Beekeeping- Year One

An essential aspect of permaculture is the lowly pollinator, who play a crucial role in food production and ecosystem health. Without the natural labors provided by honeybees and other native insects, human agriculture would likely have never arisen and here at the Bergs and the Bees we consider them as important as the air we breathe. Additionally, beekeeping is a rewarding hobby that helps a beekeeper read the natural cycles of the seasons and protects our very existence. Also, did we mention a well-managed hive can provide a surplus of 60 pounds of honey each year?

At this point you are probably thinking that it isn't simple, and you would be right.  The main issue is that bees have evolved over millions of years to NOT share their carefully collected honey and pollen stores. As a beekeeper, it is our role to work with the natural order of the colony and provide an environment where the queen can sustain a population of workers beyond what would typically be needed to gather and store resources for winter. Provided this workforce is born at precisely the right time, they are then able to gather unbelievable amounts of nectar during key blooms throughout the summer. In addition to the 60 pounds available to the skilled beekeeper, a single hive will also retain up 100 pounds of pollen and honey to sustain them through the cold Minnesotan winters. Although we did not reach this level of success in year one, we took the first step!

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Hiving our first Nuc June 2023

The first steps in beekeeping are fairly straight forward. In addition to requiring a certain amount of space and nectar resources, there is a well-recognized set of starter equipment. The University of Minnesota estimates the startup costs associated with beekeeping are anywhere from $1,700-$4,000! The high end of this figure assumes that you follow their recommendation of two hives. We did not invest in a second during our first summer, but we plan on adding another for year two. In addition to hives, you will also need to order bees, some cool new clothing, a smoker, and other useful tools. 
 
Before we started, we read that roughly 50% of colonies fail to survive winter. Feeling we were setting ourselves up for possible failure, we approached our first year with a goal of getting comfortable being around so many stinging insects and becoming good observers. Spoiler: We did end up losing our bees in the first winter, but I think it was a valuable way to prepare for enrolling in the University of Minnesota's short course on Beekeeping in norther climates in January 2024. If you are serious about beekeeping, I would highly recommend taking the course but have no regrets about giving it a try first without out it.  In the words of Thomas J. Watson, "Failure is a teacher; a harsh one, but the best." 

When purchasing bees you have two main options, a package of bees or a nucleus colony or “nucs” for short. Packages of bees are sold by weight and typically contain 7,000-15,000 bees and a mated queen. This option usually results in getting your bees earlier in the spring (which can increase honey production for the year), but requires more supplemental feeding and a there is a chance your bees require mite treatment.  A nuc is an established colony on 4 or 5 frames of waxed comb, with stored pollen, nectar, a mated queen, and approximately 10,000+ bees in various lifecycle stages (eggs, larva, pupae). This option typically starts later in spring allows for faster population growth but it can be harder for bees in northern climates to store enough honey. There is an additional risk of that the established comb has been contaminated by residue from pesticides.  Both options have their own sets of pros and cons: and after assessing our goals for the year we opted for the nucleus route. In year two we have already opted for packaged bees to trial another option.

We purchased our nuc from a local Minnesota based beekeeping company at the end of June and rushed home to get them set up. We immediately identified the fresh anxiety of visiting the bee yard in the first few months.  Honey Bees gather nectar to produce honey as a source of food for winter, and any human harvest must be weighed against the hive's need to store food for a Minnesota winter. In our area, a hive will need anywhere from 75 to 100 pounds of honey just to feed themselves! For your hive to produce that much honey, plus any excess for the beekeeper to harvest, we would need to do a lot of supplemental feeding. Although we love the golden goodness, we wanted to save the honey for the bees and spend the year observing and opted for a more hands off approach.
 
Throughout the summer, we did several hive checks, some minimal supplemental feeding of sugar syrup, and sat back and watched the bees do their thing. During one of our hive checks at the end July we found a new queen cell and noticed our hive replaced the queen! This was likely an emergency requeening or supersedure, meaning the previous queen likely died or stopped laying eggs. During this inspection we were able to find the new queen and see eggs and brood in various stages. Our hive box was about 80% full, so we added another deep box for the bees to fill with brood, pollen, and honey for the winter.

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​Fall of 2023 was busy around our farm! From hosting our first “Stump Fest”, completing the construction of our high tunnel greenhouse, to harvesting the bounties of our garden and mushroom logs. Every day was spent working elsewhere around the farm and preparing for winter. All that to say we just let the bees do their thing and continued our hands off approach. We provided a water source external to the hive and added an insulation box to the hive as the temps started dipping into the 50’s. Here is where things went wrong… in providing our hive with more room to grow at the end of summer, we should have been also providing them with more supplemental feed in the fall to help them expand. It takes honeybees a ton of energy to draw out the wax comb, and at this point in the year the nectar flow likely wasn’t enough to support their efforts. We entered winter hopeful the hive would survive but naive to their lack of stored resources for winter.

Over the winter months we completed the University of Minnesota’s Beekeeping in Northern Climates course. We learned a ton and were presented with great information that shifted our perspective on beekeeping. One of the biggest takeaways we will be implementing in our second year of beekeeping is having two hives! Having two separate hives helps identify if one colony is struggling and allows beekeepers to intervene sooner.

We did our first hive inspection of 2024 in February when we had some unseasonably warm days. Upon opening the hive, we found that our colony had died due to starvation. The hive was completely empty of honey and the top super only had one frame of drawn wax comb. With our new resources from the U of M we were able to reflect on where we went wrong and come up with a better plan going into our second year of beekeeping.  We composted the dead bees, cleaned up the hive, and rendered the extra beeswax.
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Over the years we have lost chickens, a whole orchard of trees, pets, etc. Loss of any kind is hard, but each time it has given us the opportunity to reflect on what went right, what went wrong, and how we can do better next time. If we stopped every time we failed at something, we wouldn’t be where we are today! With new knowledge and a better plan, we are looking forward to trying again in spring of 2024!