What got you started being a beekeeper?

[Horns Pure Honey]

My dad is so into bees now he wants to start a business too lesli. I love the thought of my dad and I working side by side raising bees for products and building hives for sale. We are also looking into what it would take to sell bees to the country, does any one know? thanks, bye

[Lesli]

I'm not sure what it takes to sell bees, but I'm going to give it a shot next summer--not the selling, but building up for it. We do have a fair number of beekeepers in this region, and I'm hoping that if I can raise queens and nucs (rather than packages) for local beekeepers, it might provide some extra. In any case, I want to have "spares" on hand for myself.

I suspect that raising bees for packages is quite a bit different from raising bees for honey. For one thing, you have to have the packages ready in April--a lot earlier than an Upstate NY hive is going to ramp up, I suspect. And these days, what I see advertised is SMR and Russian and all the rest. I couldn't do that, not with open mating.

But I could do nucs for May or June, I'll bet.

[Jay]

Jay cool pictures, appears the beekeeper used a regular shop vac to get them?
:D Al

Yes Al, a regular shop vac but he ran it through a beesource.com type design bee vac. So he was using the shop vac as the suction through the bee vac boxes. Those are the varnished boxes with the big 2 inch holes cut in the sides and top that you see him using, and dumping into the white hive boxes in the pictures.

Dumping the bees into a hive box from the inner bee vac box.



See the hose from the shop vac comming out of the top of the bee vac box?



The inner bee vac box on top of the hive box, and the outer bee vac box on the lawn to the right with the cover up.



Dumping the bees out of the bee vac box into the hive box, looking for the queen. See the comb in the cardboard box to the right on the lawn?



These I think are the young nurse bees who don't know their way around  outside the hive, and they are trying to climb up the ladder and the vaccume hose to get back inside the hive!




I have some pics I left out here, maybe I'll post them in the pictures section of the forum. Then you can see everything I got!!
Al, I am building one of the beesource.com bee vac plans. I'll let you know how it comes out. I have already listed myself as a source for catching swarms for the spring!! :D