Want to get started with bees? Let me tell you about Responsive Beekeeping?
- Angela Roell
- Apr 11
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 12
When you put bees in boxes you have a responsibility to understand & be responsive to their needs. Let's talk about how to raise bees responsively.
Once we decide to keep bees, taking them from trees to boxes we take on the responsibility of being good stewards. I've written about my own framework in the past, and as I've deepened my knowledge about my beekeeping since.
When folks are starting out in beekeeping there is a desire to do everything right and natural. This often leads to beginners opting for a treatment free or hands off approach without understanding their impact. But "treatment free" as it’s been sold to us has a serious social Darwinism issue. I too fell for this simple disengaged approach. Now I can admit I was ignorant to my own ignorance (otherwise known as the Dunning Kruger effect). While there are low or chemical free beekeepers, getting there means years of learning, manual hive management, integrated pest management, hive culling and careful Varroa monitoring.
In a future blog, I’ll talk more about how the deepening of my beekeeping practice impacts my understanding of how nuanced bee stewardship can be...
In short— the value of genetically diversity for adaptation can not be under stated. Which means genetics that don’t produce value for capital gain are still valuable for ecological balance. Only the strong surviving is NOT actually resilient. It's eugenics.
This post is not for that though.
This one is to share my approach to building a responsive beekeeping practice. There are so many kinds of beekeeping. In my practice, I prioritize listening to both the bees and iterative peer reviewed scientific research. I seek to understanding the impacts of habitat destabilization & climate chaos have on our pollinators, and how we can respond. In my practice I want to move with the wheel of the year and the season while integrating pest management and testing.
Over the next few weeks, prior to our 2025 Package Bee pick up on 5/17, I'll be sharing a bit about how to get started in this kind of beekeeping, and sharing resources to build a beekeeping practice. In this moment of climate chaos discerning, responsive beekeeping is more critical than ever.
Over the next few weeks I'm going to give you some insights from my practice. I'm providing free resources from several years of leading They Keep Bees Beekeeping School & Queen School Course- over 7 years of content curated for you right here.
So welcome!
Let's get started...
How to Build a Beekeeping Practice
A 16 minute video about TKB and what we do in the beekeeping world. | |
A 12 minute deep dive into Ang's beekeeping journey | |
A step-by-step planning guide for getting started with bees. | |
A guide to apiary actions and nectar blooms by month (based in MA). |
What you need before the bees arrive, a list of beekeeping equipment and tools, and how to use them:
What is the best PPE for beekeeping? In this 5 minute video on protective equipment I recommend. | |
A 5 minute video about the tools we use for beekeeping. | |
A smoker is a critical tool for letting the bees know your coming and moving them out of the way while you work. This 5 minute video shows you how to light one well. | |
A comprehensive 5 page list of the equipment you’ll need in your first year of beekeeping. |
Next week I'll give you guidance into different types of hive equipment and then we'll talk about where bees come from and how to choose the right bees for your practice.
Feel free to leave questions below.
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