Sometimes it’s because you’re a homebrewer and you get interested in making mead. Other times it’s because you’re a gardener and you want better pollination for your plants and trees. Whatever the reason, more and more people today are getting interested in beekeeping.
Keeping bees provides numerous benefits. It’s obviously a great source of honey. Honey’s numerous benefits include antibacterial and antimicrobial properties, as well as being a healthy source of sugar that can keep for years without spoiling.
Bee hives can also provide you with beeswax, which can be used to make candles, lubes, balms, creams, and many other useful products. And having bees around a garden or orchard can significantly enhance pollination and result in more productive fruit and vegetable plants. What’s not to love about bees?
Unfortunately, beekeeping isn’t something you can just jump right in and do. It requires a significant outlay on equipment and extensive knowledge on how to keep bees alive, how to harvest honey and beeswax, etc.
If you don’t do enough reading and studying before deciding to keep bees, there’s a good chance that you could end up destroying your colonies, leaving you with nothing to show for your effort. Learning from other people’s mistakes is always better than learning from your own, and is less expensive to boot.
At The Homesteading Hippy, you can read about 28 beekeeping mistakes that beginning beekeepers often make. Some of them are things you would never think someone would do, like sitting bare-bottomed on top of a bee hive.
Others provide useful information about feeding bees and protecting them over the winter. There are even useful videos embedded within to help you learn more about beekeeping mistakes to avoid.
Beekeeping isn’t easy, but it can be made a lot less difficult if you start with a good base of knowledge and preparation. It can be not just a fun hobby, but also something that provides your family with much needed supplies when times get tough.