Quarterly Beekeeping Attitude Survey
01 January – 31 March 2013
I was surprised when I started beekeeping, how many beekeepers were frustrated and fed up with it. Fed up with the effort, fed up with the bad weather, fed up with all the bee mites and parasites. But history records that beekeepers have been planning to give up beekeeping since at least the 1600’s due to the challenges of beekeeping and the weather; and there is hope for the future. There are efforts to select more hygenic bees which are better able to live with varroa. There is more information about beekeeping good practice. And the weather, surely cannot be as bad as 2012. (OK – it probably can).
So, with this in mind I thought it would be interesting to run a Quarterly Attitude Survey to see how people are feeling about beekeeping as the seasons progress. Is the first quarter of 2013 to be the Beekeeping Winter Of Discontent or Winter Of Hope?
Please vote in the survey below and encourage your beekeeping mates to do the same. I’ll write up some conclusions and keep running the quarterly surveys.
What is your attitude to beekeeping at the start of 2013?
- A. Negative - I am planning to give up (1%, 1 Votes)
- B. Neutral - I will see how it goes this year (6%, 7 Votes)
- C. Positive - I find it very frustrating but will continue (12%, 13 Votes)
- D. Very positive - I love it and plan to continue for the rest of my life (81%, 89 Votes)
Total Voters: 110
I am most likely to stop beekeeping, because:
- A. Generally it's too frustrating and too much effort (2%, 2 Votes)
- B. Varroa and other baddies take the fun out of it (10%, 9 Votes)
- C. The weather is not good for the bees (2%, 2 Votes)
- D. My colonies got wiped out (8%, 7 Votes)
- E. I am not producing much honey (3%, 3 Votes)
- F. My back is now aching (4%, 4 Votes)
- G. It's too expensive (2%, 2 Votes)
- H. My bees keep swarming and annoying neighbours (2%, 2 Votes)
- I. I am allergic to bees (3%, 3 Votes)
- J. Nothing could put me off (55%, 51 Votes)
- K. Other (please comment below) (8%, 7 Votes)
Total Voters: 92
What is the single most important reason you enjoy beekeeping?
- A. I am a commercial beekeeper and it makes money (3%, 3 Votes)
- B. I love honey (1%, 1 Votes)
- C. I like working with bees (48%, 48 Votes)
- D. It connects me to nature and grounds me (26%, 26 Votes)
- E. The challenge - I don't like to give up or be beaten (12%, 12 Votes)
- F. I want to save the planet (4%, 4 Votes)
- G. It gets me out of the house (2%, 2 Votes)
- H. Other (please comment below) (3%, 3 Votes)
Total Voters: 99
How many years have you been a beekeeper?
- A. 1 year (21%, 22 Votes)
- B. 2-5 years (45%, 46 Votes)
- C. 6-10 years (10%, 10 Votes)
- D. 11+ years (24%, 25 Votes)
Total Voters: 103
Any further thoughts or feedback on the survey, the questions or the results, then please comment below and I’ll aim to improve on this first attempt.
If you want to receive future posts and conclusions of this survey, you might want to subscribe. Or before you subscribe, you might want to check out some of the posts such as The Honey Jubilee – But Where’s My Queen.
Although primerally a top bar hive keeper, I do have a few nationals and commercial hives, but I run them the same as top bars, no foundation added, just a small wax strip, I don’t use any chemicals or additives on my bees, they survived for hundreds of years before we came along, I harvest cut comb, as and when the bees can spare it, I have hives in my garden, on a couple of allotments, and plan to add 3 or 4 to a 7 acres woodland I’m buying
Hi Stephen – You are living the dream! As a matter of interest, how much cut comb did you get out of each hive (A) this year and (B) in a typical year.
hi Roger, I’m only a 1st year beekeeper, started around June 2012, so cant really answer the question, however, my mentor that runs nationals normally has around 1200lb of honey, last year (2012) 300lb, fingers crossed this year we see less rain
I’m on the other side of the ocean from you and I think that makes a BIG difference in attitude. I hear you had a lousy summer but over here some of us could have used a bit of your rain!
Rusty
I’ve been keeping bees commercially for 40 years. What could possibly make me stop? Lack of good help and/or old age. Beekeeping is what I eat, breathe, sleep, do, and am. Hard to stop.
Inspirational! I will add your alternative answers to the next poll.
Good idea for a poll. Around the 2 year mark I was feeling in two minds about carrying on; travelling on two buses to get down to the apiary each weekend does take up a fair bit of time. But then more people my age and also more women started coming down to the apiary, and I began to feel at home there. Also doing the BBKA exams has been fun and helped me learn lots.
Wow. That must have been love. I am thinking about those BBKA exams, but hands a bit full at the moment.
Yes, having a new baby is a good excuse to put off exams!
My negative view on beekeeping has more to do with government interference with agriculture. It seems that trying to build an operation (commercial) is fraught with overzealous gov agencies that a small business needs to devote too many resources to comply with.
Started with 2 nuks this march. One up and left the Kenyan hive in a matter of hours but the langstroth stayed. Got a wild hive for the kenyan and they are going strong. I split the langstroth so now have 3 total hives. I leave them alone for the most part, no treatment of any kind except powdered sugar. Might count 6-10. No hive beetles. They made their own queen and then got aggressive but today opened all hives and no problems except maybe to many bees. I have over 100 lbs of honey on the hives as we took none this first year. Come spring (which may be now in Florida) we will harvest most all the honey. This is not how our local bee club keeps bees but we wanted to let the bees be bees. Seems to be working. I will do 2 more splits in the spring and give them away. I would only stop keeping bees if my neighbors complained. I find the kenyan to be the easier of the 3 but my husband likes the langstroth hives better
I’m spoiled rotten in my first year. I live in Sydney Australia which is varroa mite free (long may it last) and has a fantastic climate. I bought 2 mature hives (loaded with honey) in October 2012, I have harvested 120 kg so far and I need to borrow the club’s extractor to get the next batch. Every time I read about a Northern Hemisphere beekeeper struggling, it breaks my heart. Beekeeping is a great hobby here. My one and only complaint is the supers are so heavy (we use double height supers – the same as our brood box, 10 frames each) that there’s no way I could lift one off the hive. I’m dependent on my hubby to work the hives. To be honest, he’s kind of dependent on me because it takes both of us to lift one of those full supers. Honey is heavy!
120Kg. 2 hives. First season. Makes me feel even more inadequate! 🙂
Laura, another reason some keepers opt for top bar hives, is that whole boxes do not need to be lifted, single frames can be harvested, making them easy on those of us with bad backs, perhaps you could try running one alongside your other hives as an experiment for a year. Here’s a link to mine on youtube
Stephen,
I’ve heard and read a lot about top bar hives and may experiment in a year or 2. I’ve promised myself that for the first year I’m not making any changes. I have enough to learn and my bees have enough to put up with my learning curve as it is but I may try a top bar hive some day.
To be honest, I like being able to use an extractor. I get so much honey I’m not keen to crush all that wax and I’m not convinced my bees want their comb crushed (or cut) to allow me to get their honey. Right now I’m having such success with my standard hives that I’m really reluctant to change. If it’s too heavy for me I could always go to half size supers with 8 frames – less than half the weight that way, just more boxes and more time to extract from double the number of frames.
I tend not to crush wax, but cut half off each frame, cut comb sells for more than jarred honey as its guaranteed to be 100% pure, as its capped, some honey producers have been known to water it down,
good luck with your hives this year, I have a national in the back garden, and the last 2 days have seen huge numbers of girls getting busy…
I see cut comb for sale in the shops for a lot more than jarred honey though most people I talk to know nothing about it. I bet the margin is higher but (at least here?) it might not be so easy to offload. But for myself (and friends that I’ve converted) honeycomb is the best so a top bar hive for that might be the goer. Food for thought anyway.