I would think that most of us start out wanting to keep bees because of the fascination of watching them work and pollinate and make that fantastic honey. But as a rule we don’t consider what we want to be when we grow up, i.e. now that we can keep bees alive and understand most of the basics, what do you want to do with the hive and what direction makes the most sense for you.

There are basically three things that are commonly done with the hives. Pollination, queen rearing, and honey/bee products, all of which are a subject in themselves. While all of these can be done with the same hive, they all have different needs and requirement to be at it’s best. Briefly I will try and provide an overview of the requirements as I see it.

Pollination requires a strong and healthy colony early in the season. This requires a bee that will lay eggs quickly and bring the hive to strength rapidly. I would choose the Italian queen for this application as they start laying early and usually don’t shutdown once they have started. Some other races will shutdown egg laying during a dip in weather or a dearth. One choosing this path must be prepared to feed early and liberally to stimulate early brood production and remember you must go to the orchards to pollinate, which will require a lot of logistics moving hives etc.

Queen rearing is a fun project and quite rewarding. This will require a lot of bees, but split into nucs that will raise the queen cell and hold the queen until she has completed breeding and is laying a good pattern. This can be done with smaller units, but the queen is better if left in the nuc and actually allowed to lay a pattern. Again being in the Northwest we have to wait for good breeding weather for the queens and for the drones to be mature, which means about the 1st of June for best results. This only allows a few batches of queens and since the hives were broke down to nucs for the queen production or at least weakened, honey production is sacrificed.

Honey and bee products are a large category and can by quite financially rewarding if marketed properly. Honey is the oblivious product, and it is easily sold. This will require a very strong hive for maximum yield, and is why some people use double queens in their hives to help bring up the population of bees. Oregon State University did a study and found that a hive of 60,000 bees with produce 1 ½ times as much honey as 4 colonies that are only 15,000 bees strong. This means you will want a very strong hive at the start of honey flow, but honey flow just follows swarm season, so there will be a balance between very strong and blowing a swarm which would obviously ruin that years honey production for that hive. We will cover this in more detail, but there is a great market for pollen, populous, wax and wax products, bee venom, cut comb, ross rounds, and more.

Now that you are a beekeeper, it is up to you to decide what avenue is interesting for you and what you like to do with the hives. Don’t be afraid to experiment or try several of these ideas. And yes, it is just fine to watch the bees fly and simply enjoy nature’s miracles

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