PeteSpencer wrote:How long before Extinction Rebellion come along and accuse you of cynically depriving the bees of their food, their homes and their livelihoods?
(wink noted
)
A good beekeeper (which I aspire to become) only takes the surplus and leaves enough for the bees for the winter, and keeps an eye on them and feeds them if required. It's also another reason to harvest quite early so they have time to rebuild their stores before the winter. Their homes remain untouched; the frames you spin (extract honey from) are only used for storage, not for brood and their livelihood is certainly not impacted - I am certainly more than happy for them to get on with it
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There is a serious discussion about honey bees potentially being so popular these days in urban areas that they are replacing other pollinators. The focus should be on providing pollinator friendly gardens, not necessarily to add hives to places where their forage is already limited.
We are quite remote and started the pollinator friendly plants some time ago. I am pleased to see that, in addition to the honey bees, we also have a lot of bumble bees, butterflies, moths, dragon flies as well as (European) hornets and, of course, the odd wasp. This year we also seem to have rather more birds who no doubt are happy to pick up the odd aging bee...
My challenge now as an inexperienced beekeeper is to make them survive the winter...
For anyone thinking about getting some bees, get in touch with your local beekeeper's association (for some reason the term apiarist isn't used widely?) of which there are plenty.
Were I to start again I'd probably start with 2 or 3 hives - although it is more work it is actually easier to have a couple in case things go wrong - which they will. I lost a swarm but hope to increase my hives next year - as long as they do well over the winter.
We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.