Starting Beekeeping in 1965 or 2015

[MikeT]

Now back into beekeeping after over 50 yrs, I have wondered if it was more difficult to start then than it is now. I believe it is far easier to start in 2015 than it was in 1965. The reasons being:-

• The internet - able to get information immediately from search
engines and this excellent forum.

• Excellent well illustrated books in colour, in 1965 illustrations were in
mainly line drawing or black and white photographs

• Digital photography – able to take photographs and send them
immediately for help in identification of problems and diseases.

• Most people now have a car to get to meetings and out apiaries

• Telephone most people have a telephone, few household had a
phone in the 1960s and mobiles had not been invented.

• Easier equipment supplies, able to order on line .

• Cheaper equipment because of increased competition through the
Internet with foreign suppliers.

In the 1960s we did have better support from MAFF (and there were more Bee Officers), excellent Advisory Leaflets and illustrated booklets on various aspects of beekeeping these only cost a few shillings each. Advice in the mid 60s was difficult for new beekeepers unless you had a mentor near by. I was lucky, thanks to my Rural Science teacher Tug Wilson at Bremilham School, Malmesbury. For those of us who were interested in beekeeping we were taught the basics, hands on while handling the bees at school. I was also lucky in winning a prize from Wiltshire BKA of a start up kit including bees.

If you ran out of equipment in the 1960 it was possible to get supplies from farm suppliers who were plentiful in those days.

 

[Davelin]

Well in the 1960's no varroa, so bees much more able to survive without intervention, or with bad intervention; so not sure I entirely agree that it's easier now.

 

[For want of a better word]

in '65 Grandad had a galvanised iron hand operated centrifuge ( four frame tangental)..... I now do my winding up electronically!!!!!

His spirit is still with me!

Yeghes da

 

[enrico]

It's easier to do it properly now but I muddled along in the 1980’s with no knowledge other than learning from mistakes. I never seemed to lose a hive though. In all my years, to my knowledge, I have only ever lost two, one starved and the other just........disappeared!
I think all this knowledge makes us worry too much about what might be happening! Left to their own devices it always amazes me how they survive. I think we interfere too much!
E

 

[MikeT]

Thanks Enrico. I lost my first colony in the winter of 1962/3 just though the severe cold, as far as I can remember they had plenty of stores. I was given a swarm in the summer of 1963 which was a fantastic stock of Italian bees.

 

[Dishmop]

I'm of the opinion that without the internet lots of younger people probably wouldnt know what a bees is.