Bees

Keeping it as natural as possible

1. There is no scientific evidence yet, but surely their own honey has got to be better than feeding them with refined sugar.  Leave the bees with enough honey to last them through the year.  This means leaving your 14×12, brood and a half or double brood box well alone and not be tempted to harvest honey from it (they will need 20Kg of stores to get them through from September to March)
2. The best way to guarantee that bees have enough pollen is to ensure there are adequate and round-the-year pollen-bearing plants close to the hives
3. Ensure that the bees have access to a clean water supply

Other Tips

• Avoid feeding honey as it carries the risk of spreading bee diseases and the odour increases the likelihood of robbing
• Avoid spilling or leaving syrup open to bees in the apiary
• Take care to avoid robbing.

When to feed

• When a colony is short of stores and there is no or little nectar flow. This can occur at any time of year.
• When you have combined 2 hives
• When you have hived a swarm.

Sugar Syrup Recipe

Basic ingredients: White granulated sugar, water

Warning – Do not use brown or raw sugars as they contain impurities.

Thick sugar syrup: 1 Kg of granulated sugar to 630 ml of water.

Thin sugar syrup: 1 Kg of granulated sugar to 1L of water.

There is no need to boil the mixture but heating the water helps. Stir regularly to dissolve all the sugar. When fully dissolved the mixture is clear and a very pale straw color.

If syrup is stored for any length of time then a black fungal growth may appear. This can be prevented by adding a little thymol. Thymol does not dissolve readily in water but a solution can be made up in a small sealable bottle. Fill it to one third with thymol crystals and top the bottle up with surgical spirit. Add 2.5 ml. of this solution to 4.5 l. of sugar syrup or half a teaspoon to a gallon of syrup.

1.Animals: some animals eat honey bees: spiders, birds, lezards, frogs,..other do not eat bees but honey: ants, wasps,…..

2. Wax moths

Bee waxes damaged by a Wax MothWax Moth

Wax moth (Aphomia sociella) do not attack the bees directly, but feed on the wax used by the bees to build their honeycomb. Their full development to adults requires access to used brood comb or brood cell cleanings—these contain protein essential for the larval development, in the form of brood cocoons. The destruction of the comb will spill or contaminate stored honey and may kill bee larvae.

Control and treatment

A strong hive generally needs no treatment to control wax moths; the bees themselves kill and clean out the moth larvae and webs. Wax moth larvae may fully develop in cell cleanings when such cleanings accumulate thickly where they are not accessible to the bees.

.3. Varroa mites

Varroa destructor and Varroa jacobsoni are parasitic mites that feed on the bodily fluids of adult, pupal and larval bees. Varroa mites can be seen with the naked eye as a small red or brown spot on the bee’s thorax. Varroa mites are carriers for a virus that is particularly damaging to the bees. Bees infected with this virus during their development will often have visibly diformed wings.

Adult Varroa mite ( 1^st picture), Adult Varroa mite on a honey bee larva .( 2^nd Picture) and dead bees killed by Varoa mites

A variety of treatments are currently marketed or practiced to attempt to control these mites. The treatments are generally segregated into chemical ( hard and soft) as well as mechanical controls. Bee keepers can be advised by bee keeping professionals on which chemicals to use and when to use them.

4..Diseases

Nosema disease

Nosema apis is a microsporidian that invades the intestinal tracts of adult bees and causes nosema disease, also known as nosemosis. Nosema infection is also associated with black queen cell virus. It is normally only a problem when the bees cannot leave the hive to eliminate waste (for example, during an extended cold spell in winter or when the hives are enclosed in a wintering barn). When the bees are unable to void (cleansing, flights), they can develop dysentery.

Nosema disease is treated by increasing the ventilation through the hive. Some beekeepers treat hives with antibiotics such as fumagillin.

Nosema can also be prevented or minimized by removing much of the honey from the beehive, then feeding the bees on sugar water in the late fall. Sugar water made from refined sugar has lower ash content than flower nectar, reducing the risk of dysentery.

Reproduction

The life cycle of all insects, including honey bees, begins with eggs. During the winter season, a queen forms a new colony by laying eggs within each cell inside a honeycomb. Fertilized eggs will hatch into female worker bees, while unfertilized eggs will become drones or honey bee males. In order for one colony to survive, the queen must lay fertilized eggs to create worker bees, which forage for food and take care of the colony.

Each colony contains only one queen, which mates at an early age and collects more than 5 million sperm. A honey bee queen has one mating flight and stores enough sperm during the mating flight to lay eggs throughout her life. When a queen can no longer lay eggs, new queens become responsible for mating and laying honey bee eggs.

Honey bee eggs measure 1 to 1.5 mm long, about half the size of a single grain of rice. When the queen lays her eggs, she moves through the comb, closely examining each cell before laying her eggs. The process of laying one egg takes only a few seconds, and a queen is capable of laying up to 2,000 honey bee eggs within a single day.

Bee Keeping Equipment

• Hive boxes: bees housing as described above
• Honey extractor: in modern bee keeping with modern bee hives, honey is extracted with mechanical or electrical extractors.
• Smoker:

The smoke produced by dry grass or dried cow dung calms your bees down by blowing a cool smoke into the hive.

• Queen excluder

The device is simply a sheet of metal or plastic with openings sized to allow worker bees to pass through but block the larger

drones and queen bees. The queen excluder is an important part of the modern honey bee hive used to separate the brood nest area from the stored honey.

• Bee brush:

Bee brush easily brushes bees off frames whenever the bee keeper wishes to.

• Brood wax

 

• Hive tool: an all around beekeeping tool. Great for prying hive apart and lifting up frames.

• Queen cage

A Queen cage is a small, plastic box cage in which a queen is temporally confined for shipping and introduction into a colony. Worker bees can enter and come out so as to feed the queen.

• Honey extractor

It is stainless steel machine which extracts honey from the frames without damaging the bee wax.

• Bee keeping suit and veil

Bee keeping suit and veil protect the body and face against bees. Fits comfortably on your head and elastic straps will prevent bees from entering veil.

• Entrance reducer: it cuts down entrance when feeding and over wintering.

• Uncapping fork

• Double sieves are used to sieve honey.

HONEY BEES PRODUCTS

When people think about “what bees make” most would say honey, but it does not stop there. In fact bees produce and collect many different elements that are the fruits of their labour. We have briefly identified 6 products and bi-products of bees here.

 1. Honey
Honey is the complex substance made when the nectar and sweet deposits from plants and trees are gathered, modified, and stored in the honeycomb by honey bees as a food source for the colony.
Benefits of honey:

• Honey is used to make various types of drinks: sorghum wine, banana wine,  hydromel,…
• Honey is used to make candies ;
• Honey is used to treat various diseases;
• Honey is an income generating activity, and this is why we encourage modern bee keeping;
• Honey is eaten, especially on a bread.

2. Pollen

Bee pollen is a ball or pellet of field-gathered flower pollen packed by worker honey bees, and used as the primary food source for the hive. It consists of simple sugars, protein, minerals and vitamins, fatty acids, and a small percentage of other components. Also called bee bread, or ambrosia, it is stored in brood cells, mixed with saliva, and sealed with a drop of honey. Bee pollen is harvested as food for humans, with various health claims.

3. Propolis

Propolis or bee glue is created from resins, balsams, and tree saps. Those species of honey bees that nest in tree cavities use propolis to seal cracks in the hive. Dwarf honey bees use propolis to defend against ants by coating the branch from which their nest is suspended to create a sticky moat. Propolis is consumed by humans as a health supplement in various ways and also used in some cosmetics.

Apitoxin or bee venom

Apitoxin, or honey bee venom, is the poison that makes bee stings painful and produces local inflammation. It may have heal rheumatism.

5. Royal Jelly

Royal jelly is a honey bee secretion that is used in the nutrition of larvae, as well as adult queens. It is secreted from the glands in the hypopharynx of worker bees, and fed to all larvae ans queen  in the colony.

Photo: Royal Jelly around the Queen egg

When worker bees decide to make a new queen, because the old one is either weakening or dead, they choose several small larvae and feed them with copious amounts of royal jelly in specially constructed queen cells. This type of feeding triggers the development of queen morphology, including the fully developed ovaries needed to lay eggs.

Royal jelly is secreted from the glands in the heads of worker bees, and is fed to all bee larvae, whether they are destined to become drones (males), workers (sterile females), or queens (fertile females). After three days, the drone and worker larvae are no longer fed with royal jelly, but queen larvae continue to be fed this special substance throughout their development.

6. Bee wax

Beeswax is a natural wax produced by honey bees of the genus Apis starting from 13 to 18 days after birth. When the bee wax is heated, it gives a product which is used in drug manufacturing, shoe polishes, candles and brood wax.

Bee Record Keeping

While record keeping, a bee keeper do what is relevant for him/her, but has to consider including the following:

1. A descriptive of apiary location:

• When was your apiary established?
• What is the orientation of your hives?
• Are they in the sun/shade?
• What type of environment are they in? (consider ~2miles around)
• Some people will even go to the point of printing local weather forecasts (yes, I know at least one; no, it’s not me).
• A summary of the “demographics” of your apiary: date and number of colonies and nucs alive on that day. Add a new entry for every change (buy new nucs, catch a swarm, make splits…).

2. A description per hive: (this can be the first page of your hive notebook)

• What type of material do you use? Is it the same for all your hives?
  Ex: plastic frames, wax foundation, 10 frames deeps…
• What race of bee?
• Queen info:
  • Age of queen: indicate if you know when she was born (at least year/month)
  • Is she marked? (color / number)
  • Where does she come from: did you buy her? From where? Was she inseminated? Did you raise her naturally (after split or swarm)?
  • Whenever you change queen, indicate when, how you did it and why you did it (ex: too aggressive, too old, accident or lost queen for unknown reason…).

3. Information from visits:

• Date
• Objective of the visit
  Ex: routine visit; adding suppers; replacing frames; sampling for varroa; feeding …
• Did you see: (you can use this as a checklist)
  • The queen (=QS: Queen Seen)
  • Eggs (=QR: Queen Right)
  • Larvae
  • Capped brood
    You might want to estimate the number of frames of capped brood; this will inform you on the amount of new workers to expect in the coming week or two). Also note if you notice an excessive amount of drone brood.
  • Pollen
  • Honey
    Again, you might want to estimate the number of frames of pollen and honey.
• You should also indicate if you notice any:
  • Varroa
  • Deformed wings
  • Wax moths
  • Any other pest or sign of disease.