Does anyone here know about bees? We’re trying to make our garden more bee (and wildlife in general) friendly. We’ve planted a meadow area and we (mostly wife) are gradually planting some flowers & shrubs etc in the rest of the garden.

Last summer we had 3 bee nests, one in an old compost bin and 2 in the ground under rotten tree stumps.

If I want some pet bees can I just pop a hive in my garden and occasionally harvest honey from it? How much looking after and effort are they? Sarah Beeney made it look easy on TV a while ago.

And a big consideration, will it scare away the wild ones that already hang out in our garden?

Cheers

Join a local bee group/online bee group. Or get to know a local beekeeper. Friends tried it, and the local beekeeper was a literal hive of information. Helped colonise. Fascinating. Lots can happen with bees.

Such as

– Do honey and native bees spread diseases or parasites to one another?
– Are the pressures facing native and honey bees the same?
– Should I be planting or doing different things to support different bees?

Join up and talk. Beekeepers IME love nattering about bees just as much (if not more*) than STWrs love gabbing about mountain bikes.

*OK, definitely more 😉

Build a Bee House, there’s loads of other helpful websites showing how to encourage bees into your garden

Bee keeping has nothing to do with helping nature, this myth is exploited by companies to make money while native bees suffer the conciquences.

Mon the bees!!

Bee keeping has nothing to do with helping nature, this myth is exploited by companies to make money while native bees suffer the conciquences.

We did it – well I say we, my wife did it. We got a starter hive from a lady in yorkshire – it did start to ‘leak’ somewhat on the way back to surrey on the M6.

Have now had them for 3 or 4 years, my wife went on a bee keeping course (after she’d got them!) and it was super helpful and friendly. There seems to be quite a big thing of bee keepers helping each other out, so it’s worth joining the local club / fb groups – when she was pregnant recently she wasn’t really allowed to look after them, so lots of them helped out. Great educational experience for kids too – my wife looks after a hive at her school as well now (she’s a teacher).

You’ll ned a license for your pet bee, Eric.

A colleague of mine who I (used to) liftshare with, keeps bees. He is really into it, is a member of the local beekeeping group/association & has helped teach others on his allotment who now also look after some hives.

As an outsider it seems like an awful lot of work.
He is well known in his local area, so during the summer it is quite common for him to get calls from people about local swarms etc. and he ends up spending his evenings rounding them up & finding homes for them.
I am sure you don’t have to get this involved, but it does seem like one of those hobbies that potentially takes a lot more effort than you realise; although maybe it just seems like that because of the enthusiasm he has for it.

A couple of the people he taught have since given up, as they didn’t realise quite how much work was involved.

If I was looking to do it, I’d speak to a local group, try to learn by helping others out with their hives & gaining some knowledge before taking on my own hive.

Work load I Think it depends how seriously / how many hives you have – my wife only has the single hive (she may get a second when / if we move to a bigger house/garden). The work load is essentially zero from about Nov – March as they’re all asleep. After that it does increase, but it’s probably an hour or so a week at the peak time. You become the local expert on any bee swarms, but my wife just puts them in touch with a beekeeper who collects swarms. Harvesting the honey is more work (soooo tasty), and you need some special kit (honey extractor etc) but even then it’s an afternoon to extract it all, and then probably half a day to filter and put it into jars.

Dumb question – what if you don’t harvest the honey? Can you just leave it?

Asking as a hive seems a sort of cool idea, but I wouldn’t eat tonnes of honey and MrsIHN won’t really eat any

I kept bees for about 7 years around the turn of the century. It was really fascinating with loads to learn, I would think you never stop learning actually.
I joined the local beekeepong association who were amazingly helpful and supportive, give me my first hive and got a swarm of bees to put in it. So +1 to the advice above about linking up with the locals.
The workload would vary from almost nothing other than keeping an eye on the hives(most of the year), to quite intense periods of activity, particularly around honey harvest times.
That aside, you would have to open them up about once a week through the early summer to discourage swarming.
I was using traditional rectangular hives designed for maximum honey harvest, you may want to check out long bar hives, that may be less work, but also less honey. But you still end up giving 20000 honey bees a home! so great for the local ecology etc

Ps they won’t scare away any other species of bees.

I use to have a couple of hive in my garden. A national hive (better for honey production), and a top bar hive (better for building a big colony and breeding).

Learning is pretty easy and it was fun watching them but you do need to be sensible with where the hives are located. Not close to a neighbours garden etc.

This time of year they can be left alone.
Spring – need to inspect the hives weekly to prepare for queen cells and potential swarms; I was part of a little community of bee keepers who would work together to multiply colonies of bees and collect/save swarms but it became too much work to look after my 2 hives with other commitments.

Hive inspections don’t take long. Unless something goes wrong or you get a swarm. Then you have to drop everything to help them out. Difficult if you work long hours. But, if you have the time it is very rewarding. And your garden will start to look great.

Friend started keeping bees and had a couple of hives. One day one of the hives swarmed him and he got stung quite badly, not totally sure why it happened, but now he can’t keep bees and caries an epi-pen in case he gets stung again. He reckoned they were quite a bit of work too, like having a pet dog he said in that you can’t just go away without planning bee sitters for the hives

LOL at twinw the village idiot.
If you’re going to do it see if there is a local club, there is a lot to learn but once you get the hang of it you will only need about an hour a week but having people you can easily call for advice is invaluable. One hive can easily lead to two or three. I kept them for a few years and thoroughly enjoyed it. Good fun finishing your course then realising you have 10000 bees in a box in the back of your van you have to look after!Sadly on the stingy front you gain tolerance or intolerance and I went down the anaphylactic route and had to give up. I was only stung twice so it’s not a problem for most people. They won’t kill off the wild bees in your garden.

Worldclassaccident
If you’re friend was attacked on mass it can simply be some days bees don’t want you in their hive. If you open it up and they are buzzing loudly or you can smell a strong fruit aroma put the lid back on and leave them alone for a few days, next visit is generally fine. Worth joining a local club as I went away for a month during the season and a local keeper kept his eye on my hives, you just return the favour not a big issue.

Bee keeping has nothing to do with helping nature, this myth is exploited by companies to make money while native bees suffer the conciquences.

Flat Earther, anti vaxxer?

I wanted some pet bees once & went to a pet shop. I said, ‘I’m after a couple of pet bees please’, assistant says, ‘I’m sorry, we don’t keep bees’, so I said, ‘well you’ve got two in the window’.

IGMC.

Bee keeping has nothing to do with helping nature, this myth is exploited by companies to make money while native bees suffer the conciquences.

No such thing as native honey bees in the UK, unless you’re on the Isle of Man. All native British honey bees were wiped out by disease in the early 1900’s. Current honey bees are pretty much all a species of bee from Italy.

I’m a beekeeper. Hive inspections take on average 20 mins per hive, unless you need to treat, manage a swarm, or harvest honey. Nothing to do in winter except feed them. Join your local beekeeping club, Google the bbka and find your local group. Sign up to a course, learn what you’re doing. It’ll quickly get horrible otherwise.

Ps they won’t scare away any other species of bees.

Not sure about “scare them away” as such but isn’t a maintained hive of several thousand honey bees after the same resources as solitary bees or wild bees living in nests of a few dozen?

No such thing as native honey bees in the UK, unless you’re on the Isle of Man. All native British honey bees were wiped out by disease in the early 1900’s. Current honey bees are pretty much all a species of bee from Italy.

@wiganer I was going to ask what the craic with that was! So are there actually “good” & “bad” bees from a wildlife/nature perspective or are they all good? We’ve got lots of bee-friendly plants/bushes/fruit trees etc in our garden but not averse to providing a home for some bees if it’s actually helpful for them. Or are “wild” bees better for the environment?

Not too bothered about getting honey, presumably it’s still good for the bees to give them a hive you don’t harvest from, and less work obviously, although if honey could be obtained for fairly minimal hassle that would be a bonus obviously! Have heard about some easy-collection hive designs, although possibly a bit controversial in that they’re not ideal from the bees POV?

What is the deal with swarming, etc? Does it happen? Don’t want the neighbours to hate us lol! Also are they compatible with other animals (we have cats and chickens), wouldn’t want them getting harmed by a massive swarm of killer bees!!

He reckoned they were quite a bit of work too, like having a pet dog he said in that you can’t just go away without planning bee sitters for the hives

That sounds a bit overkill! We generally go away for a few weeks in the summer holidays and we’ve never done anything and they’ve been fine.

The swarms generally happen around april / may in our experience – we’ve had a couple despite my wifes best efforts to get rid of any queen cells etc. To be honest it’s not the end of the world when it happens – the garden was full of bees (and i mean full!) for about 45 minutes, and then they pissed off into the woods. The swarm in itself is quite interesting to watch – initial chaos, then they all group up on a nearby tree / something dangly, then you can see they send off scouts in straight lines in all direciton, then suddenly they’ll all just up and go! You probably wouldn’t want to have a child out in the middle of it all, but i’ve gone out with no protection and videoed it all and not got stung. Just brush off any bees that land on you.

Apparently different queens have different temperaments which then transfer to the hive – generally our bees are pretty chill. My wife has been stung a few times, but normally by accident (i.e. she had one on her and squashed it without realising). She has developed a bit of a reaction to it tho now (has an epi pen). I’ve never been stung by them.

Dumb question – what if you don’t harvest the honey? Can you just leave it?

Asking as a hive seems a sort of cool idea, but I wouldn’t eat tonnes of honey and MrsIHN won’t really eat any

Yes, you can leave it in there. They need the honey for food so taking too much is the problem.

I suppose the scientists and their study backing up my statement at Cambridge University also deserve some abuse from you lovely people.
Single-track does seem to attract it’s more than fair share of self righteous sorts.

I’ll just leave this here 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝 🐝 🐝

My neighbour had 2 hives over on the local allotments. He ended up moving them as they got increasingly aggresive towards people on the allotments, especially with lawnmowers.

Not sure if there was a reason for it but he ended up moving them rather than putting anyone at risk, was 50-50 if he was going to give them up at that point.

The honey is good though!

I initially wanted to try bee keeping in a small way so off I buzzed to the local bee supply store

On enquiring they said I could start off small and sold them by the dozen, so I puchased one.
When he handed them over I noticed that there were actually thirteen inside and asked if that was right

ah, don’t worry, he said, that’s a freebie

I’ll see myself out….

How timely, we’ve managed to negotiate the inclusion of bee keeping in the deed of conditions for the plot for our house as one of the neighbours wanted it too.

phil5556 – support the native species including the solitary bees and bumble bee species which are in serious decline. Don’t get commercial honey bees. Plant lots of nectar-rich flowers, don’t kill the dandelions in your lawn, provide places for native bees to nest.
Commercial bees are best left for places like oil rape fields where there isn’t any biodiversity to start with!

twinw4ll is correct

LOL at Marin the village idiot – just in case you want to argue, I’m an ecologist, I do this sort of thing for a living.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-41271-5#Abs1
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/think-of-honeybees-as-livestock-not-wildlife-argue-experts
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0189268
https://theconversation.com/keeping-honeybees-doesnt-save-bees-or-the-environment-102931

You’ll ned a license for your pet bee, Eric.

I only came here to say this and was beaten to it…

provide places for native bees to nest.

such as? like a certain type of plant etc or a house-type thing you’d hang on a tree/fence?

Not too sure about bees, but our local pet shop had a wasp in the window.

LOL at pipit hobby urban beekeepers who do all they can for diversity are evil monoculture companies. Village expert idiot no2. I would copy and paste lots of others people arguments for you but I’ve only got one hand at the moment so it’s a bit of a chore.

I would copy and paste lots of others people arguments for you but I’ve only got one hand at the moment so it’s a bit of a chore.

might be preferable to just calling people idiots with no real explanation though

@zilog6128

such as? like a certain type of plant etc or a house-type thing you’d hang on a tree/fence?

Rough tussocky areas on banks are good for many of the larger Bombus bumblebee species, and yes, those insect houses can be good for the solitary species – cheaper to just make your own with bamboo sticks in a pile in a sheltered area. Bare earth can attract the Andrena mining bees. Even an old bird box will get used by the larger bumblebee species, and they will usually win any competition with Blue or Great Tits for the box. Bottom line is species rich diversity of habitats where possible.

@Marin

hobby urban beekeepers who do all they can for diversity

Such as..? Plonk a bee hive on their urban roof is what most do – that does bugger all for “diversity” as you call it.

This place is great, loads of info cheers.

I’ll have a look for local clubs. Tbh it’s probably sounding like more work than I want and I’ll carry on making my garden more bee friendly, but will definitely look in to it.

Plant some winter/early flowering plants and flowers so wild bees can benefit.