Sunday afternoon – time to blow some steam off.. Actually, I need a break from cleaning out the garage. There is a lot of honeybee information up-loaded to the Internet daily. A lot of it is good, most of it is true. But I’m amazed at the amount of “self proclaimed experts” that post videos and blogs that tell you the only way to keep bees is their way. A good percentage of these “self-proclaimed experts” have only been keeping bees one year which, in my estimation, is not enough time under their belt to be proclaiming anything besides they owned bees for a year!
This false information makes it that much harder for new beekeepers to prepare for their first bees by researching and become knowledgeable about beekeeping. I know too well. I put on the new beekeeper’s hat 6 years ago. Before we ordered our first colony, I searched the internet for hours and hours, bound and determined I would learn all there was to know before the bees arrived. Yes, I gained a lot of beekeeping knowledge, just that some was poor or downright wrong, or information that worked if you only kept bees in warm weather.
After 6 years of keeping honeybees, this is what I have learned. I consider myself a good beekeeper, but far from an “expert.” The learning curve for beekeeping is a very steep one. It seems the more I learn about honeybees, there is more and more of an understanding of what we as humans really have not discovered yet or don’t have all the answers to why bees behave in certain ways. There are beekeepers out there that have been keeping honeybees for 30-40 years that will tell you the same.
- OK, back to bee-ing careful what you read on the Internet. First, I can’t state this enough. Ask a beekeeper to be your mentor. You can check with them if what you read and thinking about trying will work.
- Secondly, I stress joining a local bee club if there is one nearby. You can meet other beekeepers and it is a good way to find a mentor.
- I have learned beekeeping is LOCAL to your area. What I mean is sometimes what is posted on the Internet is from a beekeeper living in southern states like Florida, Texas, California, etc. What works for them will not and never will work for us here in the northern states such as Minnesota. Some things may be the same but the timing of events is still way different.
- Even the genetics of the bees are different and have a LOCAL aspect. In northern states, we need a bee that survives the cold long winters, uses the least amount of honey stores to get to spring, and does not brood up too early in late winter. But they should brood up fast before the spring nectar flow. This is NOT what 98% of the queens reared in the US are selected for. I believe they are selected for one thing – almond pollination in California. I will blog more on this as a follow-up post.
What I mostly learned is to listen to the bees. The bees are the true experts. It can be hard sometimes to figure out what they are trying to tell us, but they are never wrong! Bee careful . . .