Inside: Honey bees provide endless hours of entertainment, but so do beekeepers. Here are 10 of my favorite posts about beekeepers and the things they do.
To be a beekeeper, you must share your personal space with bugs and you must be willing to get stung—sometimes repeatedly. In addition, you need to okay with looking bad, smelling bad, and being contantly sticky.
You will have moments when you roast in your bee suit—or freeze in it—and days when you feel overcome by the scent of alarm pheromone or the crushing weight of a honey super.
There will be days when you act and feel clumsy and days when parts of your anatomy are red, swollen, and itchy. There will be days when your friends run from you or refuse to sit near you, even if you’re buying lunch.
You will have days of sadness, and days of extreme joy, all caused by insects. Most people will never understand your bond with something so cantankerous as a honey bee, let alone thousands of them.
Sometimes I wonder what keeps me writing posts after all these years, but I realize it’s only partly the bees. The rest is due to the thousands of beekeepers who have shared the ups and downs, and the failures and triumphs of their beekeeping days. To you, I owe thanks for many happy and instructive moments.
I hope you enjoy these posts about beekeepers, even if they’re not normal people.
Rusty
Honey Bee Suite
17 costly beekeeping mistakes and how to avoid them
New beekeepers have a lot to learn in a short time. When you become confused or unsure, try to relax and evaluate your next steps. If you consider how your actions will affect your bees, you will avoid the biggest mistakes.
To become the best beekeeper, learn it’s not a competitive sport
Once I remembered why I kept bees and decided beekeeping was not a competitive sport, I was able to shrink the apiary.
A beekeeper asks, “When do I quit?”
Beekeeping can be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. If you don’t enjoy it, perhaps it’s time to quit. You must follow your heart and not listen to bad advice.
Beekeepers and the Dunning-Kruger Effect: Unskilled and Unaware
New beekeepers learn so much so fast, their self-confidence outpaces their true knowledge. The Dunning-Kruger Effect explains how that happens.
Once folk heroes, some beekeepers are targeted by ecoterrorists
Like most environmental problems, the question of how honey bees compete with native bees is complex. To answer the threats, you need to understand how bee competition works.
Not every new beekeeper needs a mentor: compatibility is key
Mentoring is teaching, and not everyone is good at it. Sometimes, having no mentor at all is better than having the wrong one.
Weird reasons I don’t like beekeeping all that much
Like becoming a neurotic novelist, the idea of becoming a beekeeper has a lot of romantic charm. But the day-to-day reality is rife with drudgery and boring tasks that aren’t much fun.
Ten beekeeping crimes you should not commit
Beekeeping crimes include skipped steps, missed opportunities, or assumptions about honey bees, beekeeping, or the environment we live in.
Don’t think, just do: a beekeeper’s answer to pointless worry
Every beekeeper goes through moments of pure terror or pointless anxiety. It helps to concentrate on the job you need to do without overthinking it. “Don’t think, just do” is my mantra when anxiety tries to take over.
A personal note to cranky old beekeepers
“Old” has nothing to do with age but everything to do with attitude.
About Me
I backed my love of bee science with a bachelor’s degree in Agronomic Crops and a master’s in Environmental Studies. I write extensively about bees, including a current column in American Bee Journal and past columns in Two Million Blossoms and Bee Craft. I’ve endured multiple courses in melittology and made extensive identifications of North American bees for iNaturalist and other organizations. My master beekeeper certificate issued from U Montana. I’m also an English nerd. More here.
Thank you for your continued contribution to all bee ? keepers alike. We appreciate you!!!
Thanks, Barb. Happy to have you here.
It really shows that you have given a lot of thought to the content of this article. I am old school, for sure but I really enjoyed being brought up today on the reality of these in 2023. Just loving it!
I bought a single package of bees this spring and all new equipment. I have kept bees on and off (some success but mostly failure) since I was 22 years old. I am now 73 located in Limerick, Maine at the southern tip of the Mount Washington valley! It got down to 42° last night, or there abouts. It seems there is always wind here.
I got Italian bees with a Russian queen I think and boy are they doing good! One mistake I made was not tilting my hive enough to the front so any rain that got in the entrance could immediately leak out. I checked them to see how they were doing as they were a new colony on brand new foundation which they had to draw out all by themselves and I am glad I did because water had settled in the back corner and had made a green looking mold; a slurry which I immediately scraped out of there. Thank you for your educated articles. I am looking forward to more.
Thanks, John. And I’m happy to hear you got that water out. Those things can sneak up on us.
Hi Rusty,
I have to say this post really touched me, as a beekeeper; it really talks to me. I very much enjoy your articles, please keep writing them.
Thanks, Peter!