Beekeeping for Long-term Self Sufficiency, by T.D.
Several years ago I was
introduced to a book called Passport to Survival written by
Esther Dickey. This book elaborates on how you can provide for all the essential
nutritional needs for you and your family with just four basic ingredients–
wheat, powdered milk, honey, and salt. As I thought about these four items, I
realized that I had it within my power to provide for one of these four items
without much change in my lifestyle and without an excess of effort. I live in
the city, so growing more than just a few handfuls of wheat in my garden isn’t
practical. Powdered milk was out as well. I do know of a few natural sources of
salt that I could feasibly collect from; however, based on the cost of salt, I
figure it is much easier and more economical, in terms of time and effort, to
just purchase plenty of salt and store it properly for my possible emergency
needs. This left honey, which meant learning to keep bees.
The idea of beekeeping appealed
to me so much that I went out and purchased several books on how to keep bees.
After getting comfortable with the idea of beekeeping and getting support from
my wife, I decided to go all in. Within a month I had purchased the basic
equipment and ordered a starter package of bees. In the first year, with one
hive in an area that would not be considered optimal for keeping bees, I was
able to harvest 73 pounds of honey. My total time investment the first year was
under 30 hours. My total financial investment was $473.
The exciting thing was that I
never had to invest another penny into the venture, as long as I was careful
about caring for my bees and prudent about caring for my equipment. According to
the LDS Food Storage Calculator, a one-year food supply of sugar would include
about 60 pounds of sugar. Without going into a long comparison between honey
versus granulated sugar, any cook will tell you that when baking and cooking,
you need less honey than granulated sugar to provide the same amount of
“sweetness” in any particular recipe. Although 60 pounds of sugar is the
suggested amount, if the majority of your sugar was in the form of honey, it is
possible that you need a bit less than the suggested 60 pounds.
Be this as it may, after my
first year of beekeeping, I quickly calculated that to create a steady source of
sugar for my family would require more than one hive. The additional investment
for each hive, for me, runs about $150. The original investment included the
beekeeping clothing and tools as well as the parts for one hive. The second
year, I only needed to buy the parts for another hive, since I already had all
the other gear. So, I invested in another hive. Then, the second year I
harvested 53 pounds from the first hive and 47 pounds from the second hive. My
investment the second year was $150 and about 25 hours of work.
Being observant, I am quite
certain you saw the minor discrepancy between the two years. The first year I
had one hive and worked 30 hours. The second year I had two and only worked 25
hours. What gives? Well, the first year I had no idea what I was doing and spent
many unnecessary hours fiddling with my hive and checking on my bees; this seems
to be a normal reaction to an exciting new hobby. The second year, with one year
of experience under my belt, I was much more efficient in my beekeeping efforts.
I also realized there are two approaches to beekeeping. One demands that you
spend many hours checking and assisting the little furry things. The other
approach assumes that nature knows what it is doing. Since bees have been doing
well on their own for several millennia, the beekeepers only real chore is to
give them regular health checks and harvest the liquid gold. The second year, I
chose the less invasive and less demanding approach for my beekeeping
efforts.
If you are a math type, let’s
calculate the value of my produce. Assuming that purchasing wildflower honey
costs you about $5 a pound, this means that with a small investment of $623 over
a two-year period I was able to produce 173 pounds or about $865 worth of honey.
This doesn’t even take into account that my honey is far superior to whatever
you may purchase in a store, because it has not been pasteurized and it contains
the local pollen; this pollen imparts some proven anti-allergen health benefits
to those who consume the honey produced in the area where they live. There are
several other benefits from keeping bees.
Aside from the honey harvest,
you also harvest a small amount of beeswax as a natural byproduct of the honey
harvest. If you choose to, you can also set your hives up to harvest pollen and
propolis. These four items are the main harvest gathered from a
beehive.
Benefits of Honey
Let me elaborate for a moment on
the harvest and the benefits of each part of the harvest. First up is honey. As
a sweetener, it doesn’t have much competition. Honey is an all-natural
sweetener, and when stored correctly can keep indefinitely. As a matter of fact,
edible honey has been found in the tombs of the Egyptian Pharaohs.
Over time, all honey will
crystallize. This doesn’t affect the taste or the quality of the honey. Simply
put the honey jar in a hot bath of water, and shortly your honey will be back to
its liquid state. Honey has the advantage over sugar, because it also imparts
several health benefits.
The ancient Sumerians referred
to honey as a beneficial drug and ointment. The great Aristotle wrote that honey
was “good as a salve for sore eyes and wounds”. In the King James Bible, King
Solomon is quoted in Proverbs 24:13, “My son, eat thou honey, because it is
good; and the honeycomb, which is sweet to thy taste”. The ancients knew that
honey was good for us, and modern medicine is coming to the same realization.
Honey contains flavonoids, which
are antioxidants. Antioxidants can help reduce the risk of some cancers as well
as heart disease. Honey is also anti-bacterial. This is because the bees add the
same enzyme to honey that is used to make hydrogen peroxide. Because of these
anti-bacterial properties, honey has been shown to help some ulcers as well as
bacterial gastroenteritis.
Honey works wonders on coughs
and throat irritations. A couple of studies have shown a single dose of honey to
be just as effective as a dose of dextromethorphan in relieving nighttime
coughs. So the next time you are coughing yourself out of a good night of sleep,
take a tablespoon of honey and sleep well.
Honey is also used in healing
wounds and burns. Because it is hygroscopic, meaning it absorbs moisture from
its surroundings, honey actually pulls moisture out of wounds and burns. The
combination of the drying effect of honey with the anti-bacterial nature of
honey makes for a great wound and burn treatment. In some studies, it has been
shown to be just as effective as silver sulfadiazine.
Honey is also a probiotic.
Warning: On the flip side,
natural unpasteurized honey can possibly contain the spores that can cause
infant botulism, so if you decide to keep bees and harvest honey, do not under
any circumstances feed the honey to infants under the age of one.
Beeswax
Wax can also be harvested from
your beehives. The energy expended by the bees to produce a pound of beeswax is
equivalent to about eight pounds of honey. So unless you are keeping bees
specifically to harvest beeswax, it most likely will be a small byproduct for
you. When you are harvesting your honey, you naturally end up with about one to
two pounds of beeswax for each 100 pounds of honey you harvest. This takes the
form of cappings. When the bees have their honey to just the perfect level of
“ripeness”, they seal the honey in the honeycomb with a small wax cap. To
harvest the honey, you slice off these caps and spin the honeycomb. This gets
you the honey and the cappings of wax.
What can you do with the
beeswax? Well, it makes a great base for producing healing salves, lip balms, as
well as candles. With four hives, you will probably walk away with nearly six
pounds of wax every year. That’s plenty for producing hundreds of lip balms,
several dozen hand salves, or even 20 or so poured beeswax candles.
Expansion
After having such wonderful
success keeping bees my first two years, I decided that I wanted to grow my
apiary to a size that would provide enough honey for all my sweetener needs.
So what did I do? You guessed
it; I went out and purchased the hive boxes so I could keep two more hives. This
incurred an additional investment of $300. Every year since then, I have had
between two and four bee colonies producing honey for me. One of the benefits of
having multiple hives is that if one hive dies or disappears, you can easily
split one of your hives into two. This means with a bit of effort and planning,
you don’t even need to purchase starter packages of bees for your new hives
anymore. Often, a hive will swarm, which is nature’s way of reproducing at a
colony level. This is another easy way to replace a lost or dead colony. Catch a
bee swarm and place it in the empty hive boxes.
Each year my hives produce
between 100 and 300 pounds of honey for me and my family. Some is used during
the year for our cooking and baking needs; the excess is stored away against a
future need. With my experience keeping bees, I am confident that if the need
arose, I could quickly build and fill several more hives within a short period
of time, even with no access to any other resources other than what I have in my
home and yard.
The honey and wax produced from
this expanded apiary could easily be used as a barter item in a post crash
economy.
Resources
If you are interested in keeping
bees, let me suggest a few books that will get you up and running in no time at
all.
- Keeping Bees by John Vivian
- Beekeeping for Dummies by Howland Blackiston
- The Beekeeper’s Guide by Trevor Darby
Any one of these books will give
you all the basics you need to fully understand and begin beekeeping. From
there, your learning will grow exponentially from the actual experience.
The benefits of beekeeping in
summary are a ready, reliable, and renewable source of sugar and wax, a
reasonable expense up front that is easily recouped in the first year or two,
and minimal time demands that can be adjusted to your schedule.
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