Finish this sentence:

Beekeeping - Basics
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Before I started beekeeping with Flow, I wish I had known…

My answer is: how enriching and fulfilling the art of beekeeping is so I had started years earlier and about the benefits of reading bee behaviour and communication to guide my understandings of the colony e.g. different bee roles, pheromones, vibrations etc.

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My answer would be;
The work involved with bee husbandry. The time required to maintain a hived colony.
The cost involved caused by the addiction.:grin:
The space taken up by all the extra equipment.
:wink:

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  • To start weight training and savings for regular massages :muscle::joy:
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I wish I had known how many ‘right’ ways of doing things there are and how much variation there is in beekeeping methods depending on where you are and local conditions. Five years ago I thought the first answer I heard (from someone who knew their stuff) was the right one. I now understand that someone might give me an answer that works well for their hive in their conditions, but there may be other approaches that work just as well, or even better, in different conditions or with a different colony. It’s good to stay open to alternative ways of doing things, and to also trust your instincts and knowledge of your own bees. I will be learning for a long time yet, it’s fluid and ongoing.

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OK, so I kept bees for decades before we had a Flow hive. My answers are therefore coloured by that experience. In no particular order…

  1. How opinionated traditional beekeepers can be when faced with a fascinating new option for honey extraction
  2. How lazy new beekeepers can be when they think a hive is “plug and play” - no learning required
  3. That I didn’t need to spend $500+ on a centrifuge and tools for extracting liquid honey
  4. How easy it would become to avoid the sticky mess of extracting frames of honey in my kitchen
  5. That honey can be extracted directly from the hive, and often doesn’t even need straining because it is so clean
  6. That my husband would become even more addicted to beekeeping, because of some of the above…

:blush:

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As with Dawn_SD’s post, my experience pre-dates Flowhive introduction by about 4 decades but I can share some thoughts:

  1. I wish I had known that taking my honey/pollen hive products directly to the retail level was as lucrative as it is.
  2. I wish I had known that you don’t really need to have a lot of hives in my area to get a nice income…but the experience of running a lot of hives helps in understanding bee behavior.
  3. I wish I had known how important it is to start out with clean (disease free) equipment…a clean slate of new boxes, frames, and foundation…stocked with package bees.
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… How much space I’d actually need to store everything!
… That one of everything is usually (justifiably!) not enough.

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Really interesting. Thanks Doug.

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You’re welcome Bianca. And years ago I never thought of or was too busy to produce value-added hive products like this luminaire my daughter makes with our beeswax. This is marketed as a Christmas gift and is popular with folks in this part of the world where the nights are so long. So if only I had known…

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