Beekeeping is the care and control of honeybee colonies. They are kept for their honey and other products, or as a hobby or for their pollination services for fruit and vegetable blossoms. Honeybee keeping is a common practice that is carried out from the Arctic and Antarctic to the Equator, in large cities and villages, on farms and rangelands, in forests and deserts. The honeybee is an untamed species. The inhabitants of a colony in a tree are not different from those residing in an artificial home known as a beehive or hive.
Back in antiquity, people were aware that bees swarmed to multiply, produced delicious honey, and stung. By the 17th century, they had discovered how effective smoke was at keeping them under control and had created the screen veil to ward off stings. The major discoveries that form the basis of contemporary beekeeping were made between the 17th and the 19th centuries. Among these were the enigma surrounding the queen bee, who is the progenitor of almost every member of the colony, her peculiar method of reproduction, parthenogenetic development, movable frame hives, and the fact that bees will produce a new queen in the event that the old one vanishes.
With this information, individuals could split a colony rather than depending on spontaneous swarming. Subsequently, the invention of the wax-comb foundation—a starter comb that bees use to construct straight, manageable combs—as well as the realization that honey could be extracted, and the combs could be recycled—paved the way for industrial beekeeping and large-scale honey production. The efficiency of bee colonies in producing honey has increased due to the identification of diseases and the use of medication to treat them, the importance of pollen and pollen substitutes in building robust colonies, and the artificial insemination of queens.
Honeybees and their colonies
One of the Apis species and a member of the order Hymenoptera are honeybees. (See the article hymenopteran for a thorough discussion on honeybees.) Social insects, honeybees are well-known for the copious amounts of honey they bring into their nests. A complex group of individuals that work together almost as a single organism is called a colony of honeybees. A queen bee, a fertilized female capable of depositing a thousand or more eggs daily, a worker bee colony consisting of a few to 60,000 sexually immature females, and a drone colony of a few to a thousand male bees make up the majority of the colony. In the majority of bee species, the female bears a poisonous sting.
Nectar is a sugary solution that bees gather from nectarines in flowers and occasionally from nectarines on plant stems or leaves. When nectar is transformed into honey by bees, it loses about 16–18% of its water content, whereas nectar may contain 50–80% water. They occasionally gather honeydew, an exudate from specific insects that feed on plants, and store it as honey. Honey is the main source of carbohydrates for bees. Additionally, they gather pollen, the male component that resembles dust, from flower anthers. The vital proteins required for raising young bees are found in pollen. The bees pollinate the flowers they visit while gathering nectar and pollen to supply the nest.
Propolis is a resinous substance that bees gather from tree buds to seal hive cracks and cover foreign objects that they are unable to remove. They gather water to cool the hive and dilute the honey for their own consumption. In a single year, a thriving colony in a prime location could gather and transport up to 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms) of nectar, water, and pollen into the hive.
Bees secrete beeswax in tiny flakes on the underside of their abdomen, which they shape into honeycomb, which consists of thin-walled, back-to-back, six-sided cells. The cell's function varies according to the needs of the colony. Some cells may store honey or pollen, while others are used by the queen to lay eggs, usually one per cell. The broodiest is the place where bees hatch from their eggs. Pollen is typically found in cells surrounding the broodiest beneath the honey, and honey is typically stored near the top of the combs.
Regardless of the outside temperature, the bees keep the broodiest at a constant temperature of about 93 °F (34 °C). If water is available to air-condition the cluster, the colony can withstand daily maximum temperatures of 120 °F (49 °C). When the temperature drops below about 57 °F (14 °C), the bees stop flying, form a tight cluster to conserve heat, and wait for warmer weather to return. They can survive in temperatures as low as 50 °F (46 °C) for several weeks.
Summer flowering stimulates the queen's egg-laying, the cluster expands, and honey accumulates in the combs. When a large number of young bees emerge, the nest becomes overcrowded.
Swarming
When the colony becomes overcrowded with adult bees and there aren't enough cells for the queen to lay a large number of eggs, the worker bees choose a dozen or so tiny larvae that would otherwise develop into worker bees. These larvae are lavishly fed royal jelly, a whitish food with the consistency of mayonnaise produced by certain brood-food glands in the worker bees' heads. To allow the queen to develop, the cell in which the larva is developing is drawn out downward and enlarged. The mother queen leaves the beehive with the swarm shortly before these virgin queens emerge as adults from their queen cells.
Swarming usually happens in the middle of the day, when the queen and a portion of the worker bees (usually between 5,000 and 25,000) suddenly swirl out of the hive and into the air. After a few minutes of flight, the queen lands, preferably on a tree branch, but occasionally on a roof, a parked car, or even a fire hydrant. While a few scouts reconnoitre a new homesite, all the bees form a tight cluster around her.
When the scout bees have found a new home, the cluster splits. The swarm takes to the air and travels to its new home in a swirling mass. Swarming is the bees' natural method of reproduction or growth.
Normally, her sperm pouch, or spermatheca, contains enough sperm to fertilize all of the eggs she will lay for the rest of her life. The drones are killed while mating.
Although the queen can live for up to five years, many beekeepers replace the queen every year or two. If she is accidentally killed or begins to falter in her egg-laying efficiency, the worker bees will raise a "supersedure" queen who will mate and lay eggs without causing a swarm to emerge. She dismisses the mother queen, who soon vanishes from the colony.
Bee workers
Worker bees have a six-week active season, but they can live for several months if they emerge as adults in the fall and spend the winter in the cluster. Worker bees, as the name implies, do all of the hive's work except egg laying.
Drones
Drones are only reared when the colony is large and there are plenty of nectar and pollen sources. They usually live for a few weeks, but when fall or an extended period of adversity strikes the colony, they are driven from the hive and die. The drone's only responsibility is to mate with the queen.
In drone cells, the queen can lay drone (unfertilized) eggs. If she is not permitted to mate or if her sperm supply is depleted, she will lay unfertilized eggs in worker cells. Parthenogenesis is the process by which unfertilized eggs develop into adult drones. A colony may occasionally become queenless and unable to develop a new queen. The worker bees then begin to lay eggs, often several to a cell, which develop into drones. It is difficult to requeen a colony that has developed laying workers with a laying queen.
Manipulation of colonies
The annual work cycles.
The beekeeper's year begins in early autumn. He requeens colonies whose queens are not producing enough brood and ensures that each colony has enough stores: at least 50 pounds (22 kilograms) of honey and several frames filled with pollen. Some beekeepers also feed the drug fumagillin to reduce the risk of Nosema disease in adult bees (see Disease and pest control). The colonies require sunlight and protection from cold winds. In the winter, some beekeepers in northern and mountainous areas wrap their colonies in insulating material.
A few beekeepers kill their bees in the fall, harvest the honey, store the empty equipment, and then restock the following spring with a two- or three-pound (0.8- or 1.4-kilogram) package of bees and a young queen.
If the colonies are properly prepared in the fall, they will require little attention over the winter. However, in early spring, the beekeeper must inspect the colonies. Strong colonies frequently deplete their food supply and starve only a few days before flowers begin to bloom in abundance. A few pounds of sugar syrup, 50-50 sugar water, or a honey-filled comb from a more prosperous colony might be enough to save such a starving colony. Again, fumagillin may be fed to the colony, and some beekeepers also feed a pollen substitute or pollen supplement cake to the colony. Honey is not fed to colonies unless the beekeeper is certain of its origin. Honey from brood disease-affected colonies American foulbrood could infect his colonies and cause significant damage.
As the spring season progresses, the cluster size grows from 10,000 to 20,000 bees that survived the winter. The keeper adds more supers, or boxes of combs, to accommodate the increased size of the cluster and broodiest. The colony is unlikely to swarm if the combs are manipulated in such a way that the queen can constantly expand her egg-laying area upward. This can be accomplished by arranging empty combs or combs with brood about to emerge at the top of the cluster and combs with eggs or young brood toward the bottom of the broodiest. The beekeeper desires that the colony reach its peak population of 50,000 to 60,000 bees at the start of the major nectar flow.
After leaving the hive with a full stomach of honey, swarm bees rarely sting. The most common method is to place a hive or an upturned box beneath or nearby, then shake or smoke the bees to force the queen and the majority of the bees into it. The others quickly follow. After the swarm has been safely contained within the box, it can be relocated to a permanent location.
Beekeeping regulations typically require bees to be kept in hives with movable combs. If bees are captured in a box, they are usually transferred to a movable-frame hive within a few days so that the new honey and comb are not lost during the transfer.
The process of requeening a colony
When a beekeeper requeens a colony, he removes the failing or otherwise undesirable queen and replaces her with a new one in a brood nest screen cage. After a few days, the colony adjusts to her presence, and she can be released from the cage. A strange queen placed in the cluster without this temporary protection is usually killed by the workers right away. Individual cages of about three cubic inches (50 cubic centimeters) are usually shipped with about a half-dozen attendant bees and a ball of specially prepared sugar candy plugging one end of the cage. When the cage is placed in the hive, both sides of the bees consume the candy.
The odors of the bees have become indistinguishable by the time the candy is consumed and the bees reach each other, and the queen emerges from the cage into the colony and begins her egg-laying duties.
Equipment for beekeeping
The smoker to calm the bees; a veil to protect the face; gloves for the inexperienced or those sensitive to stings; a blunt steel blade called a hive tool for separating the frames and other hive parts for examination; the uncapping knife for opening the honey cells; and the extractor for centrifuging the honey from the cells are standard beekeeper tools.
Bee Stings
The worker bee sting is barbed, and it is torn from the bee while stinging. It has a venom-filled poison sac and muscles attached that continue to work the sting deeper into the flesh and increase the amount of venom injected for several minutes. To avoid this, the sting should be scraped loose at once (rather than grasped and pulled out). Bee stings are excruciatingly painful, and no one becomes immune to them. However, after a few stings, immunity to the swelling is usually built up.
A bee sting usually causes immediate, intense pain at the site of the sting. This lasts for a minute or two and is followed by an inch or more of reddening. Swelling may not be visible until the next day. A sting can cause acute allergic reactions in some people, usually those who already have allergies. Such a reaction manifests itself in less than an hour and may include extreme difficulty breathing, heart irregularity, shock, splotched skin, and difficulty speaking. Such people should seek medical attention as soon as possible.
Products made from bees
Production of honey
Honey is sold in a variety of forms, including liquid honey, comb honey, and creamed honey. The predominant floral type from which the honey was collected is sometimes indicated.
Liquid honey
Additional supers are added directly above the brood nest if liquid (strained, extracted) honey is desired. When one is nearly full, it is raised, and another is placed beneath it. This could go on until several containers are full, each holding 30 to 50 pounds (14 to 23 kilograms), or until the nectar flow stops. The combs are removed, the cells uncapped with the uncapping knife, and the honey extracted after the bees have evaporated the water until the honey is of the desired consistency and sealed in the cells.
The extracted honey is immediately heated to approximately 140 °F (60 °C), which thins it and kills yeasts that could cause fermentation. It is then strained of wax particles and pollen grains before being rapidly cooled and packaged for sale.
Honey, comb
Extreme caution is required in the production of honey in the comb, or comb honey, to prevent bees from swarming. The colony must be large, and the bees must be packed into the smallest space possible without swarming. New frames or sections of a frame with extra-thin foundation wax are placed directly above the brood nest, at precisely the right time for the bees to fill them without destroying them. If the bees do not fill and seal the new comb within a few days, it will be of poor quality. New sections are added as quickly as sections are removed, until the nectar flow stops. These are then removed, and the colony is given combs to store its honey.
Honey that has been creamed
Almost all honey granulates or converts to sugar. By placing the container in water heated to about 150 °F (66 °C), such honey can be liquefied without significantly affecting its quality. Liquid and granulated honey are sometimes blended, homogenized, and kept cool to promote uniformly fine granulation. The granules will be extremely fine if properly processed; the honey will have a smooth, creamy appearance and is known as creamed honey.
Floral varieties
Some honeys are sold by floral type; that is, they are labeled with the names of the primary flowers visited by the bees while collecting the honey. The beekeeper has no way of directing the bees to a specific food source, but through experience, he or she learns which plants are the major sources of honey. Different flowers produce honey with varying colors and flavors. It can be heavy or light in body, dark or light in flavor, mild or strong in flavor. The beekeeper has blended the majority of the honey to a standard grade that can be supplied and marketed year after year.
Beeswax
In most cases, beeswax is a byproduct of beekeeping. When beekeepers uncap, break, or have unusable honeycombs, they attempt to salvage the beeswax. First, they drain or extract as much honey as possible from the combs. The material is then placed in water that has been heated to slightly more than 145 °F (63 °C). This melts the wax, causing it to rise to the surface. The wax cake is removed and refined after it cools and hardens for reuse in comb foundation. Other applications for beeswax include high-quality candles, cosmetics, agriculture, art, and industry. In some areas, bees are primarily manipulated for wax production. Wax is a highly stable commodity that can be transported over long distances in adverse conditions without being damaged.
Bees raised for commercial purposes
Queens are raised for sale to other beekeepers for requeening established colonies or for inclusion in a 2- or 3-pound (0.9- or 1.4-kg) package of 8,000 to 10,000 live bees to form new colonies or replenish weak ones. The queens are produced when the beekeeper cages the reigning queen in a colony and inserts 30 to 60 queen cell bases into which young (one-day-old) worker larvae have been transferred into the cluster. Queens can be artificially inseminated with sperm from known drones, but most beekeepers prefer to let the queen's mate naturally. The live bees are shaken from the colony's combs into screen-wire cages via a funnel.
Pollination
The most important function of bees is as pollinators. In the United States alone, 90 crops rely on insect pollination, which is primarily performed by the honeybee. The average bee colony is worth 20 to 40 times as much in crop pollination as it is in honey production. The value of bees in ornamental plant pollination has never been calculated. Bees are also useful in pollinating some forest and range plants, which produce seeds that birds and other wildlife feed on.
When bees are used to pollinate crops, the beekeeper places the colonies within or near the pollination field. The vast majority of the approximately 1,000,000 colonies used for pollination are found in alfalfa-seed fields, as well as almond and apple orchards. The colonies are spread at a rate of two or more colonies per acre in groups every 0.1 mile (0.16 kilometer) across alfalfa fields. Almond orchards should have two colonies per acre, while apple orchards should have one colony per acre.
Some growers prefer to place the colonies alongside the orchard, while others prefer to distribute them in small groups within the orchard. Many other crops rely on bees, including blueberries, cantaloupes, cherries, clovers, cucumbers, cranberries, cutflower seed, plums and prunes, vetch, and watermelon.
Pest and disease control
Honeybees have diseases and enemies, including brood diseases, diseases that only affect adult bees, insect enemies of the adults and the comb, and other enemies such as toads, lizards, birds, mice, skunks, and bears.
Diseases
The most serious brood disease is American foulbrood, which is caused by a spore-forming bacterium called Bacillus larvae. It can be found anywhere bees are kept and affects workers, drones, and queens. Heat and chemicals have no effect on the spores. A comb containing diseased brood has a mottled appearance due to a mixture of healthy capped brood interspersed with diseased or empty cells formerly occupied by diseased brood. When dug into, the decayed mass has a typical ropiness, which is one of its distinguishing features.
By transferring equipment or allowing bees to feed on honey from infected colonies, American foulbrood can be spread to healthy colonies. To control the disease, sulfathiazole and terramycin are commonly used. Many countries, including the majority of states in the United States, require the destruction of diseased colonies by fire and have apiary inspectors to enforce the regulations.
Streptococcus pluton, a nonperforming bacterium, causes European foulbrood, but Bacillus alvie and Achromobactin Eurydice are frequently associated with Streptococcus pluton. This disease resembles American foulbrood in appearance. In some cases, it has a negative impact on the colonies, but they recover quickly enough that colony destruction is unnecessary. Terramycin has the ability to control the disease.
Sacbrood is caused by a virus and appears to be similar to foulbrood diseases. It can appear and disappear on its own, but it is rarely serious. There is no need for chemical control. If the problem persists, the colony is usually requeened by the beekeeper.
The fungus Ascosphaera apis causes chalk brood. This disease's larvae have a chalky white appearance. Stonebrood, which affects both brood and adults, is also caused by a fungus, Aspergillus flavus, which is usually isolated from stonebrood bees.
The most serious disease of adult bees is Nosema disease, which is caused by the microsporidian Nosema apis. It is widespread, causes significant honey production losses, and severely weakens colonies. The external symptoms of nosema disease in bees are not visible. Ingestion of the spores, which quickly germinate in the ventriculus, or main, stomach, transmits the disease from adult to adult. A swollen, soft, grayish white ventriculus is typical of an infected ventriculus. The drug fumagillin can be fed to the colony to gain some control.
Acarine disease is caused by the mite Acarapis woodi, which enters the bee's tracheae via its breathing holes or spiracles in the thorax or midsection. This mite causes bees to be unable to fly, with disjointed wings and distended abdomens. There is currently no effective control for this mite. The only federal bee law in the United States was enacted to prevent the importation of adult bees carrying this mite into the country. Varroa destructor and Tropilaelaps clareae, both native to Asia, are also serious problems for beekeepers. V. destructor is now common in Europe and North America, where it can wipe out entire honeybee colonies.
Pests
Galleria mellonella, or greater wax moth, is a lepidopterous insect that destroys combs as a larva. It does not attack adult bees, but it may start destroying the combs of a weak colony long before the bees leave. It can also destroy honeycombs that have been stored. When the larvae are ready to pupate, they frequently eat out a space in the soft wood of the beehive to spin their cocoons, causing damage to frames and other hive parts. The best way to control this pest is to keep colonies healthy. Combs are fumigated, kept in a cold room, or stacked in such a way that a strong air draft flows around them when they are stored.
The larvae of the lesser wax moth, Achroia grisella, cause similar damage to the greater wax moth to stored combs. Anagasta kuehniella, a Mediterranean flour moth larva, feeds on pollen in the combs and causes some damage. Both of these moths are controlled in the same way as the greater wax moth.
Braula caeca, or bee louse, is a tiny, wingless member of the fly family that is occasionally found on bees. It feeds on nectar or honey from its host's mouthparts. Its larvae burrow in honeycomb cappings.
Ants can infiltrate hives and disrupt or kill bees. Termites can damage or destroy hive parts that have been placed in the soil. Other insects that are natural enemies of the honeybee include dragonflies (Odonata), robberflies (Diptera), praying mantises (Orthoptera), ambush bugs (Hemiptera), and certain wasps and yellow jackets (Hymenoptera).
Predators
Mice frequently enter the hive during the winter when the bees congregate, or they get into stored combs and despoil or damage them by chewing the frames and combs to construct their nest. Skunks, usually at night, consume large numbers of bees at the hive entrance. They are protected by fences, traps, and poison. Bears consume honeybees and brood in the hive, usually destroying it and its contents. Electric fences and traps are used to protect bee colonies in bear country.
Bees can be their own worst enemy at times. When exposed to honey when there are no flowers in bloom and the weather is mild, bees from different colonies will fight over it. This fighting, or robbing, can become intense at times and spread from hive to hive in a mob-like fashion. If a colony's bees are all killed, the honey is quickly stolen and carried to other hives. This increases the robbery to the point where a cluster that was carrying honey into its hive a few minutes earlier is attacked, all of its occupants are killed, the honey is stolen again, and the process is repeated. When robbing becomes intense, only darkness or bad weather can put an end to it.
Colony collapse disorder
Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is one of the most mysterious disorders to strike honeybee colonies in the modern era. It is distinguished by sudden colony death and a lack of healthy adult bees within the hive. While the underlying cause is unknown, it appears that the disorder impairs the ability of adult bees to navigate. They leave the hive in search of pollen, never to return. Honey and pollen are frequently present in the hive, as is evidence of recent brood rearing. The queen and a small number of survivor bees may remain in the brood nest in some cases.
CCD is also distinguished by the delayed robbing of honey in the dead colonies by other, healthy bee colonies in the vicinity, as well as a slower than usual invasion by common pests such as wax moths and small hive beetles. Only the European honeybee (Apis mellifera) appears to be affected by the disorder.
CCD was first reported in autumn 2006 by a commercial beekeeper in Pennsylvania, who had 80 to 90 percent colony losses. Other beekeepers in 35 states throughout the United States continued to report colony losses during the spring and summer of 2007, with many beekeepers losing anywhere from 30 to 90 percent of their hives. Other countries, including Canada, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Greece, Germany, Poland, France, and Switzerland, reported significant honeybee losses. The syndrome continued to affect honeybee colonies in the years that followed, though the percentage of colonies lost each year appeared to be decreasing. Nonetheless, the potential economic impact on agriculture is significant; annually, an estimated $15 billion of crops in the United States are pollinated by bees.
Comments