Do you enjoy the outdoors and do you enjoy supporting nature? Do you like gardening and nurturing plants? Do you enjoy woodworking? Would you enjoy a biological challenge? How about a sideline business? If you can answer yes to most of these questions, then beekeeping may be for you!
Even before recorded history, man was gathering honey from honeybees living in hollow trees. Soon man had learned another reason for keeping honeybees. They are fascinating and essential pollinators! Pollinators are in short supply according to Dr. Jim Tew at the Ohio State University Honeybee Lab. Our unmanaged populations of wild honeybees have been pushed to near extinction in recent years due to infestations of tracheal mites, varroa mites, small hive beetles, and accompanying viruses.
One good thing to come from all this has been a resurgence of interest in apiculture (beekeeping) brought on partly by the lack of pollinators for commercial crops (more than 90 different crops depend on honeybees for their pollination), as well as a big price increase for producers of honey. Beekeepers have become quite popular these days. Sound good? Even though honey was once considered as being as valuable as gold, most beekeepers do not get rich with honey. However, they are able to rent hives as pollinators, harvest and sell honey (averaging about 40-60 pounds per colony---that is about 14-20 quarts per hive), sell beeswax, pollen, propolis (hive "glue"), and maybe even other products like candles and mead. Hundreds of people from all walks of life have become beekeepers. Whether it is in a backyard, apartment rooftop, small town garden, or farm, beekeeping can fit in just about anywhere.
How can you find out more about beekeeping? You could order the book Backyard Beekeeping from the Alabama Cooperative Extension System (#ANR-135). This color publication is a 50-page guide for the beginning beekeeper filled with charts, tips, diagrams, and photos that support the text. It is available for $10.00 at www.aces.edu/pubs, or it can be ordered from any Extension county office. Other good sources include Honeybees and Beekeeping: A Year in the Life of an Apiary by Dr. Keith Delaplane at the University of Georgia (www.ent.uga.edu/bees); The Hive and The Honeybee by Dadant and Sons, Inc., or Beekeeping Principles by Dr. James E. Tew.