Beekeeping How To Start Beekeeping In 2021

[Music] Wow it tastes a little bit like Wow woohoo hi I'm David Burns and I'm passionate I'm in timpz about beekeeping I've been keeping these for a long time and I've been making youtube videos on beekeeping for well over a dozen years I have a lot of videos on YouTube on beekeeping but one thing I've never done in all the years I've been putting YouTube videos up for beekeeping I've never done a basic how to keep bees video and so that's what I want to do today I want to offer you at video to help those of you that are brand-new to beekeeping or maybe those of you that have been doing it a few years but you still haven't figured out what in the world you're supposed to do I want to go through some basic things on beekeeping so first of all this is considered a hive here and where I live in Illinois it requires me to have two deeps these two deep bodies are called hive bodies where the brood of the main part of the colony lives they raise their young here they store some honey some pollen to actually raise all the brood and normally a beekeeper does not take or remove any kind of honey or any kind of food sources from the two deep bodies this is for the colony now this is a honey super and typically this is it's been practiced this way for well over a hundred years you know and this is where the bees put excess honey and it's called a honey super a little smaller because it makes it easier for us to lift it off it's not so heavy this can wait thirty or forty pounds fully loaded with honey and next we have a top cover like this is a top cover it kind of hangs over the high to keep the water from coming inside the hive and then next we have the inner cover inner cover is a cover that provides a little bit of a barrier between the actual high components and the outside of the box the inner covers that we make here they have a little notches here that increase ventilation so your frames don't become moldy in the in the weather and so this is the honey superin as you can see it's a box like this it fits on top of another box and inside though there are frames now these are undrawn that means Abbie's haven't worked this yet it's new material it's a wood frame with a food-grade plastic insert with beeswax added to it so the bees draw that out and make it wider and they'll make a comb on top of this imprint the hexagon imprint already that's there and it speeds it up so there's ten of these in the box as you can see here and next below that one we have the same thing only since it's a hive body this is where the bees are gonna raise all their young similar frame only three inches longer and so you have to have two of these if you live where I do in the North if you get wait for yourself a lot of beekeepers only use one deep but because we go through winter here in Illinois and then the Lord's where you have to have two of these so the bees can have enough stored resources to make it through the winter eventually if we get down to the bottom board and on the bottom board is commonly referred to as a screen bottom board now and this helps control varroa mites a lot of mites can fall through this and it also increases ventilation so in the summertime when the bees are trying to dry out the nectar to make honey this will increase their opportunity to get a lot of that moisture out of hive but we really enjoy it most to get rid of the varroa mites the colony now this is a hive stand that I pulled out of the yard it's a little dirty but the bottom where it fits right in here and then you just stack all your boxes on top you want to keep your hive about six to eight inches off the ground six to eight inches off the ground will keep your hive from getting too close and get moisture on the ground so it's important to have it up off the ground now you can use cinder blocks you can use pallets and you know things around the house if you want to just make sure you get it up off the ground other things I want to show you because this is a basic introduction since we do have raw lights and not aware of what those are a pest that came into our country and the early 90s and they've wreaked havoc most your struggles as a beekeeper is going to be combating the varroa destructor mite so we recommend using a green drone comb this is a comb that you put in your brood nest area and they'll put brood in here that's male drone larvae and the varroa mite likes to go into the and lay eggs on drones because they're in there longer you simply take this out freeze it and you kill a lot of mites at once just a brief introduction this is called a beetle blaster another problem that we have in keeping bees is small hive beetle especially those of you in the south we've put a little vegetable oil in this and then we put it in between the frames like that and when we do that the beetles are chased into this beetle trap and drowned or essentially are suffocated in the oil so it helps trap small hive beetle beekeepers often use other things like pollen patties you just lay these on top of the brood nest area to give the bees a little more protein very common we also use pollen powder this is pretty commonly used in my operation and my customers enjoy putting pollen powder in their sugar water and then they feed that to the bees to give them more protein bees live off of carbohydrates and protein carbohydrates is the vector of the honey the bees consume and protein comes from the pollen that bees gather from flowers so they're down the same diet that we as humans are we honor you we also use other things such as honey be healthy and you can see here this is a great way to help the bees stay healthier and clean their gut out a little bit but mostly it's advertised as to help the bees consume more sugar water and in seasons when you're trying to feed your bees you add a little bit this is very concentrated add a little bit of this smells like lemon and it attracts the bees it's a feeding stimulant other cool tricks some tools look at that this is actually a refractometer if you've ever made beer or wine I think that's used in that as well but you put a drop of honey on under the scope here and close it and you look down through this Inn and there's a scale in there it will tell you that your honey it's at the proper moisture you don't have to use this it's not that expensive this one is about 30 bucks but if you want to you just wait until all the honey is capped over and that's generally safe and knowing that the honey is ready to be harvested but this is called a refractometer also you've noticed if you've done any research and beekeeping you'll see beekeepers using a smoker like this this is a smoker that's been around forever it hasn't changed much you use this to calm your bees so before you make your hive inspection you put a little smoke at the entrance you smoke under the hood and then you can work your bees because the smoke actually confuses the bees because they're not able to communicate bees communicate through the spread of pheromones and so when they're trying to communicate and their pheromones are received by the antenna the antenna collects micro micro particles of the smoke I guess and now they can't really communicate by picking up these pheromone odors through communication they just kind of stopped doing much and they calm down a lot smoker is really important you can use smoker fuel like pine needles sometimes people use twine just make sure it's kind of organic didn't have any chemicals on it but your choice of whatever smoke you want to dense smoke you don't want flames coming up next we have the hive tool this has been around forward ever this is the traditional looking hype tool we do have several different models out today a j-hook and so on but this is a good one is tempered steel this is painted it comes to a real wedged point here this allows you to get in between your boxes and separate them because once your hive is up and going strong the bees are going to use a propolis propolis as substance together from trees and plants and they actually bring it back into the hive and kind of glue all their pieces together and that's how these boxes can sit each other and not blow away and you'll have to use this to separate it you can scrape so this would be your best friend next to your smoker gotta have a high tool I'll show you a few other things about you know just basically getting started in beekeeping this is called a queen of scooter and it can come in metal this one's the plastic one I I like plastic just fine like it does these swats are small enough that the Queen she can't pass through this she's too large and her thorax is too large but the worker bees can pass through so the reason this sounds good is if you want your queen to stay down in here in the brood nest area and not lay eggs up and your honey super then all you need to do is slide this queen of scooter all the way down place here and then that will who is our queen down and allow the workers to kind of screw it up like that and now your queen is held in the brood nest area here and all the workers can take the honey and store it up above it's a really neat way to do that also some common things that you're going to want to get probably starting out are some gloves I don't use gloves but I've kept these for a long time so I manage them and work them in such a way to avoid being stung and you'll learn that but at first a new beekeeper you might say who I gotta wear some gloves I understand that you might want to get a bee brush there are times you may want to brush some bees off of some frames or if they're stuck on here on a rainy day whatever you might just find a be brush to be real handy this is a feeding system that I personally invented and in certain times of the year we have to feed our bees and this feeder allows us to put it on top of the fruit boxes you take this off you put this on top and then you're able to put a shell around it and put jars of food here and then maybe a pomegranate to push through here so this is just a feeder board to feed your bees from the top especially in the fall and in the spring well what about the winter well in the winter time this is something else that I invented it's called the winter kind bored and as you can see it's filled with carbohydrates and proteins vitamins and minerals and so this actually goes on top of the hive upside down like just food is facing down so you put it on top of your to brood nest areas you take this off put it on top of this and then put your top on and then your bees can fly in and out in the winter time if they need to go to the potty beads never defecate inside their colony so on warmer winter days they'll take a little body break and fly back in and then making you stay fed in the wintertime and this is a good tool so this is an extractor and many of you have probably heard of an extractor but you actually crank the handle like this and as you turn it what happens it spins the honey out of the honey comb that you opened up with the knife used usually use a cold knife like this to cut the caps off of the honey comb out of these supers and then you put it in here and spin them in centrifugal force forces the honey against the wall and it runs down to the bottom goes down here and then you open the valve here call a honey gate and as you open it like the honey flows out and you can then strain it if you want to you don't necessarily have to but if you don't strain it you'll have a little bit of wax that might flow to the top of the honey and this is called your honey extracted okay so when you're starting beekeeping most people are gonna buy a package of bees which is ten thousand bees or about three pounds and today we use a plastic container like this some of them are made out of wooden screen the queen is in her own little cage she's made it sometimes marked but she's not available yet to walk around with all the other bees and so when you take your package apart you'll take the Queen cage out and set it aside and I've got videos you can watch on my channel to show you how to install the packages but you simply remove the candy shake all the bees in the bottom single deep check them all out of here and then you take your queen cage and you'll open up the little candy cap and then set it in there and let the next day or two all these beads will eat through the candy and release the Queen and she'll be their new mom and the hive will take off three pounds is a good number to eat rolling in the season so if you haven't already bought your package you need to hustle because if you're watching this during the winter packages sell out really fast so be sure to do that get your packages bought even before you buy your equipment make sure you're you've secured your bees from someplace we recommend you find a good reliable source for your honeybees somebody that's done it for a while be careful about buying bees from someone you may not know their reputation of course you know that but once you shake them in here then you don't add these boxes instead you wait until the hive kind of gets pulling out some of these frames adding wax to them and when they get about five frames you have this box five frames you can add your hunting super at that point so how do you get started in beekeeping we got talked about the equipment and some basic things that we use to feed bees and get them rolling well first of all let me say it is imperative that you do take a class and it's important that you find the class where it's taught by someone who's well knowledgeable on beekeeping there's a lot of certified beekeepers now and they teach classes you need to know all the nuances of beekeeping particularly in dealing with pests and diseases this can be a challenge today let me I'm just gonna be honest with you beekeeping isn't magical you just don't throw bees in a box and it all works out it does require you to know what you're doing it's just like if you bought a brand new car and you didn't know how to drive it it would be disasters first you have to learn how to drive the car and then you buy the car right so it's the same way that beekeeping it's really imperative that you know what you're doing or else you're going to be very disappointed I really believe today that a lot of the bees a majority of the beads that we see perishing that we hear about that are dying unfortunately are dying because of poor management mismanaged hives by new beekeepers who really fail to educate themselves on beekeeping now I don't have time in these videos to give you a whole day or two obviously of instructions on how to keep bees but there's somebody in your area you don't have to take one of my classes I'm not trying to get you to do that although I'm proud of the classes that I offer of course but certainly find a place someone is reputable that has classes we have online classes and and educate yourself during the winter months so in the spring you'll be ready to roll so as a certified master beekeeper my responsibility and that I feel really strong about is to help you be successful and sometimes that's really challenging with all the pests and diseases that are facing colonies today and some of you are probably wondering too you know I may have my hive close to a farmer's field well chemicals affect my bees all and those are things that you really need to make sure your research in a hive like this you need to inspect your colony about every two to three weeks and what you're looking for is to make sure they have eggs make sure that everything looks good and that's why you need to know how to identify pests and diseases because if you don't they can get a pest some disease and you won't know it and they'll collapse on you and die so there is some basic information that you're going to need to know it rolling again I just can't take time today I'm just giving you a basic overview of what you need to plan for so inspecting your hive about every two to three weeks making sure the queen is healthy she's laying a lot of eggs the Queen there's only one Queen in here out of when the hive gets full size is forty to eighty thousand bees one queen now one Queen lays approximately one to three thousand eggs a day and I did not misspeak one to three thousand eggs a day and so you need to make sure she's healthy these bees in the in the summertime only bit of about 35 to 45 days then they die of being I guess working themselves to death they're quickly replaced by the eggs at the Queen's Lane so in the summer time you've got to be aware that you've got to have a strong queen if you lose your queen or if she isn't laying that many eggs as she's supposed to your queen will group your hive will go down in population and then your hive will eventually perish another be frustrating you spend a lot of time money learning beekeeping watch your queen so you're gonna have to invest that much time in inspecting your colony you can add as many supers as you want once they fill this one up you don't have to harvest it you can add another one on top of it on top of that once some people have really tall hives with a lot of these honey supers being filled up with honey generally the first year the bees are adding so much wax to the nest area that they don't they're not able to make enough wax to really turn all that nectar into honey and the supers the second year it's generally when you get most of your honey from a honey but I've had a lot of customers tell me on their first year they've got one hundred two hundred pounds of honey off of their hives so you just never know depends on where you live hey everybody thanks for watching my video on how to become a beekeeper I've given you the basic of basic elements this is by no means a beginners class or a basic class at all those classes can take anywhere from five to twenty hours or more to really help a beekeeper know the basics of becoming a beekeeper I do encourage you to take a class it is in my opinion essential for you to be a successful beekeeper but my video today hopefully has given you at least enough information to whet your appetite to pursue the beekeeping endeavor that you know you want to do if you've liked this video please subscribe down in the corner below or like it we'd love to do more videos and when you subscribe and like our videos it challenges us to do more we'll see you next time

Channel: David Burns

Views: 810,023

Rating: 4.9283361 out of 5

Keywords: beekeeping, how to start beekeeping, beekeeping 101, beekeeping for beginners, How to keep bees, beekeeping honey bees

Id: ryThwgpdkFw

Length: 19min 55sec (1195 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 13 2019