One friend told me once:
“I envy you, you work only in the summer, and you rest the rest of the time. And in the summer there is probably not much work, because bees do everything for you. They carry honey, and you can only wait and take it in time. "
I suppose that not only my acquaintance thinks so, but most people who are familiar with beekeeping are very superficial.
Beekeeping is a unique activity. Probably the most useful profession of all that I know. Only now to call it simple, I would not.
Bees really only work in the warm season, but the beekeeper has to work all year. The work of the beekeeper is divided into two parts:
- Summer - This is active work with bees in the apiary, setting hulls (expansion), creating layering (new families), withdrawing young queens, as well as pumping out honey. You also often have to wander with them, because otherwise you will not get a lot of honey.
- In winter time - This is the preparation for the next season. Winter work is no less, and sometimes even more. It is necessary to repair or make new cases, covers and bottoms, to assemble the necessary number of frames.
Also, do not forget that bees can get sick. And here, not only the task of properly caring for them, but also the diagnosis rests with the beekeeper. After all, as I wrote earlier, there is practically no one to turn to for professional help. To quote myself:
Each beekeeper is a veterinarian himself for his bees.
So you have to look for information yourself, communicate with colleagues and take measures to save bee families.
This is a small number of those activities that any professional beekeeper faces during the year.
If a person chose beekeeping as his profession, this is usually for life.
This can not be done by a person who does not like bees and nature in general! In this, the bees will die, and it will not work to collect a lot of honey.
