Am I a Beekeeper?

WHO IS A BEEKEEPER?

Someone who owns beehives?

Someone who harvests honey from hives?

Someone who can aggressively work hives?

Someone who attends to bees?

The term beekeeper refers to a person who keeps honey bees in beehives such as boxes, logs, calabash, woven, pots etc. Honey bees are not domesticated and the beekeeper does not control the creatures. The beekeeper owns the hives and dictates the locations. The bees are free to forage or leave (abscond) as they desire. Bees usually return to the beekeeper's hive as the hive presents a clean, dark, sheltered home. And if anything such as a leakage in a hive and the bees can’t close it, they may live the hive.

A beekeeper takes good care of his bees by; inspecting them for pests and diseases, making sure the nest does not leak, keeping the bee yard clean, supplying bees with water, securing the forage plants, maintaining the hygiene of hives and harvest honey at the right time and leave enough for the bees.

Of course there are beekeepers that wear heavy protective suits and work bees aggressively; I don’t wish to call them beekeepers: they are bee-killers!

Classifications of beekeepers

1.      Hobby Beekeepers

These beekeepers have an interest in ecology and nature as their main attraction and honey come as a by-product of the hobby. Hobby beekeepers keep a quite few beehives ranging from 1 to 10 hives. Hobby beekeepers don’t attend to their bees so often. Most beekeepers are hobby beekeepers!

2.      Sideline Beekeepers

Are beekeepers who wish to make profits from keeping bees while relying on another source of income while dedicating enough time to beekeeping. Usually operate several hives as many as 200 colonies.

3.      Commercial beekeepers

These beekeepers control hundreds to thousands of colonies of bees. Worldwide, commercial beekeepers number about 5% of the individuals with bees but produce about 60% of the world's honey crop. They employ trained beekeepers to take of the colonies.