Urban Beekeeping: Rule 1; Bee A Good Neighbor

With the increase in urban beekeeping one of the things I get asked about a lot as President of the Omaha Bee Club is "What is different between beekeeping in the city vs beekeeping in the country?"

Urban beekeeping is indeed increasing and it's exciting and full of potential.  At the same time, it persents problems that don't exist or aren't pressented the same way in country beekeeping.

Urban beekeeping requires us to think more about our neighbors and the neighborhood we have our bees in.  Country beekeepers might not have neighbors within a half mile to a mile or even further from them.

The first rule of urban beekeeping, I tell people, is to bee a good neighbor.  This means, don't let your beekeeping become someone else's problem. 

Make sure to provide a good water source for your bees so that they don't take over your neighbors swimming pools or bird baths.

Your bees will swarm.  Plan on it.  Try to prevent it if you feel you can or must and be prepared to set out strategically placed bait hives to hopefully catch any swarms that get away.  Your neighbors might think it's cool and wonderful that you're keeping bees, but they don't want your swarms moving into their eaves, roofs, walls and sheds or garages.

Some people have an irrational or ignorant fear of bees.  While the idea of a 6 foot tall, 250 pound construction worker being afraid of some little bees might amuse you or even annoy you, remember that in "normal" society, beekeepers are the weird people.  Try to keep in mind that these people can be your greatest ally or they can be the biggest thorn in your side.  Try to educate them on how your bees are pollinating their gardens, fruit trees and ornamental flowers.  This gives them bigger and more fruits, vegetables and blooms.  Maybe drop a small jar of honey on them once a year, let them get  them hooked on the good stuff.  Whatever you do, don't antagonize your neighbors (at least, not unnecessarily).  You, whether you like it or not, are representing all other beekeepers, why make it harder for the rest of us?

Keep your bees happy.  Now we as beekeepers know that some colonies are more grumpy than others, especially as people get closer to the hive.  Keeping our bees more docile by not unnecessarily riling them up and paying attention to the bees environment by keeping certain predators like skunks, racoons and others away so as not to get them aggressive all the time.  This will help in not having people complain that you have "mean" bees.

In times of dearth, when the temperatures and weather conditions keep flowers from blooming and not much is available in terms of forage, you can put out sugar syrup feeders (try to keep them more than 75 feet away from the hives to prevent robbing).  By putting syrup out for them in your own yard, you can minimize how much they go out to investigate neighbors trash and picnics.  Some beekeepers will use in hive frame feeders at these times to help keep bees in food stores during a dearth.  Keep in mind that if you use outdoor feeder pails with sugar syrup during these times, you will likely get a lot of other visitors to the pails as well like Yellow Jackets and Wasps. 

To be a happy urban beekeeper means keeping your neighbors happy or at least tolerant.  You can go a long way by beeing a good neighbor.

Spring Management of my Modified Warre Style Hive

I've mentioned before that my hives are sorta, kinda Warre-ish types of hives.

I use 5 frame Lang boxes and frames.  Custom built bottoms, tops and quilt boxes.  I nadir all the boxes according to Warre's method and I only harvest the boxes above the bottom two in the stack as they are the brood and winter stores boxes.  The entrances are about 3/8" high by 7 1/2" long at the bottom board.

I don't recall if I ever discussed this particular hive with you but I meant to (and I might have somewhere but I don't remember) and so I will recap it's beginning and then get to where things are now.

This hive started April 28th with a "Baby Nuc" or a 3 frame nuc with a queen which was "salvaged" from another colony that had been re-queened because the owner insisted on a new queen even though this queen was still doing just fine.

I started them in a single deep 5 frame box placing the 3 frames in the center of the hive in frame spaces 2, 3, and 4 with foundation-less frames on each side in spaces 1 and 5.

A second box was added to the stack underneath the first box (nadiring) one week later.  That box had 1 frame with black plastic foundation in the center at frame space 3 with foundation-less frames surrounding it in spaces 1,2, 4, and 5.  This is the "default" new box for every hive I run.

The two box stack was then moved to it's permanent location about three days after adding the second box and has been in place there, un-opened and un-inspected since then.  Based on recent bee yard visits/external inspections  I determined last week that the time was coming to add a third box to the stack based on activity at the entrance of the hive.

This week, today actually, the third box was added to the bottom of the stack with the same setup as described above.  No smoke was used and the bees were not aggressive  or feisty but did exhibit some defensive behavior which is to be expected.  Of the two of us there, no one was stung.

Next week there will be a full inspection of the hive.  Inspections are scheduled to occur at about every 4 weeks or once a month.  The hive is visited weekly with observation and environmental checks to ascertain that the hive is not in need of immediate inspection.

The goal is to minimize intrusion in the nest and disrupting the inner environment such as nest scent and heat.

I'l post again after the inspection and go over how I do inspections and what I look for.