An alternative way to get honey bees for free. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.
The main thing that hinders people from keeping bees (apart from allergies and bee stings) is the cost of buying bees. But what if you could catch a swarm and get honeybees for free? It’s possible. There are two methods. Chasing a swarm of bees. Or, letting the swarm come to you.
There are multiple things you can do with a swarm. The first option is to keep them as your own bees. Some people also rent their bees out for pollination. Farmers will pay a fee for you to place some of your bees on their land to help their crops.
And, when all else fails you can always keep them around for the honey that they will produce for that season but don’t do anything special in order to keep them. Just give them a home while they want it, basically.
You’ll need to mark the queen and put a queen excluder on the outside of the hive for a few weeks to make sure that she doesn’t leave once you’ve caught the bees. This is a great way to get as many hives started as you can without incurring much expense.
Listen to Cathy Isom’s This Land of Ours program here.