A friend of mine moved to Texas and became a beekeeper. Doing what they can!
I used to have several hives in Texas until moving out East. The heat and droughts were brutal for them. We were constantly trying to split healthy hives to increase success for our queens.
This coming spring I’ll try to add two hives to our backyard as the city allows for up to 3 hives per residence. I’m hoping the more temperate climate and docile queens will help our area.
How much work per month do you find them?
I’d love bees on our property but I don’t have the time to do lots of maintenance.
On that note I wonder if I can pay a keeper to colocate a colony on my property…
@darknavi@vlemmy.net Surprisingly, there is not that much maintenance on beehives. They are incredibly efficient and sufficient on their own. When I add my two hive boxes next spring, I’ll be present enough at home to periodically check hive activity and do minor hive body inspections.
The most active you’ll be in the care of the hives is during winter (your climate may vary). In colder months when flowers don’t bloom, we cook sugar water to have for hive feeders so they are well fed. Outside of that, let nature take its course. It’s very rewarding and fun to provide a means for you and your neighbors to have pollinators and local honey.
There are plenty of “starter kits” or “garden kits” that allow for ease of entry into beekeeping.
Honeybees moved into my backyard recently. I guess they somehow attract a lot of different wildlife in some mysterious way, because we now have cardinals, blue jays, possums, chipmunks, and marble lizards living back there too.
For context, I live in Ridgewood Queens, so this feels absolutely insane. Loving every second of it but god damn
Lemmon Grass attracts bees! Use this information as you will.
Native flowers attract bees and offer pollen + nectar for them :)
Don’t forget that honeybees aren’t the only bees nor the only pollinators. Ask your local university or beekeepers / native plants association about what you can do to help out in your area!
Even worse, honeybees can compete with wild local bees… Best solution is indeed flowers (local plants are usually better choices) and providing a good environment for wild pollinators
It’s understandable that that’s a sensitive issue for you, but the advice honestly is pretty accurate
…what? this is such an absurd non-sequitur. how do you arrive at this from “don’t have kids”. what is with kbin posters and takes like this man
One concrete thing to do is to work with your governing body to promote diverse crop rotations. Ask them to end subsidies for single-crop farms, especially crops that don’t serve as a food source for bees or have been made toxic by pesticides (frequently found on massive corn farming operations).
We really do need to just straight-up ban pesticides, antibiotics, and synthetic fertilizers in agriculture.
If there was a way for legislate that all farms needed to be mixed use, I’d go for immediately.
My impression is the problem is primarily pesticide use is too ubiquitous. Help normalize pesticide free environments and you help bees.
In the case of bees, Neonicotinoids are a particular problem.
Edit: Another article
Another data point to fight against the deluge of “but it is not 150% established and shouldn’t we also look at <distraction>” “science” peddled by the pesticide industry:
Cuba has zero problems with its bees. Literally zero. They gave up on pesticides first out of necessity (fall of the USSR), then leaned into it, pesticides are generally outlawed and only see very rare use on state-run rice fields, a tiny fraction of their total agriculture.
The result is a very healthy bee population and flourishing honey exports. All of it passes EU organic certification with flying colours and tropical honey tastes real good so it’s not cheap stuff, either. Expect at least 30 Euro/kg as opposed to domestic rapeseed honey at 10 Euro/kg, or forest honey (generally the most expensive German stuff) at 16. EDIT: Actually the most expensive I could find was heather honey, 21 Euros. Never had it nor seen it in a supermarket.
Starting bee gardens and planting bee-friendly seeds wherever you can (provided they are not invasive to your area!)
But lots of seed companies offer “bee blends”, westcoastseeds offers seeds for this purpose. - Im sure similar wildflower mixes are available in different regions and countries.
I know this doesn’t eliminate pesticide use but every pesticide free patch of flowers helps
