Bee Keeping

[Lolly]

Hi everyone..

I'm very interested in settling up a few nice homes on our recent purchase (yay!) to entice some honey-makers (yum!)

Naturally all I have is an idea and not one single clue on what to do, so some advice would be greatly appreciated. Are there bee-keeping courses available or should I just invest in a yellow and black book for dummies??

Cheers

Lolly

PS. Advice on growing raspberries would be also gratefully accepted..

[wwoofertobe]

i was looking to do a course next year through OTEN- tafe by correspondence. look on the tafe web site (i'm in nsw, it may not be avaliable in other states?) there may be a beekeeping group in your area too so ask around.

i too would appreciate raspberry growing advice :o

[permajake]

Here's a web resource that is worth it's wait in download time.

http://www.beekeeping.com/articles/us/s ... mepage.htm

search for "Small Scale Beekeeping" if this link is down:

The Kenya Top Bar Hive System (a.k.a. KTBH). is the one that I recommend because you can build it yourself with novice hands and it's relatively simple to manage once up and running.

If there is anyone interested in building the Top Bar Hive, I have some additional tips I learned from an experienced urban beekeeper who built a few of these...

Here's a glimpse of the instructions for building a KTBH

[Cornonthecob]

G'day Lolly..... this is a great site for native bees

http://www.zeta.org.au/~anbrc/

[psychochook]

Hi Lolly,

I did a bee-keeping course in Lara (near Geelong). I will get you some contact details over the weekend. I found it very informative and interesting.

The man who i did the course with has been keeping bees for ages and had a lot of information.

[Lolly]

Wow! Thanks for the great tips guys... now I've got no excuse to procrastinate! :?

Time to get buzzy, I mean busy..D

[christopher]

Lolly,

We're not keeping bees right now, but we have in the past. They are wonderful. They pollinate your crops, forage on your behalf (um, its sort of like "file sharing...", really you are ), add several variants of increased efficiencies, including pollination, value adding, additional nutrient harvesting, and they are soooooo much fun!

My bees became Africanized, "killere bees, ugh, no fun. Not docile, easy to get along with, but mean, hyper defensive, vicious bugs, vicious in that way only social insects can be....

The tope bar hives are great, but they do make using centrifugal xtractors impossible. I have never used on myself, but can see that they offer some advantages over boxes, especially reduced start up costs.

I took a class sponsored by peace Corps about 16 years ago, raised them for three years, and then sold all my equipment when they became Africanized, which I did ultimately to my great regret (beekeeping equipment is costly and lasts a long time if well taken care of, little didI know... :cry: ) as the problems associated with Africanized bees are solved with two beekeepers working in tandem, with one working the smoker non stop and the other, um, "file sharing" (STEALING!) the honey. I was single when I sold it, and we have been interested in bees ever since....

If a course is available, my advice would be to take it as it would be time and money well spent! I learned alot, and it also helped me get over that initial (and sensible) primordial brain stem fear thing of opening a box with thousands of potentially hostile stinging insects in it, thousands of stinging insect sitting on top of THEIR honey which you want to take from them...... :lol: .

Good luck on the beekeeping. T'is worthy work, both for you and your farm and adjacent areas.

C

[psychochook]

As promised, here are the details of the course I did.

The man who took the course is called Brian Faithfull and he lives in Lara (Victoria 3212). I don't have info re web-sites (if he even has one). I did the course in 2002, so I can't even promise that you is still teaching it.

He is in the phone book so I am sure that you will be able to track him down. I found his course to be quite good, with practical activities with hives in his back yard as well as theory about diseases etc.

[Lolly]

Thanks again folks... I'm really keen to start learning..

Linda

[dryland dweller]

Like Chris I kept bees until the mid 80's and due to drought and stupidity I got rid of them to another aspirant. I did keep some of the duplicated tools tho and my 2 steam knives. the set up costs for bees (not including bees) is about $1000.00 and that includes a bench top extractor.
here is a site that sells all the gear including queens. I used them until I stopped keeping bees and they are still going

http://www.johnlguilfoyle.com.au/

with enough honey who needs sugar
Pete