Wednesday, February 29, 2012

My Latest Adventure......

Earlier this winter I had the notion that I wanted to maybe start up my own bee hive. In my mind, the plan was to do my homework over the next year then get my supplies ordered by next Spring. One thing about beekeeping is it can be very pricey to start this hobby. In my research I found it's not uncommon to have 1,000-$1,200 in starting up your hive. (These estimations are based on starting two hives, which is recommended). Just when I thought I had this whole thing planned out.......I got the mail from my mailbox. In this batch of mail, I happened to find out their is a beekeeping school only 30 minutes from me being offered in early March. Well that got me thinking, "Maybe I could just go to the school and get a jump start on that homework I was wanting to do." This Bee School even provided some tools, books, hive start, ect...bonus right? After considering it a bit more, running all this by the Hubby, we decided that is would be great to take the school and be prepared for the next year. That very night, my Craigslist stalking  Husband was cruising one of his favorite sites.......HE SAW IT!!

Hive boxes that were only $5!! They also included the frames (which had never been used yet!!) So I know could score hives for only $20, plus a little elbow grease to clean, repaint, and then the upper frames (supers) need some new foundations on their frames. Well as this to say, my start up fee for beekeeping just dropped DRASTICALLY! A new hive for one batch of bees can run from $150-$300 new, and since they recommend two hives that's $300-$600 you have just in hives (without the bees!) Now I have enough boxes for 4 hives and it only cost me $75......now that get's me excited! Then we also discovered some local we can buy the actual bees from for $70 instead of $100...yet another savings! That allowed us to save $60 just in bees. (I'm starting 2 hives this year.)
All this so say, that even though I was thinking this whole project would begin next year, the Lord had different plans in mind. I'm okay with that, His timing is always better than mine. I can say one thing with great confidence...I WILL NOT BE BORED WHEN SPRING DECIDES TO ARRIVE!
I think these beautiful boots might look a little different when March & April roll around!

I'm linking to HOMESTEAD REVIVAL...be sure to go visit other homestead bloggers.

3 comments:

aje said...

Me: "Oooo, Gaertes are going to be beekeepers, we can buy fresh honey from them!!"
Aaron: "Good, we need more beekeepers. Did you know there is a worldwide bee shortage?"
Me: "I've heard"
Aaron: "They say that if all bees die the human race would follow 4 years later."
Me: "Good thing they are keeping us all alive!"

Jeanette said...

Great boots! Beekeeping is so much fun! Good luck.

Abbi said...

Have fun with beekeeping! We started last year and have really enjoyed it. I figured out ways to make our own beekeeping outfits which helped us save money. I also was able to find used hives. We spent around $500 the first year for bees and equipment for 2 hives but we got over 300 lbs of honey. I have blogged about a lot of what we did so feel free to visit my blog and look around.

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