This section is from the book "How To Keep Bees And Sell Honey", by Walter T. Kelley. Also available from Amazon: How To Keep Bees And Sell Honey.
Practically anyone from 12 to 80 years can and are keeping bees successfully. Beekeeping is a profitable and intriguing hobby to many doctors, lawyers, business men, teachers, factory workers, transportation employees, etc.
Beekeeping as a hobby and a business is not confined to men. One of the leading queen breeders in the United States is a lady, although few of her customers realize this. Many women secure part of their income from the sale of honey, from bees that they personally operate and for a few women their honey crop is the one dependable source of cash income that pays the grocery bills and puts the children through school.
This lady with 40 to 50 colonies averages about 100 pounds of surplus honey, in the good years, which she sells at her roadside stand during the summer months. During the balance of the year she is a school teacher and enjoys the outdoor exercise and the funds that she receives front her bees.
Miss Dorothy Ryder and her sister, Mrs. M. J. Sain, of California, took over the bees of their late brother and husband and with the aid of a lifting arm on the truck they operated 400 colonies of bees by themselves and extracted over 40, 000 pounds of honey in 1954.
On the market now is a mechanical device that fits onto standard 1 1/2 ton and larger trucks for lifting bee hives and supers. While this device sells for several hundred dollars it will be of interest here to the handicapped and older people who are not physically able to lift the heavy supers of honey.
This device consists of an upright welded steel frame work that bolts securely to the frame or bed of the truck. On top of this is secured a long boom that will revolve in a full 360 degree circle. On one end of this boom is the power box containing an automobile storage battery, a reversible electric motor and winch arrangement that winds and unwinds the steel lifting cable. The battery is kept charged by the regular truck generator.
The actual lifting part consists of a 'cradle' which is a tubular frame work, fitted with push button controls and two forks with projections which fit into the hand holds of the hives or supers. This cradle is connected to the boom with a steel cable and the cradle can be moved along the entire length of the boom at will. The booms vary in length from 12 to 20 feet so a considerable number of hives can be manipulated at one setting of the truck.
Up goes one hive body and three shallow supers with push button ease which is about half a load for this machine. This stack can be placed back on the hive or loaded onto the truck.
Several hive bodies or supers can be lifted off a hive at a time and swung to one side while the brood nest or lower supers are being examined or supers added and then the load brought back to position and set back on the hive, accurately and with push button ease. With the same ease the entire colony or several supers or hive bodies can be placed on the truck exactly where the operator wants them.
To make the fullest use of this machine in loading hives and supers onto the truck the stakes of the truck body should be removed and only the flat bed used so that the hives and supers can be loaded on from either side and the load roped on. Then, too, the hives should be located in rows, facing in opposite directions, with enough room between the rows so that there is ample room to run the truck between the two rows plus enough room for the beekeeper to manipulate the hives on either side. This setup will enable the beekeeper to work the maximum number of colonies with one placing of the truck which is a major consideration.
Many factory workers, railroad men, rural mail carriers, school teachers, government employees, professional men and others, who have a short work day or a short work week, operate as many as 200 colonies or more as a side line. The returns may mean a very profitable income every year. Many of these people have the advantage of having a ready market for their honey among their fellow workers and so they are able to secure the retail price for most of their product.
Then too, these people have a work insurance which their bees furnish them. If they should be laid off their regular job they can spend more time with their bees and expand them rapidly if need be and make a good living until the regular job calls them back.
If a man's health should fail or he is retired because of an age limit, beekeeping is an occupation that fits in well into such semi-retirement. Bees do not require daily or regular attention as it is just on the bright warm days that they should be manipulated. Working for himself the beekeeper need not rush or work steadily if his health does not permit. Beekeeping can also be made into a family job with the wife and family helping out.
A high fence or hedge will raise the flight of the bees over the heads of passers-by and prevent trouble.
Beekeeping is a business that can be expanded or contracted rapidly if the need arises. Many beekeepers keep a few bees for years in their back yard and when conditions change they expand into commercial operators with ample knowledge of how to proceed. If there is need for contraction the bees can be killed, the honey extracted, the combs melted into wax and the wooden equipment stored for years if one does not wish to sell the colonies of bees.
Sometimes conditions change so that a beekeeper has to move his home and in this case it is the usual practice to move the bees to the new home even though it may be several hundred miles away. Bees can be safely moved, even during the summer, hundreds of miles if given space and air as directed in another section of this book.
 
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