A sustainable bee yard is the goal indeed. Keep that goal in mind and read and watch as much as you can. Some books I might recommend besides ' Keeping Bee with a Smile' are 'Keeping Bees in Horizontal Hives' by Georges de Layens, 'Natural Beekeeping' by Ross Conrad, 'The Backyard Beekeeper' by Kim Flottum. If you want more on honeybee behavior, check out Tom Seeley's 'The Lives of Bees' and 'Honeybee Democracy'. If you have a beekeeper near you, see if you can watch them work their bees. It may not be the way you will keep your bees, but you will walk away having learned something. Thanks for posting Wes, have a great day!
I've read a lot of those books and they're all great suggestions! "Honeybee Democracy" is definitely great when looking into the mechanics of swarming. You have a nice day too!
That's a great video, looks like the habitat you have is pristine. I think it's so important for beekeepers to find their own style that works for them yet when they start off it's easy to be overly influenced by others with more experience. I am in the UK and in no way a natural beekeeper, but do try to keep my maintenance to a minimum and still on a learning curve. Being a small congested country we have major issues with mites. You must do a clip on the fishing also as live to see what's in the river!. Best wishes from the UK😊
Hello from across the pond! Natural Beekeeping can work for anyone, even if they have a lot of mites. Mites are a also an issue where we live but our Bees have learned to adapt to them. There is a good news video somewhere on youtube where an old UK beekeeper keeps Bees treatment free and his Bees were doing so well that they conduced experiments to figure out his success. All he really did was just keep his bees normally and wouldn't treat them, and after time he had a stock of mite resistant Bees! Anyone can do this and we have found success in it too. Would love to do a fishing video at some point!
great video. I'm currently doing some prep work in my backyard to hopefully start keeping bees but my 13 year old is still a little scared of getting stung so i may wait until next year.
Beekeeping has always been simple. Humans have tried to maximize their gains and in the end most of it has only made beekeeping more difficult than it needs to be.
How can you be sure they are local bees if you catch a swarm? What if a hive purchased from another state swarms and you catch them? That’s technically not a local race right?
Swarms are healthier than package bees and NUCs because they come from healthy colonies that have usually lived in a location for sometime making them at least somewhat local. Package Bees and NUCs need time to get their numbers up for swarming, especially because they are in a weakened state upon installation. They will always have a high failure rate due to the sudden change in climate as well as the poor handling from their sellers. While not every swarm will be completely local, you have a much stronger chance of acquiring local genetics through swarm catching whereas NUCs and packages are almost always from far away locations.
It may be clearer if you call todays popular beekeeping "modern beekeeping" instead of traditional. The way you are doing it is should be called the traditional way.
The school of hard knocks can be costly but appears to be the best teacher over and over again. Thanks for sharing this info!
Thank you for being a viewer! 😀
A swarm is truly an amazing thing to experience. Watching them go into a box is so exciting, especially when it's your box and now you got some bees!
Catching Bees is so much fun. It's hard to comprehend for someone who has never done so but it's truly eye opening.
A sustainable bee yard is the goal indeed. Keep that goal in mind and read and watch as much as you can. Some books I might recommend besides ' Keeping Bee with a Smile' are 'Keeping Bees in Horizontal Hives' by Georges de Layens, 'Natural Beekeeping' by Ross Conrad, 'The Backyard Beekeeper' by Kim Flottum. If you want more on honeybee behavior, check out Tom Seeley's 'The Lives of Bees' and 'Honeybee Democracy'. If you have a beekeeper near you, see if you can watch them work their bees. It may not be the way you will keep your bees, but you will walk away having learned something. Thanks for posting Wes, have a great day!
I've read a lot of those books and they're all great suggestions! "Honeybee Democracy" is definitely great when looking into the mechanics of swarming. You have a nice day too!
That's a great video, looks like the habitat you have is pristine. I think it's so important for beekeepers to find their own style that works for them yet when they start off it's easy to be overly influenced by others with more experience. I am in the UK and in no way a natural beekeeper, but do try to keep my maintenance to a minimum and still on a learning curve. Being a small congested country we have major issues with mites. You must do a clip on the fishing also as live to see what's in the river!. Best wishes from the UK😊
Hello from across the pond!
Natural Beekeeping can work for anyone, even if they have a lot of mites. Mites are a also an issue where we live but our Bees have learned to adapt to them. There is a good news video somewhere on youtube where an old UK beekeeper keeps Bees treatment free and his Bees were doing so well that they conduced experiments to figure out his success. All he really did was just keep his bees normally and wouldn't treat them, and after time he had a stock of mite resistant Bees! Anyone can do this and we have found success in it too.
Would love to do a fishing video at some point!
great video. I'm currently doing some prep work in my backyard to hopefully start keeping bees but my 13 year old is still a little scared of getting stung so i may wait until next year.
Maybe an observation hive in a tree (10-15 feet)? They don't seem to sting as much as Bee hives on the ground.
It is super simple. It's almost like we (humans) have to make it complicated...😂
Beekeeping has always been simple. Humans have tried to maximize their gains and in the end most of it has only made beekeeping more difficult than it needs to be.
If I'm not spending all my time and money on bees...now what do I do!😂
What will I do with all this time! I have too much time!
How can you be sure they are local bees if you catch a swarm? What if a hive purchased from another state swarms and you catch them? That’s technically not a local race right?
Swarms are healthier than package bees and NUCs because they come from healthy colonies that have usually lived in a location for sometime making them at least somewhat local. Package Bees and NUCs need time to get their numbers up for swarming, especially because they are in a weakened state upon installation. They will always have a high failure rate due to the sudden change in climate as well as the poor handling from their sellers.
While not every swarm will be completely local, you have a much stronger chance of acquiring local genetics through swarm catching whereas NUCs and packages are almost always from far away locations.
Bees sure are complex
They can bee but we have Wes to simplify the complex part
It may be clearer if you call todays popular beekeeping "modern beekeeping" instead of traditional. The way you are doing it is should be called the traditional way.
Good point, never thought of it that way.
This is daft information very conflicting
Thanks for watching!