The pollinating activities of honey bees are important for our farms, gardens, and flowers. There are many good reasons to keep bees. It is a safe hobby the entire family can enjoy.
If you enjoy gardening, beekeeping will vastly improve the productivity of your vegetables, fruits, and flowers. Honey bees are diligent workers at their craft, most often gathering more nectar and pollen than they can utilize. The excess that remains goes to the beekeeper in the quest for the delightful prize, honey!
So, if you take up beekeeping, you will benefit from dramatically bountiful produce harvests and the golden prize of raw honey. Why else keep bees?
The pollination factor is pretty important. While you may be thinking of it on a small scale for your home garden, the honey bee is extremely important to U.S. agriculture; we need bees to pollinate crops so we can feed our families.
Because of the drastic reduction in the bee population caused by pesticides, chemicals, parasites, and urbanization, even a small backyard bee colony helps to reestablish the bee pollination. The more people who take up the beekeeping hobby, the better chance we have of rebuilding the wild bee population.
Raw honey is not the only product we get from these miraculous creatures. Beeswax is a very useful product used in making candles, lip balms, ointments, salves, healing tinctures, moisturizing creams, furniture polish, and varnish.
Honey bees are very gentle and docile creatures. Some people shy away from the hobby because they are afraid of being stung. Most experienced beekeepers will tell you if you handle the bees properly, stinging can be kept to a minimum, if you even get stung at all.
Most beekeeping beginners buy their hives in precut kits for easy assembly. After you are more experienced, you may want to design and build your own from scratch.
In addition to the hive kits, you'll need a smoker, a hive tool, a veil, a soft bee brush, and a few other inexpensive odds and ends. Oh, and let's not forget, of course, one very important necessity: the bees!
After you have the equipment and the bees, you are ready to install your hives and start your beekeeping adventure. You can become a successful beekeeper without investing a fortune and without needlessly worrying about its safety.
With a little bit of instruction up front, you'll be ready to get started so you can enjoy not only the tasty rewards of your own raw honey supply, but the benefits of many other products you can make with your priceless bee bounty.
You can find out more useful information about beginning beekeeping at Buck Stephens' website,
BeeKeepingBiz.com
