Having someone local, from whom you can learn, and who can help you in the beginning of your beekeeping journey, is precious.
That being said, it’s not always easy to find someone who is local, experienced, good at teaching and willing to teach and help you.
It’s not impossible to learn things by yourself but having someone experienced to teach you will save you lots of time and frustration. He can show you things that you may even not be aware of (you can’t learn something until you become aware of its existence).
So, before you decide to do it on your own, you should really do whatever you can, to find someone to help you.
Find a local, experienced (more than 10 years of keeping bees) beekeeper who is willing to teach you and follow him (help him whatever he needs) on his apiary for one whole beekeeping season.
Find local beekeeper
Beekeeping is local!
What works in one place may be completely different in other.
So much depends on your climate and plants that are growing in your area.
Even elevation has a huge impact.
So, find someone close to you.
He will provide you with the information about plants that are growing, available honey flows, potential problems and so on… which someone who is not local cannot provide you with.
He will walk you through the activities you need to do month by month. The timing for those activities may be completely different in another area.
He can point out the things you should pay attention, that are specific to your location, and that someone, who don’t keep bees at that location, can not know.
And it will be much easier for you to go with him to his apiary if he is near you.
Find an experienced beekeeper
If you’re going to learn from someone, he should have a lot of experience.
Someone who doesn’t have enough knowledge and experience may easily mislead you in the wrong direction.
So, if you are not able to find someone with the experience, it’s much better to take some classes and make an effort to learn on your own, than to listen to someone who does not know enough.
Beekeepers like to say that you become a beekeeper after 10 years of keeping bees.
And that’s absolutely true.
Beekeeping is an always ongoing process of learning.
Even experienced beekeepers are constantly learning. There are always new situations, new conditions, new problems that you may never seen before, even if you have years of experience.
But someone needs to see enough yearly cycles of honey bee colonies, enough different bee colonies through the years (because every colony is a story of itself), to solve enough problems, make enough mistakes, lose enough hives and successfully keep a lot more, through the years… to start to understand bees and their behavior in connection with different situations and weather conditions.
If you are learning from someone, make sure he has no less than 10 years of experience in keeping bees successfully.
It would be great if you can find someone with 30 or 40 years of experience.
Follow him on his apiary for a whole season
Although the whole beekeeping season (from an early spring to a late fall) may sound like a long time, this is the only way to get a clear picture of all the phases one colony goes through (spring growth, honey flows, swarming, dearth, colony reduction…) and all the tasks you need to do in different times of the year (first spring inspection, regular inspections and what to expect in different times of the year, swarming control, harvesting, winter preparations…), as well as all the other situations that will occur along the year.
That’s exactly the thing that classes (although they can be really useful especially if you don’t have access to someone from whom you can learn) cannot provide you (unless they last the whole year, which is not common).
We can not highlight enough how important is to have a clear picture of the whole year, the tasks you have to do and when is the right time to do them.
After going with an experienced beekeeper to his apiary for a season and observing everything he is doing, you’ll be able to have that picture in your mind.
This will save you a ton of time, mistakes, frustrations and confusions.
Of course, there will be a lot of unexpected things along the way, that you’ll have to figure out how to solve.
But having and understanding this greater picture is crucial for everything you do in beekeeping.
Go to his apiary and help him there
By going with him to his apiary, you’ll learn so much more than any other way.
You’ll see exactly how he is doing things.
You’ll see what equipment he is using.
You’ll see how he is organizing things.
You’ll see how he is keeping track of what is going on with each particular hive (every hive is a story of itself).
You’ll see everything that will be of a great help once you have your own hives.
Go with him whenever he is going to the apiary.
Go with him whenever he is doing something outside the apiary - like rendering wax, making foundations, fixing the equipment, preparing boxes and frames… Because this is also an important part of the beekeeping.
Go with him whenever he is doing something that has anything to do with beekeeping.
Help him whenever you can and he wants to allow you, and with anything that has anything to do with beekeeping.
This may sound as it will require you a lot of time. But beekeeping requires time.
And if you don’t have time for this, then you won’t have enough time for your own bees and you may want to think again about your decision to keep bees.
Yes, this will require you a lot of time, but in the long run it will save you much more.
Big commercial beekeepers vs smaller ones
One thing that you should know is that big commercial beekeepers with hundreds of hives, do things differently than beekeepers with smaller number of hives.
When you have such a huge number of hives, you just can’t do things in a way someone with smaller number can.
Also, it’s their occupation so their goal is profit.
They are moving their hives a lot, to different locations, chasing the honey flows in order to get more harvests in a year.
They probably don’t have time to learn a beginner.
Or even if they have, their goal is completely different than yours.
They are using the expensive equipment that you won’t need, and they do things in a way that is good for a big apiary but may not be the best way for you.
If you are learning from someone big and commercial, just keep these things in mind.
For you, it would be much easier to learn from someone who has a few dozen than a few hundred hives, and who don’t move his hives all the time.
Try to find a stationary beekeeper with no more than a few dozen of hives.
How to find such an experienced beekeeper who wants to learn you
Well, try whatever you can.
There are local beekeeping associations where you can find other beekeepers from your area.
You can also see if someone is selling local honey in your area.
See who is selling bees locally.
If that doesn’t work, check local online groups.
Smaller beekeepers will usually sell honey at their home, so that’s also a way to find them.
Find someone near you, meet him/her, ask him/her how long he/she is doing beekeeping, have a conversation with him/her about beekeeping, ask how many hives he/she has and so on.
Say that you are interested in keeping a few hives as a hobby.
If you like him/her, ask if he/she is willing to help you learn and sell you 2-3 hives next spring.
Don’t expect someone to give you his/her knowledge for free.
You need to offer something in exchange.
Offer him/her to help on his/her apiary and whatever he/she needs that has something to do with beekeeping in exchange for learning during the process.
If his/her apiary is not in his/her house yard, you can offer him/her to pick him/her up and drive him/her to the apiary whenever he/she needs to go there.
Or offer him/her whatever might be useful for him/her and you can do.
Maybe you can learn him/her something that you know and he/she wants to learn.
Or you produce something and can give him/her some of your products in exchange.
Beekeepers with a lot of experience are usually older people. Some of those older people may be really grateful just for an extra pair of hands for helping lifting heavy boxes.
See what you can do for him/her.
Be clear about what you want.
You want to follow him/her on the beekeeping tasks for one year, to learn from him/her, and help what you can working on those tasks during that time.
You want to buy 2-3 hives from him/her next spring.
Do your homework
Before you try to find someone to learn from, you need to learn basics.
You need to read some books first.
You need to learn terminology.
You can’t expect someone to accept to bring you to his apiary and teach you, if you don’t even know basic terminology.
Do your homework!
In order for someone to accept to teach you, you need to show your willingness to learn.
Read a few books first!
Show him/her that you’re able to follow what he/she is talking about by understanding the terminology and basics.
You need an experienced beekeeper to show you the practical things, not to learn you something you can read in a book.
Don’t expect from someone to be willing to spend time on explaining you the basic terminology that you can learn by yourself just by reading books.
Buy yourself a beekeeping suit
You can’t expect, from someone who is willing to teach you, to provide you with a protective beekeeping suit.
Prepare yourself by buying one.
This is also a way to show someone that you are serious about beekeeping and learning. And to prove that you are not someone who will give up after few days.
In our next 2 lessons, we will walk you through the options for buying your first beekeeping suit and gloves and how to properly put them on.
Don’t believe photos and videos where beekeepers are working with bees without a protective suit. You need a beekeeping suit.
Learning from a beekeeper
Any second that someone experienced allows you to watch or help is precious.
So, be focused. Observe as much as you can.
Don’t afraid to ask questions!
Whatever you don’t understand - Ask!
Focus on understanding principles.
Focus on understanding bee behaviors.
Focus on getting a picture of when something is happening in a year and what are your tasks according to that.
If you’re mentor is bored with your questions, avoid answering you or his answers are something like “because that's how it's done” without actually explaining why something should be done in a particular way - Find a new mentor!
You need someone who understands how things function in a bee world, and is willing to pass that knowledge so you can understand too.
What if I can’t find an experienced local beekeeper who is willing to teach me
If you have tried everything you could, and you still haven’t found anyone, you have no other choice than to do it yourself.
Read as much as you can (well, you should do this even if you have someone to learn from).
Take classes.
Try to understand when something is happening in nature and in a colony - when they start to raise blood in early spring, when and what are the honey flows in your area, when you can expect them to swarm, when is the dearth, when to start winter preparations…
Understanding the yearly cycle of a colony will help you a lot with everything else.
And we’ll try to help you as much as we can.