So, you want to keep bees? Here is a blog snippet of excerpts from my Introduction to Beekeeping Course E-Book.
Further premium sections and the full e-book will help you decide which type of bees you want to keep. Yes, there is more than one variety. First, we need to deal with more practical decisions.
Location
Have you considered where you are going to place your new hive? Section five shows you some practical examples for locating your hive once you have a geographical site in place. Although nearly everyone likes bees, not everyone wants to get too close to them.
Neighbours
Will either love you, the bees you keep and the honey you pass over the garden fence every year, or, they will constantly complain that your bees are interfering with their pets, children, their leisure time in their own gardens not to mention the hysteria that arises from being stung.
Statutory Nuisance
Unlike our American cousin’s beekeeping in the U.K. is not regulated by local planning laws, literally everyone can keep bees. My advice is never to let good relations with your neighbours deteriorate to the point that they feel they need to complain.
Time Constraints
Being honest, the bees do not need us at all. But there is something to do almost weekly throughout the season, and then through the winter there are maintenance tasks and preparation work to do in order to prepare for the next season.
Physical Strength
This is where you research different hive designs as once you start to buy equipment you are usually committed to that hive design. This is because not all the internal components are interchangeable, although some are. Trust me, one hive nearly always leads to at least one more and sometimes like us at TreeBee many more.
Different Types of Beekeeping
Do you have plans of starting as a hobbyist but have ideas of running your own bee business as we do? TreeBee are a not for profit but the amount of work is the same, we are working on a future commercial beekeeping course.
Costs
Have you considered how much this hobby will cost, or is that why you are here? Section seven gives some examples for different hive designs, equipment, bee suits, etc. As a basic guide a colony of bees will be around £250 from a reputable breeder, a hive will be between £300 and £600, so before we get started with other equipment, we are looking at a commitment of about £1000 for the first hive.
Insurance
Sadly, the insurance does not cover you for bees and equipment, unless the worst happens and your bees get one of the disease that requires the local bee inspector to destroy your bees and burn your hives. It is rare, but it happens.
If you like what you are reading and want to read and learn more, why not sign up to our Introduction to Beekeeping Course? You can then follow on to do your level One Beekeeping qualification.
