Who am I as a beekeeper?
The Beginning; 2018
Hello Internet,
This is me, and my adopted dog Ize.
I was born in 1979 and became a beekeeper after a year of reading up on it in februari 2018.
I browsed through a lot of YouTube channels, blogs and forums about beekeeping. I became a member through internet of Mellifica, a Belgian association promoting the Apis mellifera mellifera or the European Dark/Black Bee. I had set my mind to getting my first hive from them; As, even if they are part of Wallonia and I'm from Flanders, they had members closer to me than their Flemmish counterpart: zwartebij.org (formarly known as : De limburgse zwarte bij).
Things did not turn out the way I thought they would.
In my quest to become a beekeeper I looked up some beekeepers close to my home and found a neighbour who kept bees. As he's keeping to himself I'll not mention his name here. He prefers working with the Buckfast. A subspecies of Apis Mellifera if you will, well it's more of an engineered bee, crossing different subspecies to create the perfect bee named after the abbey where she was created by Karl Kehrle (brother Adam)
This neighbour had a nasty fall with his bicycle and splintered the bones in his shoulder, thus preventing him from lifting hiveboxes or working in his apiary. I offered to help him out and be his hands as that would benefit me enormously. It was winter, so I did not start straight away but signed up for a beekeeping beginners course with the local beekeeping club I'm still a member of: Imkersbond Deinze.
As a way of thanks my neighbour donated me my first nucleus colony. A 6-frame simplex polystyrene. My only cost was helping him out, paying him back with 10 new simplex frames and returning the polystyreen box to him.
During the beekeeping course I quickly learnt the 'normal' way of beekeeping was to treat your hives to prevent the Varroa Distructor from weakening your colonies. Prior to taking up the course however I had already came across the writings and other publications of a couple beekeepers that did not do any treatments, with great succes: Solomon Parker, Michael Bush, Dee Lusby and Phill Chandler to name some. I also learnt that becoming a beekeeper is somewhat personal and a local activity, what works for me doesn't have to work for others ...
So instead of adopting what was tought to me in the course, I went my own way.
As I knew I had to deal with winter coming, and possible loss of hives, I looked to expand my apiary. I informed the closest fire-departments that I was willing to catch swarms if any were reported. Here in Belgium the fire-department gets called out for wasps nesting in homes and populated area's, they are tasked with the destruction of said nests. When however they come upon a bee-nest they cannot destroy it, as bees are deemed more usefull than wasps. Sometimes a call is made for a honeybee swarm and they delegate the task to beekeepers that volounteer to go and catch them.
Doing this I had to look up more information on how to catch swarms. I bought a skep, to skoop the swarms in and studied on how to do trap-outs. I even got my first hand experience doing two trap-outs in my first year as a beekeeper. With succes!!
I also signed up on a website where I could leave my name for people, so when they saw a swarm they could call me directly if they were looking who to call to remove it.
In total I got more than 20 calls, most of them were Wasps, a couple were bumble bees. I did have one actual swarm, one queen that left a mating box and four people called for a trap-out. Two of them I was able to help out. The third I did not, the nest was too high up for my liking and the hive had multiple entrances. It was also later in the season and I didn't think I'd be able to save the colony. The fourth I gave away to another beekeeper I met on facebook but don't really know, I have no idea what became of that. I didn't do it myself as the two other trap-outs I was doing took a lot from the one colony I had (removing brood from it to do the trap-out boxes)
Through my beekeeping club I also got a chance to buy bees from a beekeeper that had developped an allergy to beevenom. I bought his equipment (even though it was not the same size as mine) and there were supposed to be 2 hives populated. After moving them it quickly turned out they were weak. They got robbed out within a couple of weeks and died.
The colony I received from my neighbour that had the bicycle accident, I split up twice, with mediocre succes:
One split got a queen I bought through Mellifica as neither would make a queen of their own, the other I used to strenghten another hive with.
At one point I had 7 operational hives (if all worked out it could've been 8) but with losing both hives I bought (you're right Solomon Parker, don't buy bees) I sent 5 into winter at the end of 2018. 2 Hives were in 2 deep boxes (Zander) one hive was in a 3 deep configuration (Zander) 2 other hives were in 6-frame polystyrene nucleus hives (Zander).
Halfway through the year I became a side member of another beekeeping club: De Mandelbie. Mostly because I was curious to see the differences in beekeeping courses with my other club: Imkersbond Deinze. To that end I'll be taking a course with both clubs in 2019. The other benefits are of course I get to meet with a greater number of beekeepers. And as knowledge is power, I can gather more of it if I speak with more people, even if they don't see things my way.
That's pretty much who I am as a beekeeper sof ar... I hope to give you an overview of next year on a second page, for details of this year, you can read through my blog where you can follow my endeavors of my first year in beekeeping!
Hope you enjoy
Bob Out
