Any Bee Keepers here?

[manuka]

Hello! Am interested in bee keeping and just wondered if anyone here has them?

Sorry, no advice, just love the fact this is under 'pets' and have an image of you cuddling a bee now!

BTW, I've no idea what else yo ucould've put it under either...

Ha ha haaa!! Bumble bees are really cute and I would give one a cuddle if I was sure it was a boy (they don't have stings!)

my dad kept bees for years, if you have any specific questions i might be able to help

Oh brilliant!
Is it an expensive hobby? I don't know anything about it yet!
Did you ever go near them? Did he get stung a lot?
I've got a nearly 2 year old. Do you think it would be dangerous to have bees while she's so young?
What happens when they swarm? can that be dangerous?

im not sure how much it is but you need lots of stuff, such as

special bee suits
a hive
the stuff that goes in the hive(frames, waxy stuff for them to make honey on)
a smoker to make them dopey
a drum for putting the honey comb on to spin and extract the honey
jars for the honey
and a bee proof house because they will want their honey back

and i think thats it.

i would build fence if the toddler is around, we had a toddler shove his hands right in the hive once, it wasn't nice.

swarming's not dangerous, it just means the bees have left for good.

my dad also kept bees. the kit is not that expensive to get started, i think the hive is the most expensive thing but see if you can find a local beekeeping organisation, you may be able to pick things up cheap.
i would maybe avoid til a toddler is older. we never got stung as kids, honeybees dont sting much, but then we were old enough not to go poking the hive/taking the top off to see what happens....
also most beekepers DO get stung when taking honey etc even in full protective kit, one always gets stuck somewhere. usually just the odd sting every now and then but you have to be prepared for it.
swarming is a problem if they swam into your neighbour's chimney and you ahve to go and get them back...worth seeing if there is another beekeeper in your local area. helpful to have someone who you know could take a swarm for you/keep an eye on them when you are on holiday. also to have someone to show you what to do. they are supposed to react best to calm people but my dad is an irascible old git and they were always fine with him.

My dad kept bees for years, he had to give up when my mum suffered a MASSIVE anaphylactic shock after one of his bees stung her, and she very nearly died - heart had stopped etc...

But that is very rare!

I'm a learner bee keeper. I don't have my own hives yet, but help out at my local apiary every week, and will have my own soon.

The best advice I can give you is to contact your local bee keepers' association. If they run a learner weekend course, book yourself on it. This is what I did, and it gave me the basics, and put me in touch with loads of other bee keepers and allowed me to learn by actually doing it rather than reading about it. There's loads and loads to learn - it's all easy enough, but you would really benefit from having someone more experienced to advise and help and teach you when you're getting started.

I used to be a professional beekeeper, and we still have a few hives.

You can keep them with kids around, but they need to be in a place where nobody walks in front of the hives. Our 3 year old puts on a mask and watches when we open the hives, but there are certain times of year (eg end of summer) when bees are grumpier and more likely to sting.

Bees fill themselves up with honey before swarming and are very unlikely to sting then. swarming hive is an impressive sight! They'll go and hang from a nearby tree or something for a few days while the queen slims down and the bees scout out a new permanent home. If you can catch them then you can give them a new hive and they'll stay there.

Really the best thing to do is find a beekeeper and learn from them, as other's have said, your first stop should be British Beekeeper's Association

tortoiseSHELL, actually, it's not that rare I'm afraid. It happened to my Ma too, so Pa had to get rid of his hives as well - apparently, it can often happen to the partners of beekeepers, but the actual beekeeper is generally all right.

Very odd and I'm not sure of the reason, but maybe someone medical has done some research about it.

It was very sad for my Pa to give up the bees, particularly as making and selling the equipment was his life for many years. I've probably forgotten more about beekeeping than most people would want to remotely know!

Same here PigeonPie! Was your mum as big a reaction? My mum said it was SO scary thinking back - they were about to take the bees up to the moor for the heather, in which case she would definitely have died - my dad got her to hospital within 10mins (she was unconcious in

One thing my dad found was that the local police would often phone him in the middle of the night to collect swarms. He once had to collect a swarm that had landed on a railway signal on the main line, shutting the line - he had to climb the signal and collect the bees. He got on the local news for that!

Catching swarms was maybe my favourite part of beekeeping
Best one was inside a tomb at the cemetary, didn't manage to get that one though.

Yes, tortoiseSHELL, it was pretty scary. We were lucky that one of my parents' neighbours is a GP and when I didn't like the look of how she was going, I ran across the road and got him (thank God he was in), he came across with his bag and pumped her full of adrenalin and antihistamines etc and then got her blue-lighted to the local hospital.

I would say though, as I don't want to frighten others into not keeping bees, my Pa had been keeping them for more than 20 years and it was only because they were in the garden rather than in an out apiary that he had to get rid of them (he knew he wouldn't have time to look after them if they weren't in the garden).

Pa still gets calls from the Police now and does help if he can - he can't quite get rid of all the equipment, clothes etc!