"we were sure the bees would sense our goodwill"
May 26, 2017 8:47 AM   Subscribe

The cost of keeping bees. By getting a few hives we could save the bees, and in return the bees could save our bank account. It would be a mutually beneficial relationship.
posted by threetwentytwo (46 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
This actually seemed fairly successful overall. Failure in a new field of endeavor should be expected, and they seemed to have learned reasonably well. Also, these days nothing makes me happier than the return of swarming pollinators to the flowers in my yard, if for nothing else than it staves off the apocalypse for another year.
posted by Existential Dread at 8:56 AM on May 26, 2017 [3 favorites]


Great! First I thought, why bother taking a class. Just hit the library. However, after reflection, it seems there is almost bottomless knowledge to be gained about these creatures. So complex that beekeeping starts to feel like learning a new coding platform. I had not learned before why the smoke works, or how to introduce a new queen. So many ways to hack their programming!
posted by TreeRooster at 9:02 AM on May 26, 2017 [5 favorites]


The veiled suits were expensive, and we were sure the bees would sense our goodwill and welcome us with open wings. They did not.

This kills me, as I recognize this naive optimism in myself as well, for so many things. Surely they'll put "What could possibly go wrong?" on my tombstone.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:09 AM on May 26, 2017 [58 favorites]


This was a fascinating read because bees are fascinating.

Also, I must be hormonal because this sentence "When I see a honeybee coming home to the hives at dusk, legs laden with pollen and belly full of nectar, I know our investment is paying off." legitimately brought tears to my eyes!

WE HAVE TO SAVE THE BEES!!!!!!
posted by JenThePro at 9:14 AM on May 26, 2017 [5 favorites]


I've known a beekeeper for 30+ years and he doesn't really use his suit much around his own hives. It's not that they don't sting him, but he's used to having a few bee stings. I have seen him wear most of the regalia when he collects a large hive from someone who doesn't wish to have it near (or in) their house.
posted by xyzzy at 9:15 AM on May 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


Because keeping bees, I’ve learned, isn’t a way to make a quick buck.

Is this new to some people? I guess it is.
posted by Melismata at 9:22 AM on May 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


The local backyard chicken FB group I'm in also encompasses beekeeping and I've learned so much just by watching them talk amongst themselves. (Also, YT beekeeping videos are fascinating, highly recommend for your rabbitholing pleasure.) But yeah, it does not seem to be a particularly remunerative past-time. (Neither is chicken-keeping. The eggs are delicious but each one really costs like $5.)
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:23 AM on May 26, 2017 [4 favorites]


I didn't know about the asshole moths. That sucks.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:26 AM on May 26, 2017 [4 favorites]


I've known a beekeeper for 30+ years and he doesn't really use his suit much around his own hives. It's not that they don't sting him, but he's used to having a few bee stings. I have seen him wear most of the regalia when he collects a large hive from someone who doesn't wish to have it near (or in) their house.

Yea, ditto for the two hives my various family members kept. We had the hood and the smoker but not the suit/gloves and it was fine. I really want a hive here soon. We actually just missed out on a house offer for a home that had a hive behind it... *sigh*
posted by RolandOfEld at 9:31 AM on May 26, 2017


I wonder if it's a matter of the bees getting used to the monkeys coming over to mess with them as much as it is the monkeys getting used to being stung. Every hive member that stings is a hive member that no longer collects pollen, so it'd make sense for the bees to have some kind of natural de-escalation process when a recurring stimulus turns out not to be an existential threat to the hive.
posted by tobascodagama at 9:36 AM on May 26, 2017 [8 favorites]


But yeah, it does not seem to be a particularly remunerative past-time.

See, my family's take was very much a 'set it and forget it' for the two households that had hives in the woods behind their homes. They'd call me over once every so often to help rob and extract the honey from the hive/comb but besides that it was mostly just a remove frame full, do work to get honey into jars, re-insert frame empty type thing.

Edit: not commercial honey production, to be clear
posted by RolandOfEld at 9:38 AM on May 26, 2017 [3 favorites]


I love reading about bees and beekeeping.

My dad kept bees when I was very young, and the tang of that honey, the hum of the garage during extraction, the smell of rope burning in the smoker, are among my most treasured sensory memories. It is not an easy hobby at all, and undertaking it through muggy Iowa summers and frigid Iowa winters didn't help. But we harvested enough to give gallon jugs of it to my school bus driver, my teacher, the school secretary, scout leader, and everyone else we knew, every year.

There's a long tradition of regarding the keeper as an adjunct, rather than a director, so to speak. The author does seem to lean in that direction.

Here's a lovely passage from Keeping Bees:

Try to decide your top priority [in keeping bees]. Are you keeping bees primarily to harvest the honey, or is the honey a justification (if you need one) for keeping the bees? If you pick the former, I look forward to reading of your 500-pound record in the coming issue of the bee magazines. If you pick the latter, that's two of us.

And this, from the same book, is even more charming:

Pour a puddle of syrup through the screen and shake some bees into it. . . . Watch their little tongues go at the syrup. Touch the feet and antenna of bees crawling inside the cage wire. They can't sting through the wire. Blow on a cluster and see what it does. Poke a broom straw through the wire and into the bees. Stir them gently. Fast movement will meet with antagonism. Slow, gentle movement won't be noticed. You are learning two major skills of bee handling: do nothing until you feel safe—have confidence born of know-how—and do everything in a slow, gentle, and deliberate manner.

And another, from The Queen Must Die:

There are said to be at least five thousand species of wild bees in North America alone, but little is known about them. When creatures have little or no commercial value, if they are neither especially harmful nor useful and not strikingly beautiful, fascinating, or bizarre, they are largely ignored to go their own way. This also holds true of most people of little or no distinction.

I feel like many things that I'd find deeply satisfying or of great value are, at this moment in history, so much harder than they used to be, or should be. Keeping bees is one.

What I'd give for a mouthful of warm comb, dripping with dark honey, sun going down over the neighbor's bean field, the air a blend of honey and sawdust and motor oil, lost bees circling the bare bulbs overhead...if there is a heaven, mine will let me go back to those nights.
posted by Caxton1476 at 10:06 AM on May 26, 2017 [53 favorites]


For folks that want to encourage native bees (which also have declining populations, are better pollinators for native plants, and are unremunerative for honey and/or pollination services), some resources: general information on native bees from USDA (pdf), and suggestions for improving your yard for native bees including building nesting structures (pdf). The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation is very helpful on this issue and also a neat conservation organization focused on underappreciated animals.
posted by hydrobatidae at 10:15 AM on May 26, 2017 [22 favorites]


"In a decision I regret to this day, we opted not to buy protective gear."

I had to read that in Arthur Carlson's voice.
posted by HuronBob at 10:29 AM on May 26, 2017 [9 favorites]


The starting outlook on this reminds me of my favorite Mitchel & Webb.
posted by maryr at 10:56 AM on May 26, 2017 [5 favorites]


I very briefly and very idly considered beekeeping a while back, but I quickly decided that I should probably just concentrate on supporting our local beekeeper instead. He's pretty great. He looks like Santa Claus, he's politically active, and most importantly, he already knows what he's doing and I trust that he puts his proceeds to better use than I could.

(My city also started issuing backyard chicken licenses around the same time they did for beekeeping, and I decided that my best course of action would be to convince one or more of my friends to get some chickens. No noble intent there, though. I just want a source for fresh eggs and to be able to visit chickens without being responsible for them.)
posted by ernielundquist at 10:58 AM on May 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


There are many approaches to bee keeping.

One of my uncles was in it for as a side business. He sold wax, honey, propolis and royal jelly. He must have had between 10 and 15 hives. I loved to go help during harvest season, my favorite part was operating the centrifuge. Apart from the money invested, he would spend ~10 hours a week tending the hives, way more when harvesting. I don't remember the exact numbers, but we would almost fill a 200 liter barrel every year.

Another uncle was in it for love of bees and gardening. He followed instructions from an early 1900s book and the advice of his gardener from Yucatan. Never bought a queen. He would catch wild swarms with cardboard boxes. He kept 2 or 3 hives. One was a hollowed log, one was some kind of woven basket thing covered in mud and the last one was a . He would spend a few hours once a year setting up the hives, and another few hours harvesting the extra honey and wax. Less than 80 hours in a year. The most honey I saw him harvest was about 3/4 of a gallon milk jug.

Once in a while one of the hives would be abandoned. He would clean it up, and wait for the next wild swarm to catch.

I'd love to do the second approach, and eve though we have a nice shared garden full of bee friendly plants, the landlord is worried about liability.
posted by Dr. Curare at 10:59 AM on May 26, 2017 [6 favorites]


This is one of those endeavors were the real money is made in selling the supplies. Like gold mining in the old west.
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:00 AM on May 26, 2017 [12 favorites]


BTW, if you see a wild swarm, usually in late spring, in a place you think it should not be, don't try to kill it or scare it away. Call a beekeeper.

Every city I've ever lived has had some kind of beekeeper club, and at least one friendly beekeeper happy to come and gently capture the swarm to take it to a new hive.
posted by Dr. Curare at 11:01 AM on May 26, 2017 [4 favorites]


I'm a beekeeper. It's an extremely rewarding and interesting hobby. It's not going to make you any money, unless you are very advanced and get involved in (1) operating large-scale pollination services, (2) removing hives from houses, or (3) raising and selling hives/queens to other beekeepers. You might get to the point of selling local honey, but it'd have to be twice as expensive to actually recoup the costs of production. But you can get started for about $600, which is less than a lot of hobbies. I think starting any hobby - knitting, woodworking, whatever - with the goal of making money is a little misguided. But if it sparks your passion, like it did with this blogger, all the better.

On the topic of wearing a suit, many advanced beekeepers skip the suit (few skip the veil - bees aim to sting your face). It's not just about being used to stings, though that's part of it. Bees get agitated and start stinging when they're handled roughly or the hive is open too long. Advanced beekeepers are competent enough to recognize good conditions for inspecting the hives, and to work with the bees quickly, calmly, and gently. Beginners make lots of mistakes that result in agitated bees: fumbling equipment, getting stressed, taking a long time to perform an inspection, not being gentle enough, making poor decisions about when and how to inspect. The suit's insurance against those mistakes, and helps you stay calm. Advanced beekeepers skip it because it's usually hot as hell and awkward to boot.

The biggest mistake the article-writers made was not getting involved enough in their local community, it sounds like. I was surprised when I started beekeeping by how little information is codified or agreed-upon. A lot of knowledge is just in peoples' heads, and 3 beekeepers will have 5 opinions on any given aspect of beekeeping. And so much depends on your location and habitat. Beekeeping is mostly about decision making, there's a reason we call it "managing a hive", and that requires experience to recognize when and what decision needs to be made. A mentor or local club rep could have told them how much honey to take. But kudos to them for sticking with it.

I love beekeeping and could talk about it all day long. :) But I agree that if you want to "save the bees" you should go help some local bees, not worry about honeybees.
posted by Emily's Fist at 11:01 AM on May 26, 2017 [18 favorites]


Neither is chicken-keeping. The eggs are delicious but each one really costs like $5.

TL;DR: 36 cents per egg not 5 dollars.

I have to disagree with this one just because I've done it, it's not accurate and I wouldn't want this comment to discourage other potential chicken keepers. Here are my startup/maintenance costs:

- Chicken tractor materials: $300
- 7 chicks: $100 (this is an outrageous price, can be had for much cheaper)
- Feed: $15/bag (bag lasts about 3 weeks)

That's it. Now, chicks don't start laying until they're about 6 months old so I have to eat about $130 in feed costs before they start laying. Once they start they lay about one egg every two days averaged out over the year (winter is slower if you let them have natural light; I like giving them a break). So let's make it a full year cycle. Another 6 months of laying gives me about 637 eggs and another $130 in feed costs. So over the first year I pay:

$300 + $100 + $260 / 637 = Just over $1 per egg. Not bad since grocery store prices are about $.50 per eggs of a similar quality.

The picture gets even better after two years (chickens lay until they die at about 8 years old though their production falls off as they get older). Now I've got 1911 eggs and an additional $260 in feed costs:

$300 + $100 + $520 / 1911 = $.48 per egg.

After year two I've already reached parity with the grocery store and it keeps getting better. Considering a 15% drop in production each year due to age I get the following cost per egg after each year:

Year 3: $.39
Year 4: $.36
Year 5: $.36
Year 6: $.36
Year 7: $.37
Year 8: $.38

So, there you have it. Not $5.00 per egg. It's 38 cents per egg over 8 years of ownership.

This was actually a really useful exercise as I can see my cost per egg start to rise after year 4 with a significant drop in egg production. This would be a good time to start a new flock. The picture is even rosier without the chicken tractor construction costs (assuming it is still in good shape after 5 years) where my cost per egg is $.26 after year three.
posted by talkingmuffin at 11:08 AM on May 26, 2017 [19 favorites]


Good luck getting honey from those chickens when their queen dies.
posted by dr_dank at 11:24 AM on May 26, 2017 [65 favorites]


I went to school with a girl from a beekeeping family. I have very fond memories of the times she brought in different varieties of honey for the class to sample. It was mind-blowing for someone who had only ever had grocery store honey before.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:24 AM on May 26, 2017 [2 favorites]


My roommate has started eeping beeks. We live in the city, but he's got a colleague with a bunch of land where the hives are. It's only been a month or two, so I dunno if it'll go like these folks' first hive, but so far it's ok. He has some kind of beekeeping mentor, which I think is probably pretty helpful.

He also wired up the hive with an arduino so he can monitor the inside and outside temperature and humidity remotely. I have no idea if that's useful.
posted by aubilenon at 11:25 AM on May 26, 2017 [3 favorites]


With all due respect for you and your excellent math, talkingmuffin, there is one factor not calculated in there: Time. You're also spending your time on those eggs. Now again, if it's a hobby coop then that's all fine and good and I've no idea how you'd factor that in to the numbers anyway. I suspect that past year 1 you're mostly just feeding and collecting eggs, but you've still got to buy the feed and collect eggs before they go rotten.

Basically, yeah, nobody should be going into beekeeping or chicken ownership for the money. They should do it for the love of bees and eggs and I suppose chickens if those are a thing than can be loved and not simply tiny dinosaurs.

(Out of curiousity - what do you do in the winter? Does the coop need heating? Or do the birds provide enough heat of their own?)
posted by maryr at 11:41 AM on May 26, 2017 [3 favorites]


I read this article like Leslie Knope talked Ben into getting bees. "Oh, Ben, we don't need protective gear." Maybe Ron Swanson tried to talk her out of it but she barreled ahead.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 11:55 AM on May 26, 2017 [3 favorites]


maryr, that why I have kids ;-)

There's all sorts of things not factored into this equation, the cost of the land that the chickens occupy, the wear and tear on my tools, the costs for city water/sewer etc. etc. But I'm just keeping it simple as these are mostly just factored into the cost of "daily life".

The coop does not need heating. I'm lucky to live on the Pacific coast so winters are mild. Apparently chickens are good down to -10 C without supplemental heat. I've never had to deal with temps. that cold so don't take my word for it.
posted by talkingmuffin at 11:59 AM on May 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


maryr, we kept backyard chickens recently for several years here in northern Iowa, and although the winters don't feel like the neverending threats to life and sanity I remember from my youth, one year it got down well below zero several times, with consecutive weeks hovering around zero to single digits.

We didn't lose any birds, but boy, did they complain and spend a lot more time inside the coop. Egg production went down, too. I built the coop myself and it worked fine - it was movable, so putting it in direct sunlight for the longest possible time seemed to help. On the very coldest night - probably around -20, maybe colder - I got nervous enough to rig up one of those metal cone lights in a way that didn't blind them but generated juuuust enough heat to help them ride out the night. Honestly, they probably would have made it just fine, but I felt bad for the ladies. They pile on top of each other and glare at you like you're an idiot when you open to coop to say hi.

In retrospect, I can imagine making a double-walled coop, with space for insulation, maybe a roof I could switch out from white to black in the winter, etc. But not in this city - an asshole neighbor decided after almost 3 years he didn't like them and filed a complaint. Turned out he was a retired lawyer specializing in property law, and one of his former practice partners was on the zoning board. So, surprise! We lost. Gave the chickens to friends in a bird-friendly city. Their local paper ran a feature, which got picked up on a slow news day by papers from coast to coast. True story.

In conclusion, I like bees and chickens more than I like most people.
posted by Caxton1476 at 12:13 PM on May 26, 2017 [13 favorites]


My $5/egg figure was wild hyperbole, but I suspect we're not really breaking even. I pay for woo-woo organic feed to the tune of about $40 for a 50 lb. bag. Building my coop and run probably took about $400 in materials plus a few weekends of my time (but on the plus side got me into woodworking as a hobby, so there's that, and also it's a really nice coop and run). There's the big bags of pine shavings I use as bedding. And all the little bits and bobs like the feeder (and the materials to build ever-more elaborate feeders because my god chickens only get about 10% of their feed in their mouths if left to their own devices). I spend a fair amount of time tinkering with their habitat. Oh, and I had to pay the city $250 for a permit. I only have four chickens, so there's a definite lack of economy of scale happening here.

You can raise chickens for pretty cheap. I don't, though, partly because I live in the city on a 2000 sq. ft. corner lot where everyone can see my set-up and if I had a unkempt or un-Martha-Stewart-looking coop, my neighbors would likely be displeased.

And also my chooks are prima donnas who refuse to eat vegetable scraps and are mainly just interested in the dinner my son throws over the side of the deck when I'm not looking.
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:27 PM on May 26, 2017 [3 favorites]


Obligatory JP the Beeman (he is wonderful).
posted by Deoridhe at 12:54 PM on May 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


Since my mother has been a beekeeper for the last 10 years, this sentence made me shake my head and sigh.

Rather than face the bees and risk their wrath, we avoided the hives and made up excuses to put off our inspections.

Of course your bees died, silly humans. You ignore the bees at your peril.

Other than that, yeah, bees are a lot of work and if you have to relocate because of life changes, it's a pain in the ass to sell 25 hives and move 70 gallons or so of honey which a moving company won't move.

But I get honey and mom has something to do in her retirement, so it's a win-win.
posted by teleri025 at 1:06 PM on May 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


Flo & Joan (of The 2016 Song fame) exhort us to Save the Bees.
posted by somedaycatlady at 2:08 PM on May 26, 2017


Now I need to learn to knit so I can make tiny three-toed wooly socks for chilly backyard hens.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:27 PM on May 26, 2017 [5 favorites]


I kept bees for a couple years in highschool, but I eventually got tired of getting stung. It was a good money maker for me, but only because my parents subsidized the equipment without requiring a share of the profits.

The old guys at the beekeepers society who I hung out with to learn the trade advised me that you can make a small fortune keeping bees as long as your first step is starting out with a large fortune.
posted by bracems at 3:31 PM on May 26, 2017 [10 favorites]


I too, believe WE MUST SAVE THE BEES. Thanks for the post, OP, and thanks for the informative comments, Mefites!
posted by scratch at 4:25 PM on May 26, 2017


If you're interested in starting with chickens, rescue battery hens are a great option. We have several sets of friends who have battery girls and they are so rewarding.
posted by DarlingBri at 5:52 PM on May 26, 2017 [6 favorites]


My cubicle-mate took a beekeeping class last fall and now has two hives. I think one of the benefits of taking the class for her was hooking up with an experienced mentor. And she loves talking about her new hobby. Our work group is fairly tight-knit and we all enjoy keeping up on each other's hobbies, and beekeeping is probably the most exotic.
posted by lhauser at 6:47 PM on May 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


I was surprised and happy to see two actual bees wander into the house today. They hung out on the flowering plants on my desk and listened to me coo at them and bid them welcome. They stuck around for about 20 minutes, then wandered back out the door.

I love bees. I am fascinated by them.

Sadly, I'm also allergic to them, so no bee keeping for me. :(
posted by MissySedai at 7:26 PM on May 26, 2017


If you're of a certain age, you may remember how allegedly easy it was to make a mint raising chinchillas, whatever they are.
posted by kozad at 8:52 PM on May 26, 2017 [7 favorites]


chickens lay until they die at about 8 years old though their production falls off as they get older

I keep hearing this lately and having grown up around farm chickens I can only conclude it's a myth being spread by Big Backyard Chicken. Chickens can live till 12 or 13, easy, and they only lay regularly for a couple years. This is why history gives us so many recipes for stewed chicken.

If you want to always have a laying flock you need new chickens each year and because hens are territorial assholes the easiest way is to hatch a brood. Failing that to get some fertilized eggs or brand new chicks and stick them under your smartest or most maternal hen and hope for the best.

They also really will eat anything. Expensive chicken feed is still confusing to me. They eat kitchen scraps and bugs and horse and cattle feed just fine. They're not vegetarian.
posted by fshgrl at 8:57 PM on May 26, 2017 [5 favorites]


If you're of a certain age, you may remember how allegedly easy it was to make a mint raising chinchillas, whatever they are.

In one house we moved into when I was a kid, the wife had been a board member of the regional Chinchilla Breeders' Association. One room in the barn was stacked with boxes of their letterhead and envelopes. My sister and I used it as scrap and drawing paper for a decade.

I guess we could have made some mischief with them, but it never would have occured to us.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:54 AM on May 27, 2017 [1 favorite]


Chickens really are assholes. We added two new pullets to our existing two young adults and they barely tolerate each other. Since they're only a year different in age I think my strategy is going to be to off them all at once and get a whole new flock, unless one decides to go broody at an opportune time and I can get some fertilized eggs (I've been keeping chickens for three years now and never had a broody one--just luck I guess).

Integrating chickens is the worst. They're horrible little dinosaurs.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:07 AM on May 27, 2017 [1 favorite]


Growing up in Newton, MA, my mother kept chickens and my dad and I had a couple of bee hives. Among the many thing I fondly remember about beekeeping was when our backyard neighbors came over to complain to my father about the beehives. "The bees are going to fly right through our yard," they said. "You can see that the entrance to the hive are pointed right at our yard!" My father quickly intuited that they thought bees flew in "beelines," and suggested, "how 'bout if I angle the hives so they are pointed away from your yard?" The neighbors had no problem with that solution, so dad and went out there and rotated the hives 45 degrees on their cinderblock foundations. Never heard another peep out of the neighbors about bees.
posted by slkinsey at 10:55 AM on May 27, 2017 [7 favorites]


Oh, the other funny story about our bees was that when my father transferred from MIT to Rice, my parents couldn't take the hives with them and gave them to a beekeeping friend of my father's at Brown. He just stuffed some loose cotton in the entrances and drove down to Rhode Island with the hives sitting in the back seat of his station wagon. We always regretted that he hadn't been pulled over for speeding.
posted by slkinsey at 11:01 AM on May 27, 2017 [4 favorites]


I got my first hive this year. I have no illusions that I am ever going to make money with this particular hobby, but it's not actually that expensive as many hobbies go. Less than buying, say, a reasonably good guitar or two seasons of swim lessons. The second-best thing about it is so far is just hanging out semi-near the entrance of the hive (no protective gear needed for this) and watching the bees do their bee thing. The very best thing is suiting up with my six-year-old son and having him help scrape off burr comb and generally seeing him act mature, intent, and excited to be hanging out with his mom.

I do feel a little bad about the local bee species and I'm trying to figure out what I can do to help the bumblebees and the mason bees now.
posted by The Elusive Architeuthis at 11:06 PM on May 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


Really surprising that mason bees don't look out for each other more.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:55 PM on May 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


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