I read an article on this recently and I will address it in a simple honest way.
Bee keeping is not simple, its actually hard work, not only that but it requires a lot of skill and a lot of people perhaps go into it for the wrong reasons. They think they are helping the environment. It only requires you to be stung once by a bee to put you off beekeeping for life.
If you are managing more than two colonies it is likely you could be doing a lot of frame building and managing them all summer. If you then speak to the BBKA they encourage you to do courses. These are unnecessary, but how else do you get the practical skills unless you know someone like me. You can learn beekeeping in one summer,but it takes a lifetime to master. Any beekeeper one who says they don’t make mistakes is a liar! It’s easy to make a mistake. ( Especially if you are managing as many hives as me, and do hive inspections quickly like me )
It’s my eighth year and I have around 18 colonies. In May I am overrun with splitting colonies and managing my hives to make sure they don’t swarm. This year I managed my bee’s so carefully I didn’t have a single swarm. When swarming happens it can be a nightmare. Last year I had around 6 swarms, that’s why this year I made an extra effort. If you only have two bee hives, it’s likely they will not swarm. Two beehives are very manageable, but what you need is a knowledgeable mentor. I can assess a beehive in around ten minutes, and I often judge what is going on inside from the outside, such is my level of expertise. Even though you cannot tell if there are supercedure cells from the outside, I can usually tell by the amount of activity outside the hive as to how healthy or weak that colony is. I do not like to disturb my brood boxes regularly to check if my queen is laying, as I know all my queens are only one to two years old and are all good. In July I am busy building frames, 60 to a hundred of the things to stay on top of my colonies. Every year is different though .
Why give up? Well, if you only have two colonies it’s a poor reason to give up, just because your bee’s didn’t make it over the winter. You were probably devastated by the amount of death involved. I see dead bee’s every day. Psychologically it reminds me of the circle of life, but perhaps most people don’t think like that, death is upsetting. Perhaps the beekeeper's that give up just weren’t good enough. Look at professional football, we only have 24 top teams and millions of people play football. Many could never step foot onto a professional football pitch. Perhaps its simply a numbers game. My guess is that really these people give up because they never had a mentor nor good enough support from a fellow bee keeper.
I am down scaling and thinking of giving up, because I did not realise what I was getting into at the start and 18 hives are a lot to manage.
The issue it seems is down to time and dedication of existing bee keepers to transfer their skills.
Hope you found this information useful. Happy Beekeeping!
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