Contributed by Peter Cowin.
This has certainly been an unusual year but nobody has told that to my bees. For them, 2020 has been buzziness as usual.
My bees got through last winter very well. In six of my seven bee yards I had 92 percent survival. I lost more hives in the seventh yard as I believe my colonies acquired a lot of late season mites from the collapse of a neighboring beekeeper’s hives.
Normally in the spring, much of my time is taken up with preparing for, or teaching, beekeeping classes for beginners from Readfield to Presque Isle. However, COVID-19 restrictions cut out the vast majority of my classes and in doing so it looked as though I would have a lot fewer new beginner customers. Most people would assume that, as a beekeeper, I make my money selling honey. That certainly is part of my business; however, I make most of my annual income from selling bees and equipment.
As it turned out, the need to stay at home this year led to a huge rise in people gardening and thinking about their gardens and sustainability. That prompted a lot of folks to take up beekeeping, with or without classes. As a result, instead of facing a decline in sales, I increased my sales of bees by more than 60 percent.
I, too, increased my beekeeping activities this year. I went from having 70 hives to 130.
With all this extra activity I was very glad of the help of several of my mentees. Each spring I am fortunate to have new and experienced beekeepers join me in my yard to increase their experience. At the same time, they provide me with some gratefully received help.
This is something I thoroughly enjoy as well. Beekeeping is so enjoyable in its own right, but I do love sharing it — especially with such enthusiastic and motivated volunteers.
This year, I had also planned to produce and sell more honey as well as produce and sell more bees. In this business it is a trade-off, you can make bees or make honey. You need the bees to make the honey. This is where having lots of hives helps. Some are dedicated to growing more bees to sell, others are dedicated to honey production.
But it is also possible to manage hives to make more honey in a different way than the typical hobbyist does.
The simplest, and usually the least risky way to manage bees, is to give them two deep boxes in which to rear their brood. This is the method I recommend to all my beginners. This large brood nest gives the queen bee unlimited room and the colony reaches its maximum possible population.
More bees means more honey, right? Well, not always.
Rearing all that brood requires a lot of energy and bees. Instead, I ran the hives with a single brood chamber. In other cases I used two side-by-side, five-frame nucleus colonies, also known as nucs, with a queen excluder and communal honey supers above. In these cases, the bees still have a substantial population but much less brood to look after. As a consequence, with less brood, young bees who normally care for the brood are recruited to the field force at a much earlier age.
This radically increases the field bee population. As a result, much more honey is stored.
In most cases where I had two nucs and communal honey supers my hives made 120 to 150 pounds of honey each, or 50 to 75 pounds per nuc. My larger double brood chamber hives made more like 40 to 80 pounds each. This was despite the fact that drought severely curtailed the honey flow in most areas.
The downside of running hives this way is that you have to be very careful about swarming and feeding as soon as the honey supers come off. It is not a method for beginners, but very much suited my needs this year.
With COVID-19 still dominating our abilities to meet in person for now, I have had to adapt with the times. I’m planning my first virtual classes with Ellsworth Adult Ed and soon some others.
You can check my website beewhisperer.us or Facebook page, The Bee Whisperer, for details. Or call 207-299-6948.
I am also now taking orders for 3-pound packages of bees and nucs for 2021.