How do I learn beekeeping?

You can find great beekeeping tutorials on YouTube. There are books, like the Blue Book (Beekeeping in Southern Africa – M.F. Johansmeier), that are good to have as reference guides. Courses are on offer throughout the year from seasoned beekeepers. Soak it all in, but don’t feel overwhelmed, and take opinions with a pinch of salt. Every beekeeper has their own way of doing things and what works for them may not work for you because of slightly different climate, environment, plants, bees or budget constraints.

At the end of the day, the simpler your approach is to start with, the better you will do. Don’t enter beekeeping expecting to raise queens, harvest propolis, keep perfect records, perform removals, offer pollination services and export honey to the UAE. Start by focusing on getting a few hives set up and making some honey. Just this is a difficult task, and it will teach you a lot about bees and yourself as you work to accomplish it.

What do I need to keep bees?

Safety first. As a newbee, you want to build confidence. A negative experience early on could put you off bees. This means getting a good suit, good gloves and good boots. Long gumboots work best since you can tuck the suit legs into the boots – bees aren’t inclined to climb down your leg, they naturally climb upwards. It is advisable to layer up underneath the suit (sweat is preferabke to stings).

You need a smoker. When beekeepers work with bees they burn cardboard, wood chips, dung or grass in a container to make smoke, which they blow over the bees every now and then to keep them calm. African bees are aggressive and dangerous, so you want to keep them calm by using the fight or flight response. Bees will fight everything except water and fire. When bees smell smoke they go into a flight response, preparing to evacuate the hive and find a new home. They drink honey to sustain the swarm on the journey and this, together with the flight response makes them docile.

You need a beehive. Most of the world uses the same beehive system: Langstroth. This is a vertical hive where hollow chambers, filled with removable rectangular frames, are stacked atop one another. The frames are a standard size so that beehive components made by different people should be interchangeable. There are typically 10 frames inside each chamber, each with a small strip of wax to guide the bees and get them to build their wax comb in straight rows from the top of the frame down. There are wires running across the frame from end to end which the bees incorporate into the beeswax, reinforcing the wax comb. The frames are the perfect width, called ‘Bee Space’, compelling the bees to build each new comb on a separate frame.

The bottom chamber is called the brood box because that is where the queen lays eggs and young bees are nursed. The colony stores pollen in the brood box to feed the larvae, and sometimes the side frames will have honey in them. The brood box has a floor and an entrance, at the bottom, where the bees come in and out of the hive and let air in and out.

Typically, the brood box is separated from the rest of the hive by a mesh screen called a queen excluder which goes in between it and the next chamber. This keeps the queen, who is larger than the other bees and can’t fit through the screen, in the brood chamber so that she doesn’t lay eggs in the upper chambers.

Chambers on top of the brood are called supers, because they form a superstructure on the hive unit. These are the honey boxes. Most beekeepers place 1-2 supers on top of their brood chamber during the honey season or nectar-flow.

How do I get bees?

I always advise beginners to avoid doing removals. If you have wild bee colonies (not in beehives) around, and they aren’t a danger to people or animals, leave them where they are. Removals are difficult (even for advanced beekeepers) and often the bees simply abscond leaving you with an empty box. In spring wild colonies run out of space and make new queens, who swarm - leave to find new homes with some of the colony. So having a swarm in a tree, under a floor or in a tyre is not a bad thing.

You want the catch box to be close to where the permanent beehives will be, since you can only move a hive or catch box small increments every day (1-2m). Or you can move them more than 5km in one go, so if you have multiple apiary sites you can swap catch boxes form one site to another to take advantage of the relocation.

The more catch boxes you have the more swarms you will get at the start of spring, then you will get the bees in the hives earlier in the season and see faster results in the first year.

Can I keep bees here?

Bee Bunkas are for sedentary beekeeping: permanent hive locations where beehives stay all year round. This means some places just won’t work as apiaries. Honeybees need water and food. Generally, if you look at google maps, anywhere that is green is good, since there will be decent rainfall, denser foliage and medium to large trees. The darker the green the better the honey production, but do your research, identify the plants and check if they have a nectar flow.

Commercial agriculture nearby can be a benefit or a problem. Not all crops flower, some are harvested before they flower, some only make pollen not nectar and if farmer use pesticides incorrectly it could harm your bees.

Bees can fly up to 5km to collect food, but they use so much energy that it doesn’t allow them to produce extra honey stores. The closer the food, the less energy they use and the more honey they will store. A 1km radius is what you should look at to identify the main food supplies.

Keeping bees in urban areas is a tricky business. You have to follow municipal bylaws which specify the location and distances of your hives from public or neighbouring property. You also have to be a very diligent beekeeper, keeping the swarm happy and conducting your work at night or in the late evening when the bees are not going to become agitated. I advise urban hobbyists to open hives as little as possible and, when they do, to do as little as possible. Add and remove supers, but leave the brood alone.

Can’t I just plant food for the bees?

Yes, you can plant crops or gardens that will provide food for the bees; however, you will be limited by flowering periods and arable space. Flowering trees are the best source of food because they provide lots of nectar which the bees need to make honey. Pollen is a food for bees, but it does not directly make honey.

How many hives per hectare?

It depends on the food available. A gum (eucalyptus) forest will support more hives. Indigenous bushveld will support less. The best way to find out is to start placing hives in an apiary and see when you get to a plateau in honey production. On average permanent apiaries range from 5-20 hives, with a few kilometres between each apiary site.

The closer the bees are to their water source the more honey they will produce since they need to travel a shorter distance to collect water and therefore use less energy.

How soon can I expect honey?

Unless you are buying beehives with established bee colonies, you shouldn’t expect to get much honey from a colony for the first year. A caught swarm takes 4 weeks to build up comb and start rearing more bees on 5-6 brood frames. Then, when they are transferred from a catch box to a brood chamber, they need a few more weeks to fill the last 4-5 frames. If your timing is right and you catch the swarm early in the season and there is good food for them and the weather works in your favour, then you will be able to put a super chamber on and they will start to build comb and store honey.

Sometimes you will get lucky and strong swarms, caught at the right time, will produce honey at a rapid rate. Generally, you may find you transfer them a bit late or they take a bit longer to build comb because there’s been too much rain or not enough. By the end of the season when it starts getting cold you will remove the super and harvest what honey there is, but don’t rely on a big harvest the first year.

How much money can I expect to earn?

By the second year you should be able to harvest at least 2 full supers from the new colony. This is 15-20kg of honey. Although in the third year the harvest will likely go up as the swarm really gets settled, I usually stick with 15-20kg/hive/year as an estimate since some years will be droughts, or floods, or fires, and the bees will struggle. On a good year you can probably get double that depending on the area and the bee food available. In a bad year you may only get 5-10kg.

Wholesale (20-25l plastic buckets) prices for generic honey like sunflower, citrus or bluegum are R50-R90/kg. Bottled (500g-1400g plastic or glass) and sold to retailer may fetch you around R90-R120/kg. Bottled and sold direct to consumers you would be looking at around R150-R250/kg.

Commercial honey may be 100% honey, but it is still processed. It is heated to make it easier to pump through pipes in the bottling plant and to keep it from crystalising on the shelf for longer. This impacts the flavour and natural enzyme concentration. It is typically also filtered, removing extra pollen to make it clearer.

Raw honey is honey that has not been filtered to such an extent (just a larger mesh that collects wax bits) and has not been heated (gravity used to pour and bottle). Raw honey should fetch at least R20 more per kg, but it depends on how you market it. If you have wildflowers that the bees forage from the flavour will be unique and can be marketed as such. For example, Buffalothorn and Fynbos honey are widely sought after for their dark molasses appearance and unique flavours.

So, if you get 20kg the second year you could earn R1000-R4000 per hive. There are other expenses like the suit, spinner, buckets, bottles, labels, replacing frames every now and then (maybe once every 5 years at most), fuel, etc. The beauty of the Bee Bunka is that once you’ve got a swarm established it’s not going anywhere. The first few years will be about paying off the equipment, but if you keep adding hives then you will reach a point where you are bringing in a good deal of money for minimal work. I probably spend about 2-3 weeks a year managing my 40 hives which is time well spent for the money it brings in. I also have 1 person helping me in the field always and then back in the honey room to spin the honey.

What does a hive cost?

A complete Bee Bunka hive will cost you around R2000. If you bought the moulds, you could get that cost down to R1200 by making the hives yourself, and only buying the frames (R600 for the frames). Stands for the hives can be made a bunch of ways, whatever is easiest for you. See the attached instruction manual for making the hives. The moulds become cost effective if once you make over 20 hives. Below 20 hives and it may be better to buy the ready-made hives.

When should I work with bees?

Afternoon or evening is always advisable. If the bees become aggravated, the sun setting will force them to return to the hive. By morning they will be calm again. So, for any major work like transfers, brood inspection/maintenance or moving hives do it late in the day. We sometimes harvest honey earlier in the day because a lot of the bees are out foraging which means less bees inside the hive and on the comb that you are removing. Our process is quick and simple and keeps the bees calm:

1. Smoke at the entrance, lift the lid slightly and smoke underneath.
2. Prepare empty super with new empty frames.
3. Remove lid and inner cover.
4. Check side frames – if they are full and mostly capped the inner ones will be too since the bees start fulling from the middle out.
5. Remove super with frames, place empty super in its place, close the hive – the bees stay clam since they haven’t had time to realise anything was changed and it is dark inside the hive again.
6. Place full super on top of the lid – as you remove frames the bees left in the supper will be left on the hive rather than falling on the ground.
7. Remove one frame at a time, shake/brush bees off and place the frame in a wooden super or plastic box nearby. This will be loaded in your vehicle as soon as it is done and covered so foraging bees aren’t attracted to it.
8. Place empty super on the floor next to the hive for when you return again.

Deals with landowners?

You may know, or find, someone who has a property or farm where you can put beehives. It is common to make a deal or sign a contract with the landowner that stipulates rules of entry/exit, areas of operation, ownership of the beehives and an agreed upon exchange of value. What you give the landowner, or they give you, depends on who is getting more out of the bees. Don’t oversell the value of the land or undersell the value of the bees or overestimate the amount of honey you will get. It is difficult to make a profit from beekeeping even without having to pay someone or give them a cut of your harvest.

Often landowners only want enough honey for their household use and to chat to you about bees for an hour or two when you come around. Make time for them and build a good relationship by informing them about the harvests and performance of the hives. If they request a cut of the proceeds or harvest, make sure you account for all of the work you put in and the market value of the honey. 10% should be the upper limit of what you are willing to give away for an average site. For sites that are amazing you may have to be more competitive or they could be stolen by another beekeeper.

How do I connect with other beekeepers?

Lastly, the most important thing you can do is join a local beekeeping group or association. Nowadays they all have Whatsapp and Facebook groups which are incredible sources of information and stimulating debate. There are also groups for the selling and buying second hand equipment and marketing your bee products.