How to properly organize beekeeping for beginners
You can master beekeeping for beginners with the help of manuals, experienced professionals and visual lessons. The requirements for the creation of an apiary provide for measures to protect the surrounding residents from stinging insects. Without compliance with the standards, the arrangement of the apiary is impossible.
Features of beekeeping and where to start for a beginner
If the decision to create your own apiary is made, then you will need to fulfill a number of conditions:
- find a location for hives that meets the requirements;
- prepare the necessary equipment and equip the wintering place;
- choose a breed of bees suitable for climatic conditions and productivity;
- get knowledge of beekeeping for beginners.
The desire to get a sweet product from flying insects will require knowledge. You can master the theory from the manual or go as an apprentice to an experienced master. You cannot do without visual techniques for carrying out maintenance of the hive. Video on beekeeping for beginners will provide invaluable help:
Apiary arrangement rules
If you are a beginner beekeeper, then you need to learn from a small number of bee colonies. At the legislative level, the “Instruction on the maintenance of bee colonies” was canceled and since 2013 the issue has been transferred to regional regulation. Optimally for mastering beekeeping from scratch, start with three hives. But at the same time safety standards must be observed. If hives are installed in a settlement, this must be agreed with the neighbors. They need to know how to avoid bee stings. A neighbor bitten by a bee will always win a lawsuit against the beekeeper.
It is planned to place hives 10 meters before the border of the property and 50 meters from the living quarters. In order to prevent insects from flying into neighboring areas, it is prescribed to arrange a fence around the perimeter of at least 2 m in height. If the size of the site does not allow to maintain the distance from the hives to the dwelling and the fence, it is prohibited to engage in beekeeping.
How to organize beekeeping for beginners, where to start if the size of the plot does not allow you to build an apiary? It is necessary to find a place for an apiary in a residential or abandoned settlement. You can find an area without buildings, where there are many flowering plants and no air pollutants. Register a plot for rent or property in order to create an apiary.
When registering the land, a sanitary and veterinary passport for the apiary is simultaneously issued. The site must meet the requirements of constant bribe by bees from honey plants within a radius of 2 km. At the same time, intersections with the motorway and the river are excluded. You can choose a breed of bees flying high, then pedestrians will not become an obstacle for the worker bees.
400 bees work to collect a spoonful of honey. Half collects pollen, the other puts it in a honeycomb. To get a kilogram of honey for 4500 flights. A large family gathers up to 20 kg of nectar per day, from which 10 kg of honey is obtained.
Beekeeping success for beginners depends on the first steps in creating an apiary.A bee package, swarm or colony is the primary material acquired for further breeding of bees. A bee package is formed only to order, sold in the fall.
Stages of arranging an apiary
Before buying bees, you need to take care of the location of the hives, the winter keeping of bees, and purchase a tool. All about bees and beekeeping for beginners must be learned before the first family appears in the apiary. This will help determine the nature of the relationship and make fewer mistakes.
The planning of the site is to clean up all plantings and felling residues. The area must be clean and level, even the leaves are removed. The main road and paths are being laid. All hives are installed with a tap hole inside the site, their colors are bright and different, so that the bees recognize their house from a distance.
The hives are selected according to the type of bee adapted in the local region. There should be more houses than families, the supply will be required when separating a new swarm. In addition to hives, you will need:
- foundation;
- warming pillows and canvas for each hive;
- smoker and overalls for working with insects;
- wire, paint and nails.
A winter house, a warm room for hives, should be ready by autumn. If beekeeping is planned as a business, then an apiary with more than fifty families will become profitable. You need to know that caring for bees, examining hives and related operations will require approximately 6 hours per week for three families. To provide bribes for a large number of families, it is necessary to place hives in forbs or on the side of flowering fields of cultivated plants.
Like any business, beekeeping requires planning and expansion of production. The costs of maintaining the apiary must be included in the business plan. For the sale of products, a veterinary passport is required.
Difficulties of an inexperienced beekeeper
If you approach a new business responsibly, you can avoid disappointment in the future. But for this, one should study and obtain information about the organization of the bee colony in advance. At the first stage, you need to know:
- the right choice of a bee colony when buying;
- temperature regime in the hive in different seasons and how to maintain it;
- signs of a healthy family;
- signs of bee diseases, weakening of the bee colony;
- death of the uterus and how to plant a new individual in the hive;
- how to catch an escaped swarm.
In the process of work, a lot of questions will arise, an experienced beekeeper will help or study videos and literature. The bee community does not forgive mistakes in grooming.
Where to start for a beginner in beekeeping and how not to be bitten by bees? Bees sting only in exceptional cases, since this ends with the death of the defender herself. Therefore, you need to work in the apiary without sudden movements, in light and clean clothes without foreign odors. A hat with a mosquito net should be worn on the head. Do not use clothes with a pile so that the bee cannot get confused and angry. Calm movements, quiet conversation and smoker will not anger the bees. A bee sting is painful, but carries a healing dose of poison.
Worker bees recognize their owner by their characteristic facial features. The beekeeper's eyebrows, ears and lips are a configuration signal for bees. Perhaps that is why the beekeeper's bees rarely sting.
It is best to buy hives and the necessary equipment in a specialized store. When experience appears, bee houses are made by themselves. The larger the family, the more honey and bee bread it collects and the more frames are installed in the hive.
The most rational form of capacity is a hexagonal cell. To create 100 cells, bees need 1.3 g of wax. The shape of the vessel is ideal in terms of spaciousness and strength.
Beehive designs differ in the way they attach frames for honeycombs. There are vertical and horizontal structures, and even special structures are made for onboard honey. A novice beekeeper can get the necessary information from the video.