blog on family history which dates back to William the Conqueror (yes you heard that right), I married into a very interesting family!
