Learning on the fly, bee-keeping so far.

A year ago Sean, Iris and I were about to start a beginners' bee-keeping course. We got our hives in November (roughly equivalent to Northern hemisphere May). I was just thinking about what I've learnt since then, not the bee stuff, the -keeping stuff. 

How much time?

For about 10 weeks before we got the hives we each spent 2.5 hours at a course, about 1 hour of homework and discussion and all our reading time on bee books and all our gardening/craft time on organising our bee yard and equipment. 

After we got the bees we inspected them about once a week, which was 2 hours work in each hive at first and is now more like 1 because we are better at what we're doing, and about 2 hours of preparation and follow-up reading and discussion (which is now more like 20 minutes unless we see something new). 

Honey extraction took us one entire weekend and we got enough honey for our extended family for the year.  

At first I spent about 1 hour each day popping out with my breakfast or hot drinks to the bee coop, looking at the hives and trying to understand bee behaviour with the help of At The Hive Entrance by H Storch, there's a pdf here 

http://biobees.com/library/?dir=general_beekeeping/beekeeping_books_articles or you can buy a real book here https://www.northernbeebooks.co.uk/products/storch-at-the-hive-entrance/

Now I glance out the window at them often, but only sit and watch "Bee TV" occasionally. 

As an activity to share with the family, I love it, but am very glad Iris was 15 and sensible and not a child when we started. 

Even new the bees took not nearly as much time as a puppy, but way more time than a newly constructed garden. 

Expectations vs reality

People often wonder about kinds of hives. We have had bees for nearly a year and we have two hives:

Our hives, naked above and in their winter coats below. 

All three Flow boxes actually contain 8x ordinary Langstroth deep frames each (we haven't put the Flow Frames in as we have been warned that our local honey is pretty solid and now I'm hesitant to because I'm not confident I could get them in and out really smoothly for inspections). The other hive has boxes that are 10x 3/4 frames. 

We love the ability to look in the Flow super windows between full inspections so we made a perspex ceiling for the other hive. 

I know a lot more now, including that the cost of an extractor isn't very different than a set of Flow frames. 

I think an attractive horizontal hive with some windows would be awesome, or maybe an A-Z if building it weren't an issue. 

If I were setting up anew I'd definitely go for 2 hives again but with the same frames in both our hives, so that moving a frame of brood across is simple in either direction, I'd like all 3/4 frames because they're light and robust and easy to work gracefully as the bees really prefer the calm of graceful easy movements. That is also why I think horizontal might be best; we have squished bees when stacking boxes even though we work together and try really hard to help all bees stay clear and I think horizontal avoids that problem. 

I wish I'd had the opportunity to try working different types of hives in my area before we bought. Bees in different places have different nectar and different problems so they need different care. 

Different hives make different things easier. Here in Wellington, New Zealand it is definitely the inspections that is the thing to make the easiest as extraction is a far less frequent process. Most importantly we inspect brood frames for American Foul Brood, but we also inspect regularly through Summer for varroa mites and to check our bees have enough room and are doing well. The ease of removing frames for inspection is less important if looking in from the sides and ends tells you enough about how the bees are to look after them properly. 

In Australia, where Flow Hives were designed, they have lovely runny honey, hot summers, and don't have AFB or varroa (problems that in New Zealand we constantly inspect our hives for), though they do have Small Hive Beetles which we don't. Near me we have thixatropic honey that the Flow Frames don't extract easily, a temperate climate, and AFB and varroa but not SHB. The Flow Frames being made of expensive plastic would be a bit of a problem if the hive were to get AFB, because one would have to burn it. 

Situations really vary but the bees are beautiful.