Something that I discovered this weekend is that bee keeping is really involved!
Above is the basic set up of one bee box. You need at least two of these (even better, three) to keep a happy hive. The queen lives in the bottom box and lays all her babies in the honey comb there and the box on top is the honey box. The queen is kept down in the bottom with a queen excluder mat. I told you it was involved! Most boxes come with metal lids which we don't use in South Australia. We only use wood because the metal gets too hot in summer and a mass of melted wax, honey and dead bees is not a good thing! One thing Marty said to us over and over again was the most important thing was to have happy, healthy bees. If you look after your bees the honey will come, which is logical really.
The next big purchase will need to happen in spring time when the honey is "flowing" (that's what bee keepers call it, I think it's a great phrase!). We will need a honey extractor which is a big metal spinner that you put your frames in and spin the honey out.
One of these babies will set you back anything from $800 to $8000 depending on how many frames it holds, and whether it is automatic or done by hand. I'm telling you right now we won't be doing it by hand!
Then we will need to purchase some honey containers to put our honey in for selling! 5 bee hives apparently yields about 500kg of honey, which is quite a lot of honey!
Kym is now looking into planting lots and lots more trees around our farm. We already have a lot of our property revegetated but now he's looking at it from the perspective of having something flowering all year round for his bees.
I haven't been all that involved in this whole process unless Kym has asked my advice on something but I'm really enjoying watching how excited and animated he is about it. With farming being the way it has these past four years it's wonderful to see him really animated about something.
8 valued opinions!:
Ohhhh, I love honey. Eat it a lot and buy it a case at a time. Here in the southern United States the very best kind of honey is sourwood honey. It is all I will eat. I will not touch the orange blossom or any other kind of honey other than sourwood.
Keep us updated on your new adventure!!
Leah
I love this post! Very interesting... Great pics too. ;)
I have SO much to learn before I can consider setting up a hive ~ but I'll keep my ear leaning your direction. Remember - picture documentation is wonderful for us visual learners!
Thanks for sharing! Glad you had a good weekend. :)
Our honey will be a combination of South Australian Mallee (which is quite mild, I really like it), and Banksia, depending on whats flowering the most when the honey is flowing. Still love that phrase! It conjurs up pictures of flowing rivers of honey!
Our next step is to get registered. We need three letters. We live on Eyre Peninsula so are thinking about E.P. Bees, or maybe Eastern Eyre Bees (which is bee spelled backward!). All our hives have to be labelled with the three letters of our name and we can't have something that someone else already has, so if anyone has any brilliant ideas let me know!
Looks like a great project. I really hope it goes well. We'll buy honey from you!!! Once we get through the HUGE bucket I bought at the last field days.
Hope your honey turns into money! (Yes, I am a poet). ;-)
I like the Eastern Eyre Bees (Bee spelled backward)... :) I could suggest some fun, cutesy names ~ and get really carried away, but I think you're on the right track. What does the family think?
The family aren't beeing very imaginative at all!
Of course they're not. :P
Post a Comment