If you've read my blog for very long, you know that I think keeping bees is a great idea. I think people should keep bees in the city, in the country, in the suburbs, on the rooftops, wherever they can fit a hive. In my blogs, I've extolled all the good reasons for keeping bees: helping the bees to survive when the rest of the world seems hellbent on poisoning and starving them, pollination for your garden, honey for your table.

Despite all these good reasons for keeping bees, some very good reasons exist for NOT keeping bees. I'll list a few.

1. You want a hobby that makes money. Bees are expensive! The woodenware to put them in, the protective clothing, the tools, the actual bees, the vehicle to carry the equipment around in, a honey house and equipment for harvesting the honey, not to mention continually replacing all of the aforementioned. I kept bees for 6 years before I ever made a penny in profit. Since then, it's been hit or miss, like any other kind of agriculture only without the subsidies! 

2. You want a hobby that requires very little work. Keeping bees is hot, hard, heavy work, especially south of the Mason-Dixon line. Harvesting occurs on the hottest days of the year, when you will be sweating inside 2 sets of clothing to lift heavy honey-filled supers from hives of ill-tempered bees. 

Beekeeping requires continual study and learning to stay ahead of whatever is trying to kill them: honey and larva predation, mites, fungus, bacterial and viral diseases, pesticides, to name a few. The many things you will have to learn will include bee and honey plant biology, crude carpentry, and your local weather and seasonal patterns.

3. You think you won't get stung. For some reason, a lot of people think that if they're nice to their bees and handle them just right, the bees will like them and not sting them. This is crazy-thinking! Bees are insects, a super organism. They are intent on their purposes, not yours. If it's a nice warm and sunny day when the world is in bloom, they will fly to and from the hive and probably totally ignore you. However, if you are tearing into their hive on day when they are all home with nothing much else to do, they are going to defend their stores and brood nest! That's why they have those little barbed stingers on their butts--to keep critters like you out of their business. You will get stung from time to time.

If you've read these reasons not to keep bees, and you're still thinking, "Yes, but..." get yourself some bees! I can't image not having hives of these wonderful creatures around my place. They are a source of continual learning, challenge, wonder, and sheer joy (when they aren't making me crazy). Keeping bees will teach you not just about bees, but about the plants they forage on and how bees and wild plants fit into the rest of the natural world. If you're lucky and take the time to be very observant, they will even teach you how you fit into that world! If everyone kept a box of bees, maybe we'd all become humble stewards who care for and try to fit into the world around us rather than arrogant masters who try to control and enslave the natural world and only end up poisoning it and us.

With Winter Solstice and the shortest day of the year just around the corner, the bees have already spent a lot of time in cluster. As I go about my morning chores of chopping up water and haying the goats, I pass by some of the bee boxes and I've wondered how they are faring in there. Do they have enough honey to eat? Just like the goats, having enough feed is what will keep them warm and alive through the winter. Are they able to break cluster and take cleansing flights often enough to avoid dysentery and nosema?

It's tempting to peak inside, but I know I must stay out of the hives in the winter. The bees have worked hard to glue up all the cracks with propolis as winter protection from the elements. They don't need my interference right now.

Yesterday, we all got a reprieve. A spring-like day after days of freezing weather. Everyone wanted to get out and kick up their heels. The young goats frolicked and play-fought each other. The chickens scratched through the leaf litter in the woods for bugs. The dogs got out and tussled in the yard. Even the once-feral cat followed me on my rounds and let me scratch his ears.

And were those bees flying!! Coming and going from EVERY hive! I found bees collecting water at the chicken waterers, at the goat troughs, and along the creek. They were even resourceful enough to find a bit of food. I spied them foraging on the smashed open persimmons that had fallen from the many persimmon trees on the farm! So, for today, the bees are alive and all is well on Persimmon Ridge Honey Farm. Ahhhhhh.

First posted on October 9, 2014 for Mother Earth News: http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/putting-bees-to-bed-for-winter-zbcz1410.aspx#axzz3FfiE38GJ

As I visit my hives for the last time this year, I’m reminded of how beekeeping is a mixture of science, art, and dumb luck! I keep my bees in pretty much the same manner year after year--no mite treatments, no chemicals, make new hives from the strong hives, let the weak ones die--but the outcome varies. When I head out to check on them, I really never know what I’m going to encounter.

This year, things look good.

We’ve had our first frost of fall, and I’ve completed my autumn hive inspections. All of the fully established colonies look healthy, each housed in 2 deep brood boxes with a shallow super of honey on top. The frost did not kill the fall bloom, and the bees are still bringing in nectar and pollen from goldenrod and asters, and the shallow supers are almost full of honey in most hives. This has been a good year for the established hives, none has failed and they look strong and well supplied going into winter. I put the entrance reducers in place and will try to forget about them until a warm day in late winter/early spring.

I’m not so sure about the nucleus hives (nucs). I started these hives in the spring. Most have filled the first deep brood boxes and part of the second boxes, but two nuc hives have only filled one brood box each. I know that I need to “take my losses in the fall,” combine weak hives to give them a better chance of surviving the winter. But these hives look pretty good. Are they both still too strong to sacrifice one? 

I decide to risk it. I remove the second deep boxes that I had given them and that they have not started to fill. It’s too late for them to make any progress in these second boxes, and a smaller space is easier for them to protect and to keep warm over the winter. But the bees are still bringing in food and the first brood boxes are too full! What to do?

I decide to add a shallow of drawn comb to each deep box. In one, I replace three empty frames with one frame of honey from each of three established hives. I have some extra honey in my personal stash, so I use this to fill a mason-jar feeder to place in a box on top of the shallow of drawn comb in the other hive. (See photos.) I’m hoping that feeding them back some of their own honey and giving them room to store a little more of the fall bloom will ensure ample stores for winter.

This is a gamble. Both hives may survive the winter or they may not. If the hives survive but are weak in the spring, I can combine them then. If they survive. The decision is made. I add the entrance reducers and walk away.

I have done what I can for the bees this year. The rest is up to them, to the weather, to how long and hard the winter is, to whether or not my neighbors use herbicides and pesticides, to whether some new mite or virus is introduced to my apiary for which they have no immunity. However much is science or art, keeping bees these days is just a damn crap shoot!