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« Last post by Lesgold on September 20, 2023, 11:47:01 pm »
Many years ago I was told of an older beekeeper in my area. As I was new to the hobby, I decided to meet this fellow and talk to him about his experiences. He told me that he was in his eighty second year of beekeeping. He had his first hive when he was just six years of age. At the time that I met him, he was running about sixty hives (all in full depth x 10 frame boxes) The best bit of advice he gave me was to work smarter rather than harder as you get older. He showed me a simple trick that he used for artificially swarming a hive when he spotted queen cells. The method only took a couple of minutes and worked exceptionally well. He rarely lifted full boxes off a hive. He tended to work one frame at a time. He knew how to manipulate brood and honey frames to get the best production out of his bees. He kept his bees in one location and never moved them. This reduced his workload considerably. He always took two boxes of honey off in the late afternoon and returned the frames the following afternoon to reduce travelling and double handling. Honey was always extracted in the evening when it was cooler. It?s not a system that would suit everyone but it worked for him.
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