APIIIII

• Apiculture


  Rearing of the honeybees, beekeeping
• Honey-bees are not domestic animals
• Importance of Bees

  • As a food for free
  • Economical
  • Using honey as medicine
• Honey bee's skeleton


  • It is on the outside called an exoskeleton
  • Nearly the entire bee is covered with branched hairs

  
• Honey bee's head

  • It is flat and somewhat triangular in shape
• Important parts of the bee's head

  • Eyes
  • Antennae
  • Mouth parts
  • Proboscis
• Honey bee's thorax


  • It is the segment between the head and the abdomen where the two pairs of wings and six legs are anchored
• Honey bee's legs


  • The three pairs are all different
  • The hairs serve as brushes to collect pollen

  
• Two methods of bee communication

  • Chemical
  • Choreographic
• Pheromones


  Chemical scents that animals produce to trigger behavioral responses from the other members of the same species
• Types of pheromones


  • Queen pheromones
  • Worker bee pheromones
  • Alarm pheromones
  • Brood pheromones
• Round dance


  Communicates that the food source is near the hive (within 10–80 yards)
• Waggle dance


  Communicates the location of a food source found at a greater distance from the hive
• Three types of bees

  • Queen
  • Worker
  • Drone

  
• Queen bee


  • The largest bee in the colony, with a long and graceful body, the only female with fully developed ovaries
  • Her two primary purposes are to produce chemical scents and lay eggs more than 1,500 eggs a day
• Worker bee


  • The majority of the hive's population, all female
  • Younger than 3 weeks old have working ovaries and can lay eggs, but they are not fertile
  • It has a stinger that is not a smooth syringe like the queen's, with three shafts each having a barb
  • Life span: a modest six weeks during the colony's active season
  • Duties include feeding, nursing, secreting, cleaning, repairing, constructing, ventilating, cooling, guarding, defending, foraging, and ripening honey
• Drone


  • Its primary purpose is procreation, mating occurs outside the hive in mid-flight, 200 to 300 feet in the air known as the "Drone Congregation Area"
• Honey bee life cycle

  1. Egg

  2. Larva

  3. Pupa

  4. Adult

  
• Other stinging insects


  • Bumblebee
  • Carpenter bee
  • Mason bee
  • Wasp
  • Yellow jacket
  • Bald-faced hornet

  
• Swarming


  About 50 percent of the colony packs up with the queen and takes flight, a natural way for honey bees to manage the colony's growth and survival

  
• Reasons for swarming

  • Congestion of the brood area
  • Poor ventilation
• Indicators of swarming


  • No eggs
  • Fewer bees
  • All the cells have only older larvae and/or capped brood
  • There are queen cells present along the lower third of the comb

  
• Swarming prevention


  1. Avoid congestion

  2. Reverse hive bodies in early spring

  3. Add queen excluder and honey supers before first nectar flow in early spring
• Swarming


  About 50 percent of the colony packs up with the queen and takes flight
• A swarm of honey bees is a familiar sight in the spring and early summer. It's one of the most fascinating phenomena in nature and an instinctive way that honey bees manage the colony's growth and survival

  
• Two primary reasons bees swarm

  • Congestion of the brood area
  • Poor ventilation
• Where a swarm might land

  • A bush
  • A tree branch
  • A lamppost
  • A piece of patio furniture
• Key Indicators of Swarming

  • No eggs
  • Fewer bees
  • All the cells have only older larvae and/or capped brood
  • There are queen cells present along the lower third of the comb

  
• Prevention of Swarming


  1. Avoid congestion

  2. Reverse your hive bodies in the early spring to better distribute the fast-growing population

  3. Add a queen excluder and honey supers before the first nectar flow in the early spring (stop feeding before you add honey supers)

  4. Provide adequate ventilation

  5. Make the bees comfortable in hot weather

  6. Remove queen swarm cells — all of them

  7. Replace your queen every season
• Absconding


  100 percent of the colony hits the road, leaving not a soul behind
• Typical causes of absconding

  • Colony collapse disorder (CCD) - gone with no evidence (not yet known)
  • Lack of food
  • Loss of queen
  • Uncomfortable living conditions
  • Pests, mites and disease
• If colony is queenless

  1. Let the colony raise its own queen

  2. Introduce a new queen into the colony
• Advantages of ordering a queen

  • It provides a fast solution to the problem of having a queenless colony
  • The queen is certain to be fertile
  • It guarantees the pedigree of your stock (Queens left to mate in the wild can produce bees with undesirable characteristics, such as a bad temper)
• Introducing a new queen to the hive

  1. Remove one of the frames from the brood box

  2. Shake all the bees off the frame and put it aside for the next week

  3. With the one frame removed, create a space in the center of the brood box. Use this space to hang the queen cage in the same way you hung it when you first installed your package bees
• Robbing


  A situation in which a hive is attacked by invaders from other hives
• Reasons robbing is serious

  • A hive defending itself against robbing will fight to the death
  • If the hive is unable to defend itself in a robbing situation, the invading army can strip the colony of all its food
  • Being robbed changes the disposition of a hive
• Suggestions to halt robbing and prevent disaster

  1. Reduce the size of the entrance to the width of a single bee

  2. Soak a bedsheet in water and cover the hive that's under attack
• Preventing robbing


  1. Never leave honey out in the open where the bees can find it

  2. When harvesting honey, keep your supers covered after you remove them from the colony

  3. Be very careful when handling sugar syrup

  4. Until your hive is strong enough to defend itself, use the entrance reducer to restrict the size of the opening the bees must protect, also be sure to close off the ventilation groove in the inner cover

  5. Never feed your bees in the wide open

  6. Avoid using a boardman entrance feeder
• Sacbrood


  A viral disease (Morator aetatulae or sacbrood virus) that does not usually cause severe losses, it mainly occurs early in the brood-rearing season when the ratio of brood to bees is high, worker and drone larvae are affected, pupae may be killed occasionally, but adult bees are immune to it
• Transmission of Sacbrood


  Nurse bees are suspected of transmitting the disease by carrying the virus from cell to cell, robber bees spread the disease by taking contaminated honey from one colony to another