Beekeeping 101: A Guide for Beginners

my name is Tammy horn Potter I'm the Kentucky State ApS and I am out here on the family farm at our apiary in Fayette County many people want to know what they have to have to be a beekeeper and so I like to tell people first and foremost if you have never kept a hive then don't spend a single dime on equipment or bees until you have gone to a local bee Association for a full calendar year once you've had a chance to meet people meet local with local beekeepers then one of the things that you want to invest your money in will first of all be 1/8 and EPIP in I keep my if a pen and a first-aid kit that is easily identifiable and I always have it handy as many times as I've been in hives and I used to work in the Queen industry in Hawaii I've been a beekeeper now since 1997 you know body chemicals can change with our age and so I always like to have one handy you also don't know if there's someone in the area who may be allergic and does not know that so first and foremost invest in an epic end if a physician doesn't want to give you a prescription for this I have found having liquid benadryl is a nice thing to have handy too so there are a couple of different options but make sure that you address that first so having said that then in terms of the tools of the trade to me the most important one starts with my veil it took me many years and I had like I said I had to go to Hawaii and work in the clean industry before I finally found a veil that I could see inside bee hives with and so so what I'm wearing today is just very simple it's just a it's just a broad brim hat and a very light veil and then I find if I need more protection I always have my jacket which I'm going to wear a little tip is to put your arms in first and then put your veil on and a lot of times I can work bees just like this I find that the ventilated jacket is a much better investment for my money but you know for many people a solid jacket may be a little cheaper choice but just have something that you can graduate up to if you find that the bees are getting a little defensive so you want this veil because bees like to I mean when they want to defend their territory they want to go where there are carbon-dioxide trails which is going to be your nose and your mouth so a lot of times when I have my smoker going I can work bees in just a short sleeve shirt sometimes shorts so the next thing I always have on my person will be a hive tool this is not a very expensive piece of equipment but I do recommend that beginners go with something that's a little bit more expensive it's called a j-hook tool this will help you go between the frames of a bee hive a little bit more efficiently and if you're working more efficiently then you are reducing your chances for getting stung so this is the second tool that I always have on my person the first being my veil this is not fancy equipment but I like to remind people to get a smoker can this one is made at the Walter T Kelly company and Clark's in Kentucky but I've seen some people use a popcorn tin I've used some I've seen some people have other devices it's not fancy but but there are accidents that can happen from smokers that are too hot so don't skip that this is 50 bucks it pays off in the long run lining smokers why do you need a smoker first of all the researchers have two theories on this honey bees have two stomachs and those stomachs is called a honey crop and so when they smell the smoke they will they will slurp up honey and get that crop full well that makes them less likely to sting kind of like you are at the end of a big Thanksgiving meal and all you want to do you've got your belly full and all you want to do is watch football on the couch same thing a little bit with honeybees secondly you are a walking collection of chemicals from everything from the soap that you washed your hands with this morning to the toothpaste that you brush your teeth with to the detergents that you wash your clothes in you are have a number of different chemicals on your person so smoke can help mask or neutralize those chemicals so one of the very first things I'll do once I have the smoker lit is smoke my hands because I'm wanting to get the smell of soap off of them before I start working a beehive you just take one sheet of newspaper fold the bottom of it into a ball leaving enough of the newspaper to kind of form a chimney now we are going to light this ball and put it into the chimney of the smoker now as as those flames come up I'm slowly puffing the bellows and adding my fuel this is simply untreated landscape burlap I get it in a huge roll from Home Depot untreated is the key word you don't want to have you don't want to have strong chemicals in your smoker a lot of times I'll use pine needles because pine needles have oil in them so they're quick to light and they make a nice cool smoke I find for many beginners they simply don't take their time when they're lining a smoker so they'll like use a propane torch and get this thing hot and they'll be they'll be sparks flying out of this well that just makes the bees mad so I like to do this I realize that it is slow and it is old-fashioned but it works for me you do always want to keep in mind your surroundings when you're lighting your smoker for instance when I worked in industry it was kind of natural to be in the work truck and roll out of the Rope work truck and immediately want to light your smoker underneath the gas tank of the truck which then not bode well with the company owner so here you know we're on we're on gravel you know there's some rain water here from the night before that if things got out of hand I could put the I could put the fire out and just keep that in mind I think sometimes when you've been a beekeeper for a while you can get a little complacent with those details and I've been around long enough unfortunately to have seen bad things happen when you do get complacent so that's why I'm I'm talking about that so with my veil with my hive tool with my smoker I'm ready to go into a bee hive I'm using the smoker once again because I'm giving the bees a little bit of a chance to slurp up some honey in that honey crop and I've also smoked my hands so that so that the smell of the smoke can masquerade the soaps that I have been washing my hands with this morning and by smoking my hands what I mean by that it's just like this also sometimes smoke my clothes but that's all I mean and so what I'm seeing with this frame is is looking great for this time of year I'm seeing some young larvae I'm seeing multiple generations of bees I'm seeing some drones which are the males of the hive down here they kind of drone comb kind of looks like cocoa puffs hair ARDS some drones they are fat they are the couch potatoes of the hive they do not have a stinger so no problems here the larvae is pearly white the other thing that I'm noticing here just being an apiarist I'm looking at the fact that these bees are relatively calm they're not fanning their wings this tells me it's a good indicator that this hive has a queen in it and that they are happy with her if I were to have opened this up and their little butts were in the air and they were fanning their wings that's my that's that's an a moment if that means that they could be queenless and so I have to have to keep looking but right now it's what I'm not hearing I'm not hearing a roar that you know similar to the sound of a third-grade classroom when the teacher has left the room it's that kind of roar I'm not hearing that I'm not seeing their butts in the air this tells me that their queen right [Music] you

Channel: Kentucky Department of Agriculture

Views: 11,578

Rating: 4.8390803 out of 5

Keywords: honeybee, guide, beginners, asian hornet, four essential tools, Beekeeping 101, beehive, hive tool, bee smoker

Id: tfrTUNerJMc

Length: 10min 28sec (628 seconds)

Published: Fri May 15 2020