Beekeeping for Beginners: How to Be a Successful Beekeeper!

In this less, we will discuss possible zoning restrictions you might encounter that prevent you from keeping bees on your property or that might limit the number of hives you can have, or how they are placed. We will also discuss the necessity of taking your family's and neighbors' concern about you keeping bees seriously. And, finally we discuss how much it will cost to get started as a beekeeper and how much time it will take up per month, on average.

We'll discuss what when you can start beekeeping (unless you live in a warm climate year-round, there are only certain times of the year that you can get started as a beekeeper). We will also discuss how important it is to get connected with mentors and local beekeeping associations.

In this lesson, we will discuss the most popular breeds of honeybees that people like to keep as beekeepers. We will discuss their positives and negatives, and where they do well in certain parts of the world. This will help you decide what kind of honeybee you want to purchase for your apiary.

In this section, we will discuss the approximate cost of buying your bees, the types of containers that bees you purchase may possibly arrive in, and the differences in the two types of containers (Bee Packages vs. Nucs).

In this lesson, you'll learn about how bees communicate with one another. Bees contain more odor receptors than fruit flies or mosquitoes, and they communicate with each other primarily through the scents of various pheromones they each produce. We will also discuss how bees turn nectar into that delicious tasting liquid gold - honey!

It is very important to understand the honey bee life cycle. Much of what you do to manage your hives in the future will revolve around your basic understanding of the various jobs of bees within the hive and their life expectancy. It will also impact whether or not you can conduct a good hive inspection, so don't skip this lesson!

In this lesson, we will discuss the different types of hives that you may use to start your beekeeping hobby, and the benefits/negatives of each. We will also discuss which ones are most popular and why, as well as things to consider when selecting a hive type.

One of the most important decisions you can make when becoming a beekeeper is the site selection for your hives. This will impact how much honey your bees can make, how much honey you can harvest, how many hives you can have in that location, how much water your bees will be able to access, how safe the location is for both the honeybees as well as you and your family, and how much of a bother your honeybees will be to your neighbors.

Humans are not the only thing you have to worry about stealing your hives or honey. Throughout the world, there are many animals that have no fear of honeybees, and will destroy the hives to get to the honey inside or who love to eat bees (like skunks). This lesson discusses some of the ways that you can protect your honeybees and your investment from both humans and wildlife.

We will discuss all of the basic beekeeping equipment you'll need to get started, which of it is required and which of it is optional. And, we will discuss what each piece of equipment is called (some by many different names) and what it is used for in beekeeping.

This continues the section on basic beekeeping equipment you'll need to get started in beekeeping. Because this lesson was so long, Udemy made us break up the lesson into two parts.

Getting your new bees is an exciting day! But, what the heck do you do with them now?!!! Relax. We will walk you through the process of how to install your bees, whether you buy a package of bees or a nuc.

In this lesson, we will show you how we prepped our hives before installing some of our packages of bees we purchased. We then walk you through step-by-step how to install the bees into your new hive. You'll be a pro at installing bees after watching this video!

This is a very important lesson that should not be skipped. Bees have rules that must be followed, or you will most certainly suffer the consequences of getting stung. Make sure you print out the attached checklist. Read it. Know it. Memorize it. It is very important that this information because second nature to recall.

Throughout the year, unless you live in a part of the world where the seasons are consistently the same year round, the number of times per month you should be checking on your hives will vary greatly. Get familiar with the attached checklist, and contact your local beekeeper association to make sure that this checklist accurately reflects how often other beekeepers in your area are inspecting their hives. Inspection frequency is highly dependent upon the weather conditions and nectar flow in your area, so everything on this checklist might not be exactly the same for your area.

Lighting your smoker so that it stays lit is often a challenge to new beekeepers. It's not as easy as it seems it should be because the smoke cannot be from burning wood. It has to be from material that burns cool and white. In this video, we'll show you how we light our smoker.

The first time you suit up in your new beekeeping suit, it can be intimidating trying to make sure that you have done it properly so that no bees can get inside the suit with you. In this video, Queen Bri demonstrates how to put on your bee suit.

During your first 12 months as a beekeeper, it is very important to keep your expectations of your honeybees and of yourself, as their beekeeper, in check. This lesson will help set your expectations of what you should be seeing the first few months all the way through to the first year of your beekeeping adventure with your new beehives.

During each month of the year (unless you are in a climate where the weather is consistently the same year-round), there will be different tasks you should be focused on doing with your beehives when you inspect your hives. This lesson discusses how your role as the beekeeper changes throughout the year. A checklist is also provided for you to print out. You should also contact both your local and regional beekeeper association groups to see if they have a Beekeeping Calendar that has been put together specifically for your area, as this checklist is for areas that have 4 well-defined seasons.

This lesson wraps up the previous lesson's discussion about how your hive inspections change throughout the year, depending upon weather, nectar flow, and the condition of your hives. Because this was a long lesson, Udemy made us separate it into two lessons.

You will notice that the temperament of your bees, the color and flavor of your honey, and the amount of honey your bees collect is very dependent upon the local flora available to them. This lesson discusses the importance of becoming very familiar with what is blooming year round in the area where you keep your bees so that you are familiar with what kind and how much pollen and nectar they are bringing into the hive.

In this lesson, we'll go over the essentials of how to conduct a hive inspection. After completing this lesson, you will know how to conduct a hive inspection and what it is you are looking for when you open up the outer cover of your hive box. Be sure to print out the attached checklist, and make sure you watch each of the videos below of hives inspections we conducted in our apiaries to help demonstrate how to inspect a hive. Once you have watched each of these videos, you should feel much more certain about inspecting your hives.

This hive inspection is with a swarm that we recently caught. The queen is doing a good job of laying, even in the middle of a hot dearth, in this hive.

In this hive inspection, we will show you what one of our hives looks like that has honey super hive boxes on it. We will show you some of the honey they have collected and capped of for us to harvest when the honey super is full.

In this video, we will conduct an inspection of a hive that is queenless.

In this hive inspection, we will show another of our hives that appears to be queenless. It is important for you to know the things you will commonly see in a beehive that is queenless, and this video will familiarize you with what you will see.

This hive inspection is done on a hive that has an actively laying queen, but the bees are not happy with her egg laying patter or the amount of eggs she is laying. So, they have created queen supercedure cells to replace her. We will show you what these cells look like and discuss why the hive has decided to replace the queen.

In this inspection, we will show you one of our queenright hives. Queenright means you have an actively laying queen in your hive.

In this lesson, we will discuss common problems that every beekeeper will encounter at some point. We will show you what to watch for and how to correct the problem if you see it in your hive, and we will also teach you some good preventive maintenance techniques as well.

There are different diseases that honeybees can contract, and it is very important to know how to recognize symptoms of these diseases so that you can react to them properly. When treatable, we will teach you how to treat some of the diseases you may encounter, and if not treatable, we will discuss what your next steps should be.

Pests inside and outside your beehives will be something that you will deal with frequently as a beekeeper. It is important not to get frustrated by these pests. Instead, you should know what steps you can take to prevent them from becoming a pest in your hives and how to get rid of them if they are already in your hives.