Beekeeper
Beekeeper harvest honey and beeswax from domesticated bee colonies. Domesticated bees are kept within artificial nests also called beehive or apiary which are built for an optimized workflow in regard to honey and wax harvesting.
Career
Qualifications
Beekeepers are primarily self-taught, but some beekeepers provide an apprenticeship for future beekeepers. The base requirement to become a beekeeper is a basic understanding of the life structure of the bees, the identification of non-toxic flowers, and to some extent, the cultivation of flowers.
Career Progression
- Beekeeper apprentice
- Beekeeper
Payment & Reimbursement
Beekeepers are usually self-employed and only get paid for their produced goods. The payment type depends on their region and ranges from money to goods in barter.
Operations
Tools
The basic tools are:
- Wooden apiary with removable honeycomb frames
- Long knife with handles on both ends or a sharp-edged wooden scraper
- Jig to drain the honey into a bucket
- Bucket
- Cooking ware for honey and wax heating
Materials
For the day-to-day operations, beekeepers need a finely woven cloth to filter the drained honey and dirty wax, sealable jars and bottles, and cloth bags to store and sell the harvested goods. Additionally, they need thin rectangular wooden bars to maintain the beehive and a sugar solution made from honey and water to feed the bee colony from late summer until early fall.
Workplace
The workplace setup varies depending on the preferences of the beekeeper but usually consists of two areas - the bee habitat and a workshop. The bee habitat is an area where a certain number of flowers are nearby. The beekeeper will place one or multiple apiaries in such an area on flat ground protected from the weather. The workshop is the place where beekeepers harvest and refine the gathered material.
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