Article: Beekeeping
Author(s): Fiachra
Other development: Not yet. I will!
Additional Info:
Peer Review Thread: As applicable.
Founder Review Thread: As applicable.
Synopsis: I am just filling out an existing skill which currently has no information. I actually wrote the whole darned thing before reading the guidelines here so. I dunno, let me know if this is okay and I can put it in Peer Review.
Outline:
Beekeeping
Existing Synopsis
Hives
Protective Gear
Smoke
Harvesting Honey
Catching a Wild Swarm
What is Swarming?
Novice/Competent/Expert/Master breakdown
- Getting Started
- Help
- Master Lists
- Useful Links
- Features
[Skill] Beekeeping
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[Skill] Beekeeping
by Fiachra on April 13th, 2016, 7:07 am
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Fiachra - Player
- Posts: 118
- Words: 100578
- Joined roleplay: August 12th, 2015, 7:37 pm
- Race: Kelvic
- Character sheet
- Storyteller secrets
- Medals: 1
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[Skill] Beekeeping
by Fiachra on April 13th, 2016, 7:11 am
Beekeeping
Beekeeping is the art and science of taking care of bees - including housing, breeding, and harvesting honey.
Hives
The main goal of hives, besides a place for your bees to live, is to have easily removable frames or drawers. Some hives are small and simple, having perhaps eight to ten smaller frames and being easily moved by one person alone. Others are more permanent structures with more and larger frames or drawers. A novice will likely have a smaller, more basic hive, and then learn to create larger more intricate ones as they progress. After all, as a beginner, you want to be able to figure out how to fix your hive if anything should happen to it, not just be baffled and lose your entire swarm and harvest.
The most basic sorts of hives tend to have a removable top, with the frames being placed in vertically, allowing it to be more easily accessed. As a hive gets larger, it may need to instead have horizontal frames should it be tall enough that the top can't be easily reached. There is always a slight space between the frame to ensure the bees have room to move.
The entrance for the bees is generally at the bottom, and kept relatively narrow to reduce the number of critters that might try to raid your hive.
Some beekeepers (expert and above) have even learned to make hives using jars instead of the more traditional frames, allowing them to immediately top and sell the jars once they've been filled. This is not only trickier technologically, but also because one must ensure that the bees don't overheat and die, particularly with the magnification properties of class. Still, it does make for a unique and often pricey product.
Protective Gear
A conical hat with a light see through mesh is probably the most easily recognizable piece of beekeeping gear. What it's made of varies by region and beekeepers preference. Extremely fine linen is sometimes used, the very rich might even use some of the finest silk. If you can see and breathe through it and it keeps bees of your face, it fits the bill.
The rest of the outfit is notable in that all parts of the body would be covered. If it's a two piece shirt and pants, then there would be a sash to keep a stray bee from winding up inside the suit. Often it's tied at wrist and ankle for this same reason.
The last and one of the more important pieces is a pair of thick, sting proof gloves. Often leather, but again, this varies by region and beekeeper.
Smoke
Smoke does two things to bees that allows the beekeeper to more safely approach and handle the hive. Firstly the smoke masks the pheromones bees use to communicate. Even if a few of them catch on, they can't alert the rest of the hive. It's the alert pheromone that tells the entire hive they're under attack and gets them all riled up and leads to the threat being swarmed. You get to avoid that!
The second thing it does is to make the bees think there is a fire nearby. That's the saying after all, where there's smoke, there's fire. When a bee thinks there's a fire, it doesn't want all it's hard work to be lost and go to waste, so it eats as much honey as possible. While this does result in some honey loss, it also has the same effect on the bees as a particularly large meal might have on a person, they get drowsy and lethargic. Attacking is less fun when you just want to have a nap.
Together, these mean that while a beekeeper might get a solitary sting or two, particularly if they are a novice, they are unlikely to be swarmed.
Smoke is often distributed using a smoker, a small pot, either pottery or metal which contains the burning material and had a spout of narrow top, allowing the beekeeper to more accurate direct the smoke. For this reason you obviously don't want materials that burn to hot or too quickly.
Harvesting Honey
The first step to harvesting honey after gearing up is usually to light your smoker. anything can be burned really, dry branches, hay. Some beekeepers will swear by one particular herb or another for the best results, but the simple truth is any smoke will do the trick.
Slowly and carefully open your hive. A hive that is accustomed to you and has not been upset or mistreated will likely be relatively calm, but any time you open the hive there is a chance for an angry swarm. Gently blow some smoke into the hive.
Pull out your frames and have a look at them, if the cells aren't capped, you don't want to harvest them, even if you see nectar in them, you're only interested in frames with capped cells. During this process, you'll want to scrape off any cells that your bees have built between your frames, whether they're technically 'ready' or not. It's more important to have good airflow and movement in your hive! This rogue bits of wax and honey are often the beekeepers treat!
Remove any frame with fully sealed cells. These might be heavy, as an average sized frame will have about six and a half pounds of honey! There may be a few bees still clinging to them, you can either gently brush them off, or just leave them be and they'll likely leave on their own. Ideally, you'll have space frames, so you can immediately replace the frames you've removed with new ones rather than having to wait until you've processed the honey and wax.
Although it may take awhile (competent and up) a beekeeper can also learn by looking at the cells and judging their colour, what is in them. Pure honey is a light colour, slightly darker is pollen and a developing bee, or capped brood as a beekeeper would say tends to be a tan colour and is usually in the centre of the hive. Obviously you don't want to harvest your next generation of worker bees if you can help it! It is a mistake most beekeepers make once or twice however.
Take the frames you've judged to be honey home, or to your work space. Here you'll want two tub-like containers and a large trowel-like knife that is as long as the shorter side of your frame. Heat the knife, not to red hot, but enough that it will easily go through wax. Holding the frame (some beekeepers make stands for this!) vertically or at a slight angle over the tub, swiftly (otherwise you might burn your honey!) and smoothly bring your knife down along the frame. Do this to both the front and the back. This will remove most of the wax caps, which should be in your tub. For any caps still remaining, use a smaller knife, or a tined utensil to gently shave or pick the remaining caps off. This can be time consuming.
You can now set your frames to drain over the second tub, which will be almost entirely pure honey. You can leave this for longer if you want to get as much as possible, or shorter periods if time is of the essence. Once the honey is drained to your liking, you can shave the cells out of the frames and get a second less pure batch of honey by straining them through a fine cloth.
You now have a harvest of premium honey, second grade honey, and beeswax! Good job beekeeper!
Catching Wild Swarms
Between Spring and Summer, hives may swarm. This means a queen and an entire retinue of bees will take to the air and travel in search of a new viable home. The Queen and the majority of the bees come to rest somewhere, usually on a branch, but occasionally on a wall, tree truck or other similar place. While they wait, scouts will be sent out to find their new home.
To catch a swarm, you'll want a portable hive, protective gear, a stick and some sugar water.
Ideally the swarm is on a branch, and if you're really lucky it's a low hanging one. If this is the case, set the hive under the bulk of the swarm, and give the branch a solid thwack, dropping most of the bees into your hive. You'd then put the lid on, but not in such a way that it's sealed entirely. If you've succeeded in knocking the Queen into your hive, and your hive is acceptable, the rest of the swarm, as well as the scouts when they return, will enter and stay in the hive, and you may transport it back to wherever you intend to place it. If you didn't get the Queen though, you'll be treated to the site of all of the bees you did get in the box, rising into the air and returning to the branch and their Queen.
The good news is it take a fair amount of failed attempts and bothering to get a hive to move when they're waiting on their scouts, so in the event of a failure, you can wait for them to settle down and try again.
If you're not lucky, and they're on a wall or tree trunk, your protective gear, stick and sugar water will get a chance to shine. Again, place the hive under the majority of the swarm. Gently flick, or if you have a way to mist or spray, even better, the sugar water onto the swarm. This will make it harder for them to just fly away. You could use straight water, but particularly if flicking, this is more likely to aggravate and drive off the swarm. This done, use your stick, or if you're feeling brave your arm, to gently brush the majority of the bees down into the hive. again, cover it and wait to see if you've successfully caught the Queen.
What is Swarming?
Swarming is how you get more than one active hive. As a general rule, Queen bees will not tolerate other queens. If a hive is productive enough, and the population grows enough, an older Queen will lay a Queen egg and then take a little over half of the workers to start a new hive elsewhere, often before the new Queen has even emerged. Should something prevent a hive from swarming after a new Queen egg has been laid, such as bad weather or the interference of a beekeeper, the two Queens will usually fight to the death.
Swarms can range in size from a few thousand to a a few tens of thousands, depending on how successful the starting hive was.
Swarms almost always happen only in Spring and Summer, but can on rare occasions happen at other times throughout the year particularly in climates that stay consistently warm and with bountiful resources for the bees.
Novice (1-25)
So you've bought yourself some bees. You have some idea about what sort of plants need to be in the general vicinity for your bees to survive, and you know how to use smoke to subdue them while you collect honey. You'll want to wear your safety gear at all times or you'll be sporting bee stings constantly.
Competent (26-50)
At this level you can make basic hives for your bees, generally from wood, though clay is rarely (and generally less successfully) used. You can also attempt to catch wild swarms, although your odds of success are about fifty/fifty. You can identify your Queen Bee. You can harvest honey fairly quickly and easily, minimizing trauma to your bees. You really only need your safety gear for harvesting honey and catching wild swarms.
Expert (51-75)
Your hives are a work of art. If you leave an empty hive out in an area where bees frequent between spring and summer, there is a 25% chance a hive will move into it without any effort on your part. You know when your hives have more than one Queen, or are about to swarm and can break them up into separate hives without losing bees. Your are almost guaranteed a successful catch of a wild swarm. You handle your bees so gently and with such practiced ease, you could gather honey without wearing your protective gear and risk only a sting or two.
Master (76-100)
You don't really bother with gear. You sometimes operate without smoke. You read your bees so well even this results in only infrequent stings. You know how to optimally harvest and prepare your honey and wax with very little wastage and few impurities, meaning it can be made into a better end product and sold at a higher price. You are that person posing with a beard of bees to shock and astound.
Beekeeping is the art and science of taking care of bees - including housing, breeding, and harvesting honey.
Hives
The main goal of hives, besides a place for your bees to live, is to have easily removable frames or drawers. Some hives are small and simple, having perhaps eight to ten smaller frames and being easily moved by one person alone. Others are more permanent structures with more and larger frames or drawers. A novice will likely have a smaller, more basic hive, and then learn to create larger more intricate ones as they progress. After all, as a beginner, you want to be able to figure out how to fix your hive if anything should happen to it, not just be baffled and lose your entire swarm and harvest.
The most basic sorts of hives tend to have a removable top, with the frames being placed in vertically, allowing it to be more easily accessed. As a hive gets larger, it may need to instead have horizontal frames should it be tall enough that the top can't be easily reached. There is always a slight space between the frame to ensure the bees have room to move.
The entrance for the bees is generally at the bottom, and kept relatively narrow to reduce the number of critters that might try to raid your hive.
Some beekeepers (expert and above) have even learned to make hives using jars instead of the more traditional frames, allowing them to immediately top and sell the jars once they've been filled. This is not only trickier technologically, but also because one must ensure that the bees don't overheat and die, particularly with the magnification properties of class. Still, it does make for a unique and often pricey product.
Protective Gear
A conical hat with a light see through mesh is probably the most easily recognizable piece of beekeeping gear. What it's made of varies by region and beekeepers preference. Extremely fine linen is sometimes used, the very rich might even use some of the finest silk. If you can see and breathe through it and it keeps bees of your face, it fits the bill.
The rest of the outfit is notable in that all parts of the body would be covered. If it's a two piece shirt and pants, then there would be a sash to keep a stray bee from winding up inside the suit. Often it's tied at wrist and ankle for this same reason.
The last and one of the more important pieces is a pair of thick, sting proof gloves. Often leather, but again, this varies by region and beekeeper.
Smoke
Smoke does two things to bees that allows the beekeeper to more safely approach and handle the hive. Firstly the smoke masks the pheromones bees use to communicate. Even if a few of them catch on, they can't alert the rest of the hive. It's the alert pheromone that tells the entire hive they're under attack and gets them all riled up and leads to the threat being swarmed. You get to avoid that!
The second thing it does is to make the bees think there is a fire nearby. That's the saying after all, where there's smoke, there's fire. When a bee thinks there's a fire, it doesn't want all it's hard work to be lost and go to waste, so it eats as much honey as possible. While this does result in some honey loss, it also has the same effect on the bees as a particularly large meal might have on a person, they get drowsy and lethargic. Attacking is less fun when you just want to have a nap.
Together, these mean that while a beekeeper might get a solitary sting or two, particularly if they are a novice, they are unlikely to be swarmed.
Smoke is often distributed using a smoker, a small pot, either pottery or metal which contains the burning material and had a spout of narrow top, allowing the beekeeper to more accurate direct the smoke. For this reason you obviously don't want materials that burn to hot or too quickly.
Harvesting Honey
The first step to harvesting honey after gearing up is usually to light your smoker. anything can be burned really, dry branches, hay. Some beekeepers will swear by one particular herb or another for the best results, but the simple truth is any smoke will do the trick.
Slowly and carefully open your hive. A hive that is accustomed to you and has not been upset or mistreated will likely be relatively calm, but any time you open the hive there is a chance for an angry swarm. Gently blow some smoke into the hive.
Pull out your frames and have a look at them, if the cells aren't capped, you don't want to harvest them, even if you see nectar in them, you're only interested in frames with capped cells. During this process, you'll want to scrape off any cells that your bees have built between your frames, whether they're technically 'ready' or not. It's more important to have good airflow and movement in your hive! This rogue bits of wax and honey are often the beekeepers treat!
Remove any frame with fully sealed cells. These might be heavy, as an average sized frame will have about six and a half pounds of honey! There may be a few bees still clinging to them, you can either gently brush them off, or just leave them be and they'll likely leave on their own. Ideally, you'll have space frames, so you can immediately replace the frames you've removed with new ones rather than having to wait until you've processed the honey and wax.
Although it may take awhile (competent and up) a beekeeper can also learn by looking at the cells and judging their colour, what is in them. Pure honey is a light colour, slightly darker is pollen and a developing bee, or capped brood as a beekeeper would say tends to be a tan colour and is usually in the centre of the hive. Obviously you don't want to harvest your next generation of worker bees if you can help it! It is a mistake most beekeepers make once or twice however.
Take the frames you've judged to be honey home, or to your work space. Here you'll want two tub-like containers and a large trowel-like knife that is as long as the shorter side of your frame. Heat the knife, not to red hot, but enough that it will easily go through wax. Holding the frame (some beekeepers make stands for this!) vertically or at a slight angle over the tub, swiftly (otherwise you might burn your honey!) and smoothly bring your knife down along the frame. Do this to both the front and the back. This will remove most of the wax caps, which should be in your tub. For any caps still remaining, use a smaller knife, or a tined utensil to gently shave or pick the remaining caps off. This can be time consuming.
You can now set your frames to drain over the second tub, which will be almost entirely pure honey. You can leave this for longer if you want to get as much as possible, or shorter periods if time is of the essence. Once the honey is drained to your liking, you can shave the cells out of the frames and get a second less pure batch of honey by straining them through a fine cloth.
You now have a harvest of premium honey, second grade honey, and beeswax! Good job beekeeper!
Catching Wild Swarms
Between Spring and Summer, hives may swarm. This means a queen and an entire retinue of bees will take to the air and travel in search of a new viable home. The Queen and the majority of the bees come to rest somewhere, usually on a branch, but occasionally on a wall, tree truck or other similar place. While they wait, scouts will be sent out to find their new home.
To catch a swarm, you'll want a portable hive, protective gear, a stick and some sugar water.
Ideally the swarm is on a branch, and if you're really lucky it's a low hanging one. If this is the case, set the hive under the bulk of the swarm, and give the branch a solid thwack, dropping most of the bees into your hive. You'd then put the lid on, but not in such a way that it's sealed entirely. If you've succeeded in knocking the Queen into your hive, and your hive is acceptable, the rest of the swarm, as well as the scouts when they return, will enter and stay in the hive, and you may transport it back to wherever you intend to place it. If you didn't get the Queen though, you'll be treated to the site of all of the bees you did get in the box, rising into the air and returning to the branch and their Queen.
The good news is it take a fair amount of failed attempts and bothering to get a hive to move when they're waiting on their scouts, so in the event of a failure, you can wait for them to settle down and try again.
If you're not lucky, and they're on a wall or tree trunk, your protective gear, stick and sugar water will get a chance to shine. Again, place the hive under the majority of the swarm. Gently flick, or if you have a way to mist or spray, even better, the sugar water onto the swarm. This will make it harder for them to just fly away. You could use straight water, but particularly if flicking, this is more likely to aggravate and drive off the swarm. This done, use your stick, or if you're feeling brave your arm, to gently brush the majority of the bees down into the hive. again, cover it and wait to see if you've successfully caught the Queen.
What is Swarming?
Swarming is how you get more than one active hive. As a general rule, Queen bees will not tolerate other queens. If a hive is productive enough, and the population grows enough, an older Queen will lay a Queen egg and then take a little over half of the workers to start a new hive elsewhere, often before the new Queen has even emerged. Should something prevent a hive from swarming after a new Queen egg has been laid, such as bad weather or the interference of a beekeeper, the two Queens will usually fight to the death.
Swarms can range in size from a few thousand to a a few tens of thousands, depending on how successful the starting hive was.
Swarms almost always happen only in Spring and Summer, but can on rare occasions happen at other times throughout the year particularly in climates that stay consistently warm and with bountiful resources for the bees.
Skill Progression
Novice (1-25)
So you've bought yourself some bees. You have some idea about what sort of plants need to be in the general vicinity for your bees to survive, and you know how to use smoke to subdue them while you collect honey. You'll want to wear your safety gear at all times or you'll be sporting bee stings constantly.
Competent (26-50)
At this level you can make basic hives for your bees, generally from wood, though clay is rarely (and generally less successfully) used. You can also attempt to catch wild swarms, although your odds of success are about fifty/fifty. You can identify your Queen Bee. You can harvest honey fairly quickly and easily, minimizing trauma to your bees. You really only need your safety gear for harvesting honey and catching wild swarms.
Expert (51-75)
Your hives are a work of art. If you leave an empty hive out in an area where bees frequent between spring and summer, there is a 25% chance a hive will move into it without any effort on your part. You know when your hives have more than one Queen, or are about to swarm and can break them up into separate hives without losing bees. Your are almost guaranteed a successful catch of a wild swarm. You handle your bees so gently and with such practiced ease, you could gather honey without wearing your protective gear and risk only a sting or two.
Master (76-100)
You don't really bother with gear. You sometimes operate without smoke. You read your bees so well even this results in only infrequent stings. You know how to optimally harvest and prepare your honey and wax with very little wastage and few impurities, meaning it can be made into a better end product and sold at a higher price. You are that person posing with a beard of bees to shock and astound.
-
Fiachra - Player
- Posts: 118
- Words: 100578
- Joined roleplay: August 12th, 2015, 7:37 pm
- Race: Kelvic
- Character sheet
- Storyteller secrets
- Medals: 1
-
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