Keeping bees is an exceptionally profitable enterprise. The interest to keep bees has increased considerably throughout the world over the past decade. Many people now have a hive in their backyards to create an extra income or as a hobby.
Imagine being brand new to beekeeping only to be overwhelmed with a mammoth of myths. While this seems unfortunate, there are loads of half-truths and rumors about rearing bees. Before you buy your hive and a bee protection suit, you ought to debunk these misconceptions.
1. All bees can make honey
There are over twenty thousand bee species, but only honey bees make sufficient honey for humans to raid their food stores. Honey bees are distributed in about twenty species. There are 260 species of bumblebees, which have about two teaspoons of honey in their stores. Therefore, less than five percent of bee species have the ability to make honey.
2. You can predict how much honey bees make
When someone is considering starting to keep bees, one of the questions they ask is how much honey is to be produced. While this seems like a distinct query, there is no direct answer. Several variables are involved pertaining to honey production for anybody to answer this question correctly. Weather, hive management, and colony strength are among the significant factors.
3. Queen cells are bad
Several websites and books talk about how queen cells are bad and suggest that they should be destroyed. When you kill this cell, you leave the bees without a queen. It might result in the bees swarming away, which means that you won’t have enough workers to make honey in the hive.
4. Feeding sugar to bees is harmful
It isn’t entirely a myth, because feeding bees with sugar syrup is not ideal. The right way of doing it is to spare some honey that you can feed them when the need arises. However, if you don’t have honey, sugar may suffice. Besides, it’s either that or the bees die. Living bees that feed on sugar are better than dead ones that don’t eat sugar.
5. Enlarging the hive prevents swarming
Although you want to ensure that bees have sufficient space during the months of spring and summer, you cannot evade swarming altogether. There are two kinds of swarms: reproductive and overcrowded ones. Since there are a fixed number of bee colonies that die every year because of cold weather and predators, they must create new territories consistently to evade extinction. Therefore, reproductive swarms are crucial for the survival of the species. Hives are thus a natural thing.
6. Less honey is produced in the dry months
It seems natural that when the weather is dry, plants are unable to make enough nectar and thus will produce less honey. While this may be true in the rainforests, it wouldn’t apply to modern settings. Honey bees collect nectar from irrigated plants or from wildflowers that are drought resistant. Therefore, the lack of rain is often an irrelevant factor regarding the availability of nectar.
Rearing bees is not only a lucrative business but also a great hobby. Unfortunately, you might be discouraged by all these myths. Now that you know the facts, you can keep as many hives as you desire.
