What got you started? and what hive do you use?

[For want of a better word]

Got stung when I was 6
Took BBKA Basic last year... seems I had learnt not a lot in 60 years!
My favorite hive is the little Keiler top bar... have 50 of them.
The Native British dark honey bees do well in them.

Yeghes da

 

[Erichalfbee]

Took BBKA Basic last year...

Did you pass?

 

[For want of a better word]

Did you pass?

Yes*


Even though when I graduated after retirement I vowed never to take another exam!

*Glad I had to demonstrate how to light a smoker as I was not used to the stripey Buckfarst hybrids that they held captive in their "training" apiary!!!
Rosemary water would have not done anything to calm their aggressiveness.

Nos da

 

[Erichalfbee]

Yes*

NDB beckons, then

 

[user 6228]

Dragged along to a taster day by the other half at buckfast abbey. The story of them staying active all winter and the thin boxes did just not sit right. When I heard how much a new hive would cost, I knew I could build a hive better suited to the bees and cheaper. I started looking for what it was that suited the honeybees, I then realised no-one really knew what suited the honeybees, they either knew what suited themselves or went along with everybody else...

 

[madasafish]

Interested in 2009. Read all winter. Went to Association Apiary early 2010, decided I like it, started with 2 x TBH - minimal cost start.

After 3 years and no honey!! - sat down and decided I wanted ease of handling , and top bee space - using Nationals on double brood at Association apiary showed what a lot of cack that was..


So made my own jumbo langs.. Now 7 of those plus 1 poly plus home made poly nucs plus hive cosies..

Various misadventures along the way (sore back, AFB, half a finger lost) but enjoy it.. even more than when I started.

 

[Fusion_power]

Interesting re the jumbo Langs Madasafish. What reason do you have for using them besides just like to have fewer boxes to work with?

 

[Finman]

. I started looking for what it was that suited the honeybees, I then realised no-one really knew what suited the honeybees...

I asked one day, and they said that they want to sting me and they want escape with swarm.

I do think, that they were serious. They hate me, because I take all their honey off. They farted on me in cleansing flight. And not only once.

I am not sure, did they told the truth.
.

.

 

[For want of a better word]

NDB beckons, then

In another incarnation !

Nos da

 

[Erichalfbee]

Oh I don't know
You'd probably make more sense than all the other NDBs on here.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

His shoulders aren't wide enough to carry the gold epaulettes thought

Sent from my SM-A310F using Tapatalk

 

[ken in NH]

Been in beekeeping /hobby for 69 years now- ain't quitting yet! As a five or six year old kid always took a dare. the other kids dared me to tip over a neighbor's hive. - So I did. and did again, a few days later. and again. and again. My frustrated parents finally decided the solution might be to buy me a hive of my own- it worked.