Ready to Build Your Own Bee Hive? Here’s What to Know

Can you start your own bee hive? We’ve heard how important it is to make sure bees stick around and continue to thrive, but can you have your own hive?

Some celebrities, Morgan Freeman specifically, have converted some or all of their property into great places for bees to live and thrive. Can you build a hive and allow these wonderful insects to live and work on your property? If you love to grow flowers or vegetables, this is a great way to help your plants become pollinated during the growing season, but there are some things you should know.

1. Why are you raising bees?

It doesn’t matter if your reasons are selfish or altruistic; you need to understand why you want to raise bees. If you want to have pollinators for your garden or produce your own honey, you’ll need specific equipment. It’s important to understand the “why” of your beekeeping ventures in order to successfully reach your goals and keep your bees. There are different approaches, and the answer to this question helps shape that approach to ensure your success.

2. Is keeping bees legal and affordable?

Before you run out and buy the materials to build your own bee hive, you need to know if keeping bees is legal in your area. You also need to know if you’ll face any liability issues by bringing bees into your neighborhood. What happens if a child in the neighborhood is stung by one of your bees? Additionally, you need to understand the costs. To get started, you might spend at least $800, and there’s continual maintenance costs that you need to be ready for before you invite bees into your yard.

3. Where should your bee hive be located?

There are classes you can take to help you understand the best place for your hive and how to place it there. Bees have requirements, like any other animal, to help them stay healthy and thrive. There are also legal reasons that might impact the hive’s location on your property. You might have a location picked out but need to change spots because of what you learn in the class. Take the class; it will help.

4. Do bees take a lot of time?

You might be gung-ho to have several hives on your property, but it can take a lot of your time to manage several bee hives. These little creatures require some attention every week, and you could spend as much as one hour of your time in each hive. Additionally, it can take time to get ready to check on the bees, which adds to the overall time spent. Be prepared to spend this much time with your bees.

5. Do you have the support of your family and neighborhood?

Keeping bees means the entire neighborhood now has bees. Unless you have the support of your family and your neighborhood, you shouldn’t place a hive on your property. It’s extremely important to ensure there aren’t any neighbors that are allergic to bees or have a problem with them. Most people don’t want to be around bees because they can sting, and that hurts. If you live in a neighborhood, you might need to consider a completely different activity than becoming a beekeeper.

6. What equipment is right for your hive?

Another benefit of taking beekeeping classes is to learn about the equipment used to keep bees. This is an important step before setting up your bee hive. You might not want a large bee box because it can be very heavy when full of honey and bees. If you’re only raising bees to pollinate your yard, a smaller box could be ideal for you. Understanding the equipment is one of the most important aspects of keeping these honey-producing insects.

7. What will you do with the honey?

At first, you might truly enjoy the honey, the honeycomb, and the wax that can be used for candles. After a while, you’ll want to give it away, sell it, or find another way to get rid of it. Even a small hive can produce quite a bit of honey, and that means you’ve got to extract it from the hive. This is a big chore, but it can be worth it when you find a way to utilize this honey.

After reading this, do you still want to build a bee hive and raise bees for your yard? If so, enjoy the honey and the wonderful insects, the little pollinators you’ve got working for you.