Beekeeping For Beginners

Beekeeping For Beginners

About Honey Bees

Do you know honey bees are insects? Hence, like other insects their body parts are divided into three regions: head, thorax and abdomen .


Head


The head of worker bee is triangular, queen bee is triangular but a little roundish and that of drone is almost round (Fig.2.4). The head contains the antennae, eyes and mouth parts.


Antenna: The head contains a pair of antennae which serve as nose of the bee. The antennae’s functions are to feel or touch, detect smell and to help balance the body during walking and fighting.


Eyes: The visual apparatus of the bee consists of a pair of compound eyes and three small simple eyes called the ocelli. The compound eyes can detect the shape and colour of objects, but not light intensity, and are used for distant sight. The simple eyes detect light intensity and are used for near sight.The compound eyes of drone bee are large, black, kidney shaped and unite with each other at the vertex, whereas in workers and queen bees, compound eyes are comparatively much smaller and do not meet at the vertex.


Mouth parts: The mouth parts of honeybees (Fig.2.5) are classified as the chewing and lapping type, meaning that they can manipulate solid material as well as lap up liquids.


The mouth is composed of the proboscis, mandibles, labrum, and labium. The proboscis is a flexible tube used to suck up liquids (nectar, water, honey) into the mouth. The sickleshaped mandibles are like paired ‘teeth’ one on each side of the mouth. They are used to collect pollen and propolis, to soften and manipulate wax by chewing, to clean other bees, and to bite workers from other colonies or pests. The labium assists in chewing. The labrum is equivalent to the upper lip and supports the sucking process.


Thorax


The thorax is the centre for locomotion and is composed of three segments namely prothorax, mesothorax and metathorax. Each segment bears one pair of legs. Both mesothorax and metathorax bears one pair of wings.


Legs: The three pairs of legs are structurally and functionally modified to perform various functions. Each leg of honey bee comprises of usual six segments, viz. coxa, trochanter, femur, tibia, tarsus and pretarusus. Prothoracic or fore legs are used for antenna cleaning. Mesothoracic or middle legs (Fig. 2.7) are used mainly for removing wax scales and constructing comb. In worker bees, Metathoracic or hind legs are largest in size and concave outer surface of hind tibia is fringed with long curved hairs to form pollen basket or corbicula. They are used for collecting pollen grains.


Wings: Two pair of wings is present on mesothoracic and metathoracic segments. During flight, two wings of each side get coupled with each other by means of hooks (hamuli) (Fig. 2.9). Forewings are larger than the hind wings. The wings of honey bee are generally transparent, except in case of the Giant/ rock bee (Apis dorsata) which has smoky wings.


Abdomen


The abdomen of adult worker and queen appears to be six segmented. Segment 8-10 are reduced in size whereas first abdominal segment is united with the metathorax. The abdomen bears sting, wax, scent glands and genitalia. The underside of 4th to 7th abdominal segments have one pair of wax glands each which secrete beeswax for comb construction. The bee sting is modified ovipositor and serves as an instrument of defence for worker bees and for killing rival queen bees by a queen bee.


STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT IN HONEY BEES


The way human beings undergo different life stages comprising of infant, child, adolescent & adult, each bee caste goes through four developmental stages viz. egg, larva, pupa and adult. But the time needed to complete each stage differs.


Let us learn The Life Cycle Stages of honey bees:


(i) Egg


- Queen lays pearly white, slightly curved eggs in the cells singly and vertically with the thin end attached to the bottom of the cell.

- Queen bee lays both fertilized (giving rise to females i.e. worker or queen bee) and unfertilized eggs (giving rise to males i.e. drone bees).

- The egg stage lasts for 3 days. At the start, the egg stands vertically on the base of the cell, then slants, and finally lies flat on the base before hatching.


(ii) Larva


- Small, shiny white larvae hatch from the egg after 3 days.

- Initially the larvae are loop shaped lying on the bottom of the cell but towards cell capping, they get stretched on their back in the cell with head facing distal end of the cell.

- Larvae of all the castes moult four times.

- The average larval period is 5 days for a queen, 6 for a worker, and 7 for a drone.

- After the cell is sealed (at the end of 8th day) and the cocoon has been spun (at the end of 9th day) the larva passes gradually and without moulting into pre-pupa.


(iii) Pupa


- The pupal stage is the dormant stage. Worker bees seal the cells with a porous beeswax cap and the larva spins a cocoon around itself.

- The developing bee remains inside the cocoon without eating or moving.

- The pupal stage lasts for 7–8 days for a queen, 11–12 days for a worker, and 14 days for a drone.

- Worker cells are a little smaller than drone cells. The comparative sizes are five worker cells per linear 25.4 mm of comb and four drone cells per linear 25.4 mm of comb in case of Italian bee.

- During this stage, the internal organs and body appendages develop. Finally the adult bees emerge.


(iv) Adult


- The adults emerge from the cocoon and bite a hole in the top of the sealed cell to come out. Immediately after emergence, the adult workers are a light colour, and then become darker.

- The total time taken to develop from egg to adult is 15–16 days for a queen, 20–21 days for a worker, and 24 days for a drone.


Sex Differentiation


The queen lays two types of eggs: (i) Fertilized, and (ii) Unfertilized. The queen and workers comes out from the fertilized eggs, while the unfertilized eggs produce drones.


Royal jelly is prepared and fed to the larvae by the nurse bees. The queen larvae are fed only royal jelly. The queen gets the royal jelly throughout her life. Upto 3 days, all young stages of bees get protein rich food known as ‘royal jelly’. Royal jelly is fed to the worker and drone larvae only for the first 3 days and then they are fed “bee bread”. Thus, the worker do not get the royal jelly after three days of development and so develop into sterile (cannot reproduce) female.

Beekeeping As A Business

Business oriented individuals are always looking for various ways to making a living and ways to invest their money. One lucrative business opportunity that a great deal of men and women are getting into is raising bees. This is certainly a thrilling hobby that anyone can get into and does not require any education or experience.


Becoming a bee farmer has a whole lot of advantages, first you are helping in pollinating plants with your bees and your bees will be producing honey that is rich in demand. The world is in need of beekeepers to help in producing honey so there's space for everyone to come in this industry. To get started you just need some basics which are given below.


The required supplies for beekeeping:


When beginning beekeeping there are some supplies you will need. The first supplies are the bees and queens. These can be ordered from your local beekeepers store and come in various kits that are unassembled beginner packages or assembled beginner products. The assembled kits are a full package that include frames, supers, beehive bodies, top hive feeders and some with durable plastic helmets. Other materials you need are the hive tool, stainless-steel smoker, leather groves and the monitoring tray.


The required equipment for beekeeping:


Just like supplies you also need some basic equipment for your new hobby. To safeguard your honey bees from extreme weather you will need to buy an exending outer cover which features a galvanized top that is durable. You should also get a beehive wrap insulation that has holes to cover your hives in cold weather conditions.


To raise your own debris-less pollen you should get a pollen trap which will help you pick clean pollen from your hive. Another vital equipment you should buy is the queen excluders which are used just above the brood chamber to help in separating the queen from the worker bees. When getting started you can buy a plastic queen excluder and then when you want to add more hives you can then purchase the metallic queen excluder.


To help you remove the bees from the super you will desire a triangle break free board, just place it in the middle of the brood holding chamber and supers. A get away board is useful because you will be able to empty your super faster considering that the bees that are leaving can't come backside in. Additionally obtain a bee brush to help you brush off the bees from the framework.


The very last equipment that you must have is the honey extractor which helps in extracting your honey from supers. Honey extractors come in two varieties, one being a hands crank and the other which is ran by a motor. Which ever extractor you buy make sure it doesn't mash the bees and pollen. To help in the honey flow you can get an extractor heat tape that warms up the extractor.


Once you get these you will be on your way to producing your own honey and sell it for extra money. The more hives you have the more honey you will produce, when starting out its good to start out with two hives to get the hang of managing bees.


Different Methods Of Getting Honey Bees Into Your Very Own Hives


Right now there are three ways for you to get the bees which are covered below.


- Purchase Them

Buying honey bees is the best way to get started out if you are just beginning with beekeeping. You can order your bees from your local bee farmers store or you can search for bee farming suppliers online. Some suppliers even offer to deliver the bees to you personally since they are experts in carrying them. You should order your bees when you are fully prepared to control them.


- Catch Them

In order to save some funds in buying the bees some beekeepers opt to capture the bees from the wild. Please keep in mind that if you know nothing about handling bees you shouldn't make an effort to capture the bees yourself because this can be very dangerous and can be deadly.

Bee swarms can be found in different places such as top of trees, walls and buildings. A whole great deal of property owners no longer know how to get rid of bees in their house which is where you will offer the removal services. If you do not know of anyone who has some bees they want to remove you can put an advert on local papers for 'Swarm Retrieval Services'.

To get the bees from the swarm you are able to use a five gallon plastic bucket with a perforated plastic cover. Then simply get a mixer of sugar syrup and squirt the complete swarm. If the swarm is large make sure your mixer is enough to spray all the bees.

Before you squirt the swarm you should put a bucket under the swarm so the bees fall into the container below. After you have sprayed the swarm you should then shake the tree or where the swarm is so the bees fall under the bucket. When done you can then cover the bucket and take it to where you have your hives.