Beekeeping tools

Hi there reader, how's it going! Hopefully you're well and going Ok. Apologies for the late upload. I wanted to wait until we did an inspection so that I can give you an update on the hive. In this post I'll be talking about some of the tools that are needed to keep bees as well as how to use them. I'll also be giving you an update on my bees while answering some questions that one of my subscribers has asked. What are we waiting for, lets dive in!

There are a couple tools that are used for beekeeping. First off lets address the tool that most beekeepers believe to be the most practical, the hive tool. The hive tool is a universal tool that most beekeepers use across the globe. There are two designs of the tool in the western world, the American, or Australian. The two are essentially the same except on the end of the Australian one there is a hook for levering out frames and on the American one there is another plate coming out at a right angle. On the other end they both have a sharp cutting edge for slicing propolis (a substance that bees make to seal off the hive and that doubles as a antibacterial) which sticks the frames together and makes difficult to inspect.

Next up we have the smoker. The smoker is possibly the most well know beekeeping tool that supposedly "puts bees to sleep" although that is not true. What the smoke actually does is it makes the colony think that there is a fire. As an adaptation, when bees sense a fire they gorge in their honey supplies so that if they have to evacuate then they can leave with some stores to keep them going for a bit while they find a new place to live. When they are in this state they are more docile and less likely to attack you. The smoke also interferes with the bees pheromones that they produce. When a bee stings you it releases a pheromone saying to the other bees, "come and sting around here this is where the weak spot is". Without smoke if you get one sting you are almost certainly going to get more around the same area but with smoke you might just get one or two.

As mentioned in the previous post we split out beehive a few months ago. Recently we did a inspection that confirmed that the split was successful. Now we have two smaller hives so that we can produce more honey to give to you guys. This also means, however, that the hive may take a few weeks to recover from the split meaning the harvest may come later in the season. For those who are wondering, Splitting is when we take one of the brood boxes of a hive and put it on another hive base so that we have two hive that each have one brood box. The queen is in one of these boxes. The box that the queen is in will continue to function as usual. In the box that doesn't have the queen the workers find a few eggs that the queen recently laid and will feed them more royal jelly. Then when they hatch the queens will fight to the death assuming that the strongest one wins. That queen then takes over the hive and business goes back to normal.

Q: What products, other than honey, can bees provide for us?

A: There are lots of products that bees make that we can use. One of the major ones is beeswax. Beeswax can made onto things like candles or beeswax wraps. We might be releasing some wraps in the off season (the winter) made from our beeswax. Many farmers (especially fruit tree farmers) own beehives to help with pollination. Studies have shown that only a fraction of the fruit produce that we see at a supermarket would be there if it wasn't for bees. For people who have big gardens on more rural properties bees are an asset to the health of their garden. Some people have a wild beehive in their backyard to keep their garden looking nice and healthy.

From now on I my be going shorter blog posts. Remember to check your Inboxes for an email inviting you to have some of your questions answered. Wishing you a very great start to 2023

-Parker's pure