Heart disease and beekeeping.

KentWasp · Jan 7, 2012

Hello again. Thank you for the warm welcome, kind comments and helpful advice. It reinforces my growing opinion that the bee keeping community is a very friendly and helpful bunch.
Just to fill in a few blanks:_
'KentWasp' was a poor choice for this forum but I tend to automatically use it as a London Wasps rugby fan (for my sins in recent seasons!)
I'm booked in for a 10 week (20 hour) course starting in a couple of weeks and a day and a half course at an 'away Apiary' that is being started this Spring (that enabled me to reconsider bee keeping) accompanied by a younger friend (71). We intend to manage together two hives at the away Apiary and two on his land.
I'm hoping to see my GP next week.
In the meantime I am reading books and trying manufacturing several National bee hives and Nucs. We'll see how that goes!!
My present dilemma is whether to start with a full colony (not encouraged in the books) as the latter site is surrounded by rapeseed! I've a month during which I'll come into contact with some bee keeping experience so will delay my decision.
Thanks again.

thedeaddiplomat · Jan 7, 2012

KentWasp said:
My present dilemma is whether to start with a full colony (not encouraged in the books) as the latter site is surrounded by rapeseed! I've a month during which I'll come into contact with some bee keeping experience so will delay my decision.
Thanks again.

Most of us will sympathise with the sense of impatience and urgency. Naturally you want to be up and running as quickly as possible, with vast quantities of honey to harvest. We all do! But there is a very good reason for the advice against starting with a full colony.

A full, bad-termpered, colony at the end of the rape flow can be a pretty daunting experience even after a couple of years' beekeeping.

Begin with a nuc, and allow your confidence and experience to grow at the same time as your colony. I - and I suspect most others on this forum - am glad in retrospect that I took the more leisurely approach. I doubt whether I would still be keeping bees otherwise.

Monsieur Abeille · Jan 7, 2012

Don't know - I started with a full colony just as the rape was getting underway and didn't really suffer as a consequence. Depends on how brave you are feeling I guess, buoyed up with the possibility of an early harvest.

jenkinsbrynmair · Jan 7, 2012

thedeaddiplomat said:
Most of us will sympathise with the sense of impatience and urgency. Naturally you want to be up and running as quickly as possible, with vast quantities of honey to harvest. We all do! But there is a very good reason for the advice against starting with a full colony.

A full, bad-termpered, colony at the end of the rape flow can be a pretty daunting experience even after a couple of years' beekeeping.

Begin with a nuc, and allow your confidence and experience to grow at the same time as your colony. I - and I suspect most others on this forum - am glad in retrospect that I took the more leisurely approach. I doubt whether I would still be keeping bees otherwise.