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Top Ten Rookie Bee Mistakes

21K views 65 replies 48 participants last post by  kilocharlie 
#1 ·
Anyone care to share their best rookie beekeeping learning experiences?
 
#3 ·
My mistake? This is like engineering, study, build, buy, insert, reap. Done. Well, then the little ladies arrived and the learning curve got real steep!! My three hives have made it one year this month and I have caught one old swarm. So far I have only reaped some great fun (and some costs) but there is hope for better times ahead! :popcorn:
 
#5 ·
For many a new beek, the most common one is not staying equipment ahead of the bees in a timely manner. In the spring-through-early-fall, you'd be wise to keep 2 to 4 hives ready to go if there are swarm calls. Another is only keeping only one hive - if it goes queenless, you could be out of luck in a hurry! (Much better to figure on keeping between 3 and 6 hives as a hobbyist).

Another common mistake is to think that you just get a box, add bees, then enjoy all this honey! HAHAHAHAHA! The learning curve is a bit steeper than that for most of us.

My ex-girlfriend's rookie mistake was getting stung under the veil, then taking it off and running! (Result? => 6 stings)

My first rookie mistake was getting vehicle trouble in LA the day before queens hatched in Ojai. (Result? => 2 live queens out of 32 cells)

My most painful one was not having all my hives on pallets and bolted, ready to move in my queen yard. A sudden, hurried move caused a huge die-off, including the loss of an AFB-resistant colony of very productive, well-behaved bees. :(

There was a big thread recently here on Beesource about stolen hives, so another is not branding your equipment! I'm at the point where I won't make anymore woodenware until I complete my branding irons. Face it, building hives and queen equipment is a lot of work and expense. START BY MAKING OR BUYING YOUR BRANDING IRON!!! You won't regret it.

The saddest mistakes often involve wintering. Hives must be strong - 130 lbs for a 2-box 10-frame deep Langstroth colony - with pollen and honey going into winter. Weaker colonies should go in a double-nucleus over a double screen board setting on top of a strong colony, or just newspaper combine them with a strong colony.
 
#6 ·
Harley:

I did the same thing, only I didn't even have a veil on. I'm pretty smart (and have three college degrees to prove it), won't do that again.

I suspect the number one beginner beekeeping mistake is to fail to feed a new hive enough. I know at least four people who wanted to keep bees but insisted that they were supposed to be "all natural" and didn't feed them. Guess what? Most hives (90% or so) die if you don't feed them in the first year. I fed mine to start with, then failed to realized that Italian queen from Mississippi or wherever didn't respond to a lack of forage and kept laying until they ate all their winter stores. Died off in the spring after a failed supersedure attempt and a wax moth infestation.

Fed my swarms up almost too well the second year.

The other beginner mistake that is very common is to fail to provide the correct hive space in a timely manner, either by not giving them enough room and letting them swarm or by adding too many boxes and having wax moths make a mess.

Like every thing else in life, practice improves performance.

I'd say #3 is probably incorrect use of the smoker, either not enough smoke to calm the bees properly or sending billowing clouds of hot smoke through the hive and getting the bees really annoyed just before opening the hive. Takes a while to get the hang of smoke, I think. I've learned one long, slow puff in the entrance and a quick one under the cover is all I need with my current bees except when they start pouring over the tops of the frames and top edges of the box. Then another puff will run them right down out of the way. I usually just drift the cloud of smoke over the hive, I try no to puff smoke into the hive except into the entrance.

I've avoided most of the rest of the really bad things, I think, or maybe I just have bees that recover from my poor efforts at management well enough I'm not doing any real damage!

Peter
 
#8 ·
Moving a hive without a bottom ranks as my worst rookie mistake, had the hive almost to its new location and a frame fell to the ground loaded with bees needless to say I paid a hefty price when they went up my pants. :pinch: Upside is I'm not allergic to bee stings, down side is with that many it didn't matter. :ws:
 
#9 ·
Good info guys , I really appreciate all the knowledgeable beekeepers that take the time to answer all of the newby questions posted here . I know with all the info here us newbs stand a much better chance of success . I think for me learning how to read the hive and what the bees are doing will be the hardest part to learn.
Great thread !!!!
 
#10 ·
Number one mistake: not having a plan when opening the hive. Whether it's cold, and one is too hasty when the hive needs a quick peek for whatever reason, or it's warm enough for a slow, let's not crush any bees, frame by frame inspection, have a plan (including, as mentioned above, a lit smoker even if you don't PLAN to use it). Personally, mine was not having the zipper on my veil/jacket all the way closed on a cold day when the bees were a little testy. Amazing how many angry bees can find a two inch opening. Twenty two stings to the head and face later, I missed a day of work with one eye closed shut and one side of my face so swollen, it looked like I had suffered a stroke. Also, while I agree with psfred about not feeding a new package at all, the opposite is true as well. I fed a new package by the "feed until they stop taking it" method right into a syrup backfilled brood chamber and swarm cells (and "they" say a first year package won't swarm-yeah, right!!!).
 
#11 ·
Worst mistake was not taking time to go home to get my veil before capturing a swarm. It was getting dark, and cold when I got there and they were much more testy than expected. Took 20-30 to the back of the neck, 15-20 to the forehead/eyebrows. I looked like the hunchback of Notre Dame. My buddies in the ER still have my picture posted in the break room. Needless to say I now have a spare veil in every vehicle I drive.
 
#12 ·
My most recent mistake,,,, letting my wife go out to the beeyard and stand a little ways away from me while I was intalling 4 packages. Usually would have not been a problem but this time we had just come home from church and she had on hair spray and perfume. They went to her like a fat kid to cake. She got two tangled in the back of her hair (stung twice) and several on her back and back of her legs (no stings). Felt so sorry for her I left the hives open to rescue her. Made sure she was alright, she never showed any emotion (crying, yelling or anything). After seeing she was alright I went back and finished. The next day I asked her if she would go out to the beeyard and help me to which she replied, "NO, I will help you extract, melt the cappings, clean frames and equiptment or anything else." I told her she was a sissy. You know sleeping on the couch really isn't that uncomfortable.
 
#14 ·
...or maybe trying to get a swarm out of a fir tree that was about 30 feet up in the tree. I backed my pickup up to the tree, put my extension ladder in the back of the pickup against the cab and went to the top of the ladder. The swarm was about 8 feet out on the limb so I decided to slowly cut the limb and when the limb would slowly bend down I would scoop the bees into a bucket. Also it was raining.
 
#16 ·
I remember a trip across the town of Cheyenne, Wyoming with a recent swarm of bees in 1977. I put them inside a pickup topper and did not tie them down or secure the hive in any way (I had seen dried propolis on the edges of the hive body and shallow super, so thought that was enough to stick it together). In the middle of town I went around a corner and the hive body and super became disarticulated :eek: Of course my veil was in the back with the bees...In traffic....I can only plead a case of temporary insanity. Gentle bees, no stings. ;)
 
#18 ·
Listening to people who said not to feed unless you just had too. Can a beginner really judge when they really need to feed? Better to have fat bees that swarm than malnutrinioned bees that don't.

A rooky mistake I did not make was failing to split and make increase. Two small hives are way better than one big hive any winter.
 
#19 ·
Last week had a hive I thought was a dead out in one of my outyards (no activity on a blue bird day when all the other hives were flying.)

Short on time wearing just a T-shirt and shorts I muscled it in to the back of my pick up, unloaded it the same way at the house.

Went to clean it out yesterday and saw a few bees going back and forth, popped the lid and it was chalkfull of bees. Not a sting one even though I jostled the heck out of them. Makes up for some of the stings I've taken when I was just walking by.


Biggest rookie mistake I made was getting talked into bees to begin with. Should have stuck with horses, booze, and women. :scratch:

Don
 
#20 ·
A most common mistake….beginner and experienced beekeeper alike….is impatience.
I’ll get countless calls every season asking for queens. The beek is sure their hive is queenless. I’ll advise that they wait a little longer…but they don’t listen. When they go to install the storebought queen….they find a small patch of new brood…or worse…they install the new queen only to discover, a couple of weeks later, a laying, unmarked queen.
 
#23 ·
Most important lesson I have learned??? "It will only take a minute"... "I'll be real quick!"....and "My bees are always nice!!" are NOT good enough reasons to go into a hive without a veil! Hero... shmero...I'll take the ribbing for being a wimp far better than I react to stings! :eek: I hope you hear this lesson, before you have a hive decide it's time for you to leave, and the bees mean NOW!!! :ws:
 
#24 ·
Mistake #2 I made picking up a nuc from a new source. When I went to pick it up, the beekeeper was fully suited up with veil, gloves, and sleeves/pants cuffs duct taped shut. I work mine in shorts and white tshirt with tulle veil. They head butted me repeatedly while we were in his bee yard just standing there. I should have left those bees there. I've been stung by them more than all my other hives combined. The only reason I haven't requeened, is that they stick the honey back like its going out of style. They were also the only hive that the hive beetles wouldnt mess with last summer.
 
#27 ·
Allowing myself to be sweet talked into looking after somebody's bees while they went on their honeymoon.

She said when they got back she would bake me a cake.

The hives were an hour across town but it was only supposed to involve one visit, so I did it. But on a hunch, I went there day after they left as I thought from something that had been said that the bees might be brink of swarming. They were, bearding, & queen cells everywhere. So, raided their garage, found supers, unfortunately mediums, the others were deeps, made some major changes best I could to the hives configuration, & left. 3 hours plus mileage wasted.

2 weeks later the neighbour called, freaking out, there's a swarm in his tree. I drop what I'm doing (which cost me later), drive there, the swarm is at the very top of this incredibly tall tree, no way any sane person could get it. Check the hives, regardless of my efforts the previous visit, they were in full swarming mode & just went ahead & built more cells and swarmed anyway. Had to reconfigure my checkerboarding and other manipulations from the first visit & to prevent after swarms I go through & kill the majority of the cells, set up a swarm trap in the garden, and leave, best part of 4 hours wasted, peak traffic.

The couple get back from honeymoon & she rings me the same day. I explain what happened, I can tell in her voice she thinks I did a crap job. I tell her in a couple of weeks the hives will have laying queens, and she can put the still empty swarm trap away.

She made several more calls over the next few weeks her voice tone getting more annoyed every time. The queens never did mate & start laying, in the end I sent her free caged ones, but she was still not happy about what I "did" to her bees. No cake for me, and we haven't spoken since either.

Next time somebody asks me to do this, I'm going to be too busy.
 
#28 ·
Opened a healthy booming hive in the spring and it had 20 plus queen cells in it so I cut them all out......not knowing they had already swarmed.

...been there

I opened a hive with no smoke on a fairly chilly windy overcast kinda day, figured I'd get in and out and add a box, but that didn't work out too well, they poured out of there like a plague of locusts LOL Will always have the smoker on standby now LOL

...done that

not having the zipper on my veil/jacket all the way closed on a cold day when the bees were a little testy. Amazing how many angry bees can find a two inch opening.

...still have the scar

And... after moving some hives to a new yard, I found a small cluster, (must have missed the memo that the house was moved), on the side of a tree in the old location. I made the mistake of treating them like a swarm and tried to collect them in a swarm box. Meanest bunch of bees I've ever come across. Chased me through the woods for almost 10 minutes. Like someone once said...stupid hurts. Problem being, I wasn't a rookie when this happened.
 
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