Sky Hive: Beekeeper Club & Honeybee Purchase

Beekeeper Club

My friend Abby has decided to join me along my beekeeping journey. In fact, she termed and named this blog, 'Sky Hive', so we give many, many thanks to her. Anyway, Abby and I have joined a local Beekeeper's group in our area, named 'Three Rivers Beekeepers' (TRB Website).

A little about Three Rivers Beekeepers, directly from their website:

"We are a fast-growing beekeeping club located in St. Peters, Missouri, with over 400 individual beekeepers and honey bee enthusiasts having attended our meetings with an average meeting attendance of seventy-five, and growing. Three Rivers Beekeepers serves beekeepers from the eastern Missouri counties of St. Charles, St. Louis, Jefferson, Lincoln, Franklin, Warren, Montgomery and Pike along with many western Illinois counties bordering Missouri, in and around the St. Louis region.

We pride ourselves in providing beekeeping presentations covering the entire spectrum of beekeeping subjects, from beginning to advanced, simple to complex and conventional to alternative.

Three Rivers Beekeepers remains committed to providing fresh, creative and inspiring educational programs with a refreshing atmosphere of friendship and camaraderie. We make it our goal to keep our local communities informed of honey bee and beekeeping-related issues while providing a source of information about our industry and hobby.

In early April of 2009, sensing a lack of beekeeping support for St. Charles and the surrounding counties of Missouri and Illinois, there began a discussion for the need of a beekeeping club in that area. On April 15th, 2009, five local beekeepers, including Ted Jansen, Marlene Jansen, Esther Jansen, Jane Timmons and John Timmons, gathered in the Timmons’ living room and made the decision to start Three Rivers Beekeepers. The very next day, the club name was registered with the State of Missouri, the domain name “threeriversbeekeepers.com” was purchased and a simple web page created.

Slowly, with a couple phone calls and word-of-mouth, the word went out that there was a new beekeeping club forming in St. Charles County.

Our first meeting was held Monday, May 18th, 2009. Not expecting more than ten or fifteen people to show up for this first meeting, we were stunned to welcome sixty-five! From the very first meeting of Three Rivers Beekeepers, we were the second largest beekeeping club in Missouri!"

We have gone to a couple of meetings now and learned quite a lot more about the life cycle of the honeybee, their habitat, and the year round upkeep. Other members are extremely polite, very approachable, helpful, and very knowledgeable. We got pretty lucky with this group, they didn't charge us a membership fee to join. However, I've heard that many groups do charge an annual fee to be a member. Nothing is free these days, I suppose. But, like I said, we got lucky! Most textbooks and website that I've read from suggest new beekeepers join a local beekeeping club. Many clubs will nominate mentors, who help the novice beekeepers, assisting them through their new hobby. I highly recommend joining a club. If you need help locating a club near you, visit this website,operated and maintained by 'Bee Culture Magazine, The Magazine of American Beekeeping': http://www.beeculture.com/content/whoswho/.

Honeybee Purchase

Back in December of last year (2013), I reserved a three pound package of honeybees from Honey Hive Farms, they are a local beekeeping supplier near me. They are due for pickup in April, depending on the weather here in Missouri. There are several ways in which one can obtain honeybees for their hive. One way, is purchasing a package of honeybees, like I did. Many textbooks and websites suggest obtaining your first year of honeybees using this method. You can order honeybees by the pound from a reputable supplier. Most suppliers will ship just about anywhere in the United States. A package of honeybees and a single queen are shipped in a small wooden box with two screened sides, see picture below.

Photo credit: Honey Hive Farms

A package of honeybees is about the size of a large shoebox and includes a small screened cage for the queen (about the size of a matchbook) and a tin can of sugar syrup that serves to feed the honeybees during their journey. Typically, a three pound package of honeybees contains about 11,000 honeybees, the ideal size for the novice beekeeper. I found this method of obtaining honeybees the easiest, especially with this being my first time ever keeping honeybees.

There are several other methods to obtaining honeybees. Such as buying a nucleus ("nuc") colony, purchasing an established colony, or by capturing a wild swarm of honeybees.

Several other factors come into play when you're purchasing your honeybees. Suppliers typically sell several different races/kinds of honeybees. Races include: Dwarf honeybee, Giant honeybee, Oriental honeybee, Western honeybee, Carniolan honeybee, Italian honeybee, Russian honeybee, German honeybee, and so on. Each race obviously has it's pros and cons. Many textbooks break down the many advantages and disadvantages for each of the popular races.

I chose the Cordovan Italian honeybee. Cordovan is a subset of the Italian race. In theory, you could have a Cordovan in any race, since it's technically just a color. However, most Cordovan traits are seen in the Italian honeybee in North America. My honeybees will look very similar to the picture below.