A garden in your backyard can be an excellent source of fruits, vegetables, and peace. You not only receive produce from the land but also gain a space to relax in and enjoy nature. Now, you can do many things to nurture and maintain a garden, yet you might not have thought about how to enhance your garden’s development further. The answer lies in caring for bees, even with only a beginner beekeeping kit.
Bees: the Secret of Gardens
Whether your garden plants produce fruits, vegetables, or flowers, they need several elements to proliferate. You already know that your plants need sunlight, water, fertilizer, and good soil. What most gardening advice fail to tell you, however, is that bees are also needed to nurture a healthy and bountiful garden. Bees mainly act as pollinators for your plants. With active pollinators, your fruit-bearing plants produce more fruit. Your flowering plants blossom with more flowers. Your garden, in general, flourishes.
Enjoy Bee Products
Aside from garden benefits from bee pollination, you can enjoy bee products as well. You can harvest honey and use it as an ingredient in your cooking or meals. Beeswax, on the other hand, has multiple industrial uses, so you can sell what wax you get. Royal jelly, propolis, and bee pollen are other bee products that you can also use yourself or sell to others.
Learn About Bees
Do you want to keep bees now? Before you order a beginner beekeeping kit, you have to learn as much as you can about bees and caring for them. You specifically need to study proper bee-handling, bee life cycles and habits, and the extraction of bee products. You have to understand what your life will be like once you care for bees and what tasks you need to perform in caring for them.
Register
Once you have learned as much as you can about bees, you can order a starter kit, but you cannot use it yet. You have to register with The Management Agency first, and your apiary (the garden where you will keep your bees) has to be registered under the beekeeper number that you acquire. You will also have to pay a small fee. This fee goes to the National American Foulbrood Pest Management Plan that protects New Zealand bees from diseases, such as American foulbrood.
Prepare
Next, once you have registered, you still have to prepare yourself. Keep a first aid kit in store with antihistamines available and know what allergies you have. Protective clothing is a must, too. You need a bee suit, a veil, and gloves to protect yourself from stings. You also need adequate footwear to cushion your feet from strain when working with the bees and to keep any bee from being trampled underfoot.
Start Now
Finally, you can purchase the tools you need and the bees that you will care for. Luckily, you already acquire these when you buy a starter kit. You get the smoker, hive tool, and beehive. With all that said, you can expect your garden to thrive with more fruits, vegetables, and flowers once you care for bees. Your gardening will become even more enjoyable now!