Video:Best Practices for Urban Beekeeping

Transcript:Best Practices for Urban Beekeeping

Hi. I'm Andrew Coté. From Andrew's Honey.com and and I'm the author of the Urban Beekeeping Bible, here, for About.com. Today I'm going to show you a little bit about Urban Beekeeping.

Difficulties of Urban Beekeeping

I wish this building had an elevator. In this case, we are in the greatest city in the world, New York. To be an Urban Beekeeper one needs to have a place to place the hive. That could be on a roof top. It could be a community garden. It could be a front or a backyard. Basically, a person needs a place to place bees. Where they've got 8 to 10 feet in front. An unobstructed area for their flight path. That gets early morning sun. A place that has shade. The Manhattan honey has a higher rent. The Brooklyn honey has more attitude. One of the issues with urban beekeeping is that it's very hot. Now it's something like 85. If you have an Urban hive you need to provide a good clean water source. You can not allow your bees to go off and find their own. They'll find a drip of a neighbor's air conditioner or some other undesirable spot. So, a very shallow plate or bowl filled with rocks.

Tips for Urban Beekeeping

These are docile, wonderful, beautiful creatures. But, there are 60,000 stinging flying insects here also. And so if they're not manages well, if they're not cared for the bees could become a nuisance. Making sure that your bees have enough room, making sure that your queen is healthy and laying, making sure that your hive is free of disease, really education is the key.

Check your smoker. Make sure your smoker isn't too hot. Give the girls a little.

Especially in Urban Beekeeping where you could have greater gusts of wind a hive should have a nice heavy rock or something else on top. A crank strap.

A beekeeper can not expect honey the first year. I think that having hives in New York City is a very good way for people to connect to nature. Here, we have a beautiful frame. Here's her majesty. The queen. With her regal blue dot. All this are – brood. Which are babies. This is honey.

Equipment for Urban Beekeeping

To be a bee keeper one needs bees, a hive, and some equipment. From the ground up, I build hive stands that are about 28 inches off the ground. That'll keep predators from coming to it. Not such a worry in an urban environment. But, it definitely saves my back some wear and tear.

This is called a Langstroth Hive. Reverend Langstroth came up with the concept of bee space, which is 3/8 of an inch bwteen the frames. Allows us to have moveable frames.

Bottom borad, this is a super or a lower deep. The queen generally lays her eggs here. Another deep. Generally this is filled with honey for the bees. This is called a queen excluder. The idea of a queen excluder is that the queen can not go up past it and lay the eggs. In the honey shallow, or in this case, a medium, is placed on. It will be filled with honey.

Inner cover, outer cover. In the summer I place the outer cover like so to allow for a bit more ventilation. The bee keeper also needs a veil. A hive tool is also very important to have. It lets you manipulate the frames, scrape off propolis and wax. Move things around, defend yourself from errant bees. Smoker, I burn burlap. You smoke the entrance of the beehive, prior to entering the hive. Then you take off the lid and you smoke your way down. You want the bees to think that there's a forrest fire coming. So that they're distracted. If you smoke them so much that they think the fire's here, they're going to evacuate into your face.

So, read books about beekeeping. Take a class. Really inform yourself. Thanks for watching. To learn more, visit us on the web at About.com.