Beekeeper Attitude Survey - grateful for your input

[Talking With Bees]

Hello,

What is your attitude to beekeeping? I took up beekeeping to try and regain my sanity, so I was surprised when I discovered, how many beekeepers were frustrated and fed up with it.

So, with this in mind I thought it would be interesting to run a Beekeeper Attitude Survey to see how people are feeling about beekeeping.

Please vote. It will only take a few seonds. I’ll write up some conclusions when I have the results.

Many, many thanks for your input.

 

[bees4u]

Hello,

What is your attitude to beekeeping? I took up beekeeping to try and regain my sanity, so I was surprised when I discovered, how many beekeepers were frustrated and fed up with it.

So, with this in mind I thought it would be interesting to run a Beekeeper Attitude Survey to see how people are feeling about beekeeping.

Please vote. It will only take a few seonds. I’ll write up some conclusions when I have the results.

Many, many thanks for your input.

I love my bee keeping & have done for the last 33yrs although this last year was hard making a living from them. Last year will sort out the softies!

 

[MJBee]

I first became interested in bees at Agricultural College but National Service and then an Army career prevented me becoming a beekeeper. I retired from the Army in 1979 and got my first bees (a nuc from Taylors) in 1980. Until we moved to France in 1999 beekeeping was one of my hobbies, since then it has been my main hobby.

I find it relaxing, frustrating, satisfying and fascinating. No two seasons are the same and since moving to France the battle with Varroa and now the Asian Hornet present new challenges.

I love it

 

[Hivemaker.]

I took up beekeeping to try and regain my sanity

Out of interest, did you need to have any other treatment for your insanity.

 

[BeeJayBee]

Please vote.

Where?

 

[Talking With Bees]

I love my bee keeping & have done for the last 33yrs although this last year was hard making a living from them. Last year will sort out the softies!

Hmmm. I'm a softy ... it doesn't seem to have sorted me out yet! ;-)

 

[Talking With Bees]

I find it relaxing, frustrating, satisfying and fascinating.

Me too. It's complex. The hive is like a black box in which I can not be 100% confident I know what's going on.

 

[Talking With Bees]

Out of interest, did you need to have any other treatment for your insanity.

Hmmm. Beekeeping did not help in 2012. Nor did building flat pack beehives. And I have just had a baby ... I am hopeful about foraging. The sloe gin looks to be coming on alright!

 

[Skyhook]

It's like Schroedinger's cat. There exists within me the potential of a happy contented beekeeper, and of an unhappy discontented one. On opening the box, one becomes reality.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Fascinated with beekeeping since a child (my grandfather had kept bees for years but finished before I can really remember - he still talked a lot about them and gave me a book to read when I was nine (Digges!) was hooked after that but work etc. got in the way. My wife then got involved with bees (she was the Welsh government liaison officer to FERA) so the interest was resurrected and I took the plunge even though work patters aren't ideal - best thing i ever did.

 

[PBee]

Hmmm. Beekeeping did not help in 2012. Nor did building flat pack beehives. And I have just had a baby ... I am hopeful about foraging. The sloe gin looks to be coming on alright!

Good going ...... a first for mankind!!!!!

 

[richardbees]

Sitting on the grass one afternoon, I noticed a Honeybee drinking from a muddy puddle - which sparked an interest that led to 24 years of Beekeeping. Which has become a slightly irritating habit combined with a constant challenge to defeat all the problems of weather, disease and the bees obstinate refusal to read Ted Hooper.

 

[REDWOOD]

What got me addicted was a little book I read when I was a child about insects, ladybird book I think, and promised myself one day I would do it but with raising a family I never had the money or time to really go for it, Now I wish I had started it long ago, give it up NEVER, always remember when the going gets tough the tough get going, I have never been a defeatist and never will

 

[domino]

Not sure why people would do something they are fed up with? Anyway I enjoy my beekeeping, tis good fun. Meet nice people, been exposed to some incredible cake and my association meetings make me think I'm living in the 1950s.

 

[Dusty Rhodes]

Getting towards the end of a working life which has featured two professions at the sharp end. And a hobby (diving instructor) also not without risk.

I wanted something more natural, pragmatic, relaxing. But with an edge to it.

A couple of gentle hives in the garden for my declining years.

Then the Cathedral decided it wanted an apiary for engaging unemployed youth....

When oh when can I get out the pipe and slippers?

Dusty.

 

[oliver90owner]

many beekeepers were frustrated and fed up with it

Frustrated, maybe, but not fed up with it for long. Those types soon give up and are beekeepers no longer. It is not forced on anybody; it is their choice.

The problem is mainly the number who are unable, for whatever reason, to be able to fathom what is happening within their beehives.

Those beekeepers that were fed up last year were mainly fed up with the weather - and there was nothing at all they could do about that!

 

[ultreen1]

Always had an interest, when i still lived in the city centre i was looking at apartments with a balcony for a hive! But now I'm in the sticks they're in the garden! Fulfilling is the word! Can't see me giving it up just yet!

 

[Chrisfnvs]

Maybe their expectations were to high to begin with ! as for myself i am more enthusiastic than ever, beekeeping is such a huge subject with many different avenues you never stop learning, i can`t Wait for the season to get going, Chris

 

[BKF Admin]

It's like Schroedinger's cat. There exists within me the potential of a happy contented beekeeper, and of an unhappy discontented one. On opening the box, one becomes reality.

Your post is so true.

I get a lot of pleasure from a hive that on inspection has a new queen that has started laying.

I have had times when everything seems to be going so so wrong !!
Only to find on the next apiary inspection the bees have got it so so right.

 

[madasafish]

I approach beekeeping as an enjoyable hobby and never allow myself to become frustrated as it's just life.

Why have a hobby and raise your blood pressure?

Sit down on a sunny day and enjoy the bees.. (well I would but 2012 was a washout)