What’s the Buzz on Beekeeping?

Discover the many benefits of beekeeping.

Beekeeping has been rediscovered with the resurgence of local food movements and an interest in hobby farming. As a hobby, beekeeping is growing all over the U.S. And it’s easy enough that you, too, can start your own beehive in your backyard.

Bees can thrive in both rural and urban areas. And many large cities, such as Chicago and New York City, allow urban beekeeping on city rooftops. However, it’s always best to check with your local ordinances before beginning your hives.

Before you begin beekeeping, make sure you read up on beekeeping and stock up on the necessary supplies. This includes protective clothing and beekeeping tools, all of which are available at Blain’s Farm & Fleet.

Extracting Honey From the Hive

The biggest goal for many beekeepers is what bees are most well known for: honey, which is made from the nectar of flowers.

When a honey bee pollinates a plant or flower, they are collecting the plant’s nectar. Once the honey bee returns to the hive, they transfer the nectar to the worker bees. The worker bees then store it in the honeycombs, where it turns into honey.

Beekeepers harvest the honey inside the hive using extracting supplies. Extracted honey has many uses, from moisturizers in beauty products, to a natural sweetener for your tea! You can even sell local honey at farmer’s markets or to your friends and family.

Honey has also been used as a homeopathic remedy and can be incorporated in many different recipes. In fact, a single hive can produce up to 100 pounds of honey in a year!

A Bunch of Beeswax

A secondary product that beekeepers also extract is beeswax. Beeswax is made by the worker bees in the hive to build their honeycomb, raise their brood or bee larvae, and to store the honey.

When used for human consumption, beeswax has many uses such as:

• Lip balms
• Lip glosses
• Hand creams
• Moisturizers
• Eye shadows
• Blushes
• Eye liners
• Candles
• Polish
• Pomade

Great For Gardening

If you have a green thumb and love to garden, keeping a beehive is another great way to make sure that your garden is bountiful. If bees are close by, they will pollinate your fruits and vegetables, providing them with nectar for their hives.

Bees are dying off in ever increasing numbers, possibly because of pesticides and fungicides. So backyard beekeepers are a necessary part of bringing back the honeybee population.

Bee-Friendly Plants

Bees and humans can mutually benefit from a symbiotic relationship with one another. To attract more bees to your garden and help pollinate your plants and flowers, consider growing these plants below.

• Rosemary
• Wild Geranium
• Poppies
• Clovers
• Sunflowers
• Beebalm
• Oregano
• Purple Coneflower
• Sedum
• Yellow Coneflower
• Asters
• Zinnias
• Marigolds
• Milkweed

Are you still wondering why you should start keeping bees? It’s fun! Once you’ve set up your hive, the bee colony will constantly work to pollinate and make their honey and wax.

For the keeper, there doesn’t need to be a huge time commitment. Just check on the hives for a half hour once a week, and collect the honey and wax twice a year.

From the farm to your backyard, you can trust Blain’s Farm & Fleet to help you become a master beekeeper. To learn more about caring for your backyard bees, visit our Beekeeping Blog.