Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Hobby beekeepers usually increase the number of beehives they keep, and some may
expand their activity into selling part of their honey crop at local markets and in shops.
Most will join their local beekeeping associations that, in some countries such as the
UK, are very social institutions holding shows, dinners and drinks parties, lectures
and advice sessions, and some of the most cut-throat competitions where skulduggery
reigns supreme (they would never admit to this, though).
Specializing
Most commercial beekeepers who make their living from bees started out as hobbyists.
Some specialize in honey production, others in pollination services to farmers; others
specialize in rearing queen bees for sale; and yet others specialize in other hive products,
such as beeswax, pollen, propolis or royal jelly. There is even a large and profitable
market in bee venom. Some graduate into apitherapy - a very effective alternative type
of healing that is fast becoming mainstream medicine. Mead, honey or propolis soap,
face creams and so on are all side-lines for the imaginative beekeeper.
Other beekeepers devote their efforts to breeding the 'perfect' bee: a calm, gentle,
disease-resistant, productive creature. Despite the fact that a male bee or drone has no
father (which complicates the issue), breeding success is often claimed to be at hand.
And then there are the professional itinerant beekeepers who make a living by hiring
themselves out to large commercial outfits all over the world. These young men and
women travel the world moving from one hemisphere to the other according to the
seasons, using their beekeeping skills to pick up the many jobs available in commercial
beekeeping.
These people start as basic beekeepers and move on to become team leaders, head
beekeepers and managers. They lead a physically hard life of travel and excitement.
They pick up a huge range of skills, from heavy-truck driving, to landowner dispute
mediation, plant biology and chemistry, to disease problem-solving and everything in
between, and they come from all over the world. They need a huge amount of practical
ability so that they can exist for weeks on end in often very remote areas, and they are
known as the world's last cowboys. In one beekeeping firm in New Zealand I worked
with Peruvians, Canadians, Australians, Philippinos and Brits. Just down the road
