MODERN BEEKEEPING

A beekeeper is someone who is not only engaged in a hobby or business but also someone who (by design or not) is taking an active part in protecting the future of the planet. This sounds dramatic but in fact is true.

Bees, unlike other livestock, do not need constant attention. They will go out each day and get on with it whether you are there or not. If you devote one day in ten to them with occasional bursts of more attention when required and during the harvest, you would be able to keep bees satisfactorily, and this is, in the main, for only part of the year.

During the winter months you can leave them alone completely unless something dramatic happens, such as flooding or lightning strikes.

Most commercial beekeepers who make their living from bees started out as hobbyists. Some specialize in honey production,  others  in pollination services to  farmers;  others specialize in rearing queen bees for sale;  and yet others specialize in other hive products, such as beeswax,  pollen,  propolis or royal jelly.  There is even a large and profitable market in bee venom.  Some graduate into apitherapy – a very effective alternative type of  healing that is  fast becoming mainstream medicine.  Mead,  honey or propolis  soap, face creams and so on are all side-lines for the imaginative beekeeper.

Other beekeepers devote  their efforts to  breeding the  ‘perfect’  bee:  a calm,  gentle, disease-resistant,  productive  creature.  Despite the fact  that  a male bee or drone has no father (which complicates the issue),  breeding success is often claimed to  be at  hand. And then there are the professional itinerant beekeepers  who make a living by hiring themselves out to large commercial outfits all over the world.  These young men and women travel the world moving  from one hemisphere to  the other according to  the seasons,  using their beekeeping skills to pick up the many jobs available in commercial beekeeping.