beekeeping may 16th 2015 smallholder's fair

Beekeeping

Chris Cardew 16th May 2015

Content• The Honeybee

• Social Insects, Castes of honeybee, Colony, Bee biology

• History of beekeeping• Ancients, Langstroth

• Hives and Apiaries• Hive types, Season,

• Produce• Honey, wax, pollen, propolis

• Issues• Pesticides, varroa, disease, asian hornet

• Getting started• Courses, suppliers, beekeeping associations, mentors

Social Insects

Bumblebee

Honeybee

"Apis distribution map" by © Sémhur / Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under FAL via Wikimedia Commons -

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apis_distribution_map.svg#/media/File:Apis_distribution_map.svg

Apis Mellifera in pink area. (Western Honeybee)

Only seven species of honeybee are recognised

In beekeeping only two species of honey bee, A. mellifera and A. cerana indica

• Have the scientific name Apis mellifera, which means ‘honey-carrying bee’

• Live in colonies of about 50,000 individuals in summer, and about 20,000 in winter

Honeybees…

• Visit flowers to collect nectar and pollen. • They make honey from nectar; pollen is a protein

rich source of nourishment

Honey bees

forage for

several things

outside the

Transport nectar in a crop, a special part of the gut, and carry pollen in small ‘baskets’ on their hind legs

Honey crop

Royal Jelly

Horse Chestnut bud

Bees collect resin from the buds, fruit, flowers and leaves of plants

to make a caulking resin called ‘propolis’, which they build into the

Humans use propolis from bee hives for medicinal purposes.

Collecting water

Honeybees collect four things:

Nectar (Honeydew)

Pollen

Propolis

In the colony, all worker bees are sterile females

Male bees, or drones, serve only for reproduction, i.e. to mate with queens

Each colony has only one queen, easily recognised by the longer abdomen

Honeybee Castes

The time from egg to bee emerging

Worker Bee 21 days

Drone Bee 24 days

Queen Bee 16 days15

Honeybees

build combs

from wax that

they produce

from glands

The synthesis of 1 g of

beeswax consumes at

least 6 g of honey

(Hepburn 1986)

Beeswax has a

relatively low melting

point range of 62 to

64 °C

They store honey and pollen in the six sided cells of the

comb, and use comb cells as a nursery for their young

Nectar has a varying

amount of water that

must be evaporated to

below 18.6% to ensure

that fermentation does

not occur17

The honeybee is cold blooded.

The colony is warm blooded.

Eggs in cells

• Worker bees pass

through many

occupational stages

in their lives, for

example;

• as cleaner bees,

• builder bees,

• brood care bees

• and guard bees

• Having reached

seniority, they leave

the nest as foragers

The many jobs

of the worker

honeybee

Brood care is the task of bees living in the hive

Foraging is the task of the bees that fly out of the hive 21

Royal Jelly is produced

by Hypopharyngeal

glands in the head of

the worker bee

A queen is an overfed worker

A worker is an underfed queenThe Queen

Photo by: Eric Tourneret -

A queen cell

Created

perpendicular

to the worker

Photo by: Eric Tourneret

A queen bee lays only a single egg in each comb cell, but up to 200,000 eggs each summer

Bee larvae hatch out of the eggs, grow, and when large enough, pupate in

the cells (Four stage metamorphosis; egg, larva, pupae, bee)

Honeybees feed their

queen during her whole

lifetime exclusively with

royal jelly, and assign

court bees to provide her

with particular attention

and care.

In summer as the colony

rapidly builds up, the

bees raise several young

queens in preparation for

splitting the colony itself.

Usually before a young

queen emerges the old

queen will leave with half

the colony 25

Honeybees

swarm to

propagate

colonies

Swarming

The old queen leaves with a large proportion of individuals from the original hive

Photo by: Eric Tourneret -28

Young queens

mate only

once in their

lives, during

their nuptial

flight, but with

many drones.

(Average

number of

drones is 13.2)

Sister queens

fighting to the death

Honeybees defend themselves

with their stings

•Honeybees

communicate with

one another

through various

chemical and

tactile signals.

•The dance

language is an

important part of

communication

•Karl von Frisch –

Nobel prize in

physiology or

medicine in 1973

Communication

Swarm returning to the hive.

Bees display their Nasonov gland in their abdomen to direct

the bees back home 33

•Honeybees survive the winter as a complete colony

•The bees collect together in a dense cluster, and keep

themselves warm by vibrating their wing muscles

•They use honey stores as energy source for this activity

Winter

Through their pollination of crop plants, honeybees are the third most

valuable domestic animal in Europe

The honeybee is the most important agent in the maintenance of flowering

plant diversity.

In all, 80% of flowering plants worldwide are pollinated by insects, and of these

about 85% by honeybees.

As many as 90% of fruit tree flowers are dependent on honeybees. The list

of flowering plants pollinated by honeybees includes about 170,000 species.

Pollination

Serve mankind foremost as pollinators of crop plants

Flowers do their best to attract bees.

A single cherry blossom can produce more than

30 mg of nectar per day, and an entire cherry

tree, almost two kg.36

Pollination is the process by which

pollen is transferred from the

anther (male part) to the stigma

(female part) of the plant, thereby

enabling fertilization and

reproduction37

The "Man of Bicorp" holding

onto lianas to gather honey

from a beehive as depicted

on an 8000-year-old cave

painting near Valencia,

The Langstroth bee hive,

patented in October 1852, is

the standard beehive used in

many parts of the world

for beekeeping.

The advantage of this hive is

that the bees build honeycomb

into frames, which can be

moved with ease.

The frames are designed to

prevent bees from

attaching honeycombs where

they would either connect

adjacent frames, or connect

frames to the walls of the hive.

‘Bee space’

The movable frames allow the

beekeeper to manage the bees

in a way which was formerly

impossible.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langstroth_hive 41

Several types of moveable frame hive.

In the UK mostly British National hive

Langstroth hives are

most widely used.

Others include:

British National

Top Bar Hive

Sun Hive48

Main nectar plants:

Oilseed Rape, Dandelion, Blackberry, Himalayan Balsam, Rosebay

Willowherb, Clover, Lime, Heather, Ivy 53

Honey at the RWAS 2014

Honey is comprised of

two main monosaccharide

sugars; glucose and

fructose and various other

sugars, trace vitamins

and minerals

Honey facts²• Honey produces hydrogen peroxide when it is diluted, and in 1962 it was

shown that this made the honey antibacterial.

• Most bacteria prefer a pH of between 7.2 to 7.4 for optimum growth, whereas the normal range in honey is 3.2 to 4.5.

• It is often said that if honey wasn’t so sweet it would really be sour.

• Honeybees have lived in cold-temperate climates for at least the last 10–12 million years, and in order to cope with long, harsh winters they have developed the ability to collect and store many kilograms of honey; so many, in fact, that there is usually enough for them to make it through to the spring, as well as provide a goodly amount for us.

• Glucose is the sugar in honey that solidifies. Fructose is much sweeter than glucose (by a factor of 2.5 to 1).

• Today the total world production of honey represents less than 1% of all the sugar we consume each year.

• In fact, if everyone in the world ate a tablespoon of honey each day, we would consume the entire world’s annual honey production in less than three weeks

Bees wax; candles, polish, pellets

for making cosmetics

Gathering

nuts in May

Pollen grains are the

same size to a bee as

nuts , small fruit and

seeds are to humans61

Propolis (pro-before, polis-city. Defender of the city, Aristotle)Propolis is now believed to:

• reinforce the structural stability of the hive;

• reduce vibration;

• make the hive more defensible by sealing alternate entrances;

• prevent diseases and parasites from entering the hive, and to inhibit fungal and bacterial growth;

• prevent putrefaction within the hive

• The resins the bees collect are the immune systems of trees and shrubs.

• They contain compounds that aren't just highly antibacterial; they have an ability to kill fungi and

viruses as well.

• Propolis is one of the strongest natural antioxidants, and in the laboratory it has even been

shown to be effective in inhibiting the growth of a wide range of cancer cells.62

Heather honey.

This photo shows that there are many

different types of pollen in honey 63

Heather pollen

In the US 70% of all honey has no pollen in it – Bee Culture 2013

Varroa

destructor

arrived in

the UK in

Varroa destructor can only

reproduce in a honey bee colony.

It attaches to the body of the bee

and weakens the bee by

sucking hemolymph.

In this process, RNA viruses such

as the deformed wing virus (DWV)

spread to bees.

A significant mite infestation will

lead to the death of a honey bee

colony, usually in the late autumn

through early spring.

The Varroa mite is the parasite with

the most pronounced economic

impact on the beekeeping industry.

It may be a contributing factor

to colony collapse disorder

Asian Hornet – not yet in the UK

Small Hive Beetle – not in

UK but recently found in Italy

American

Foulbrood

Pesticides

The UK Chemicals Regulation analysed 286 pesticides used in the EU and

identified 40 as being toxic to bees.

The neonicotinoid compounds clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam are

recognised as highly toxic to bees by US, UK and EU regulatory authorities.

In terms of acute short term toxicity, these compounds are several hundred to a

thousand times more toxic to bees than older insecticides such as

endosulfan or DDT.

Bee larvae exposed to the longer lasting breakdown products inside the hive can

be particularly vulnerable.

Neonicotinoid residues on sprayed crop foliage can remain toxic to bees for

several days, enabling them to pick up harmful levels when visiting flowers or

walking on leaves.

For example, clothianidin residues remain toxic to honeybees for 5-21 days.

http://bees.pan-uk.org/assets/downloads/Bee_factsheet1.pdf71

Considerations in your own garden:-

Avoid placing hives near a boundary unless it is solid such as a wall, fence, building or hedge.

This will force the bees to gain height quickly if the hive is facing the object.

If room is limited enclose the hives on the remaining sides with something dense at least

two metres high to make the bees gain height.

This could be a wooden panel fence, fine plastic netting or a trellis with quick growing plants such

as honeysuckle.

If you only have a small area available decide the maximum number of hives you will keep at this

site and stick to it, but remember that during the summer it is quite common to increase for a

number of reasons.

The larger the garden the more options you usually have and it may be better to site the bees

somewhere like an orchard.

If your garden is small or your family and neighbours aren’t keen on having bees near them there is

no point in confrontation and you would be best advised to look for a site elsewhere.

Where to site a hive?

• Hive above head height

• Water nearby

• Strong flat roof with room

to manoeuvre the hive74

Check out your local

beekeeping association

Getting started

The basic reason for any pursuit is to find happiness.

Many persons seek it through wealth, power or prestige, and while some of them

do find these things, it is doubtful whether they ever find more than specious

happiness.

The ancients who thought more deeply about happiness than we do, were

unanimous in rejecting these goals as sources of it.

They thought that happiness consisted of having a good demon, so they

called it eudaemonia.

There is no doubt that the honeybee has been my demon, and an

immeasurably good one as long as I can remember.

Happiness cannot depend upon the gifts of our fellows, nor upon their approval,

for what they bestow today they can easily withdraw tomorrow.

One’s happiness is, of course, something personal, something more his own than

any possession.

We do not all find it in the same way. Some never find it all.

Possibly most never do, even when the means are at hand.

But I have found my bees and all the countless things that I associate with

them a constant and unfailing source of happiness.

I know that not all persons are of this temperament.

Some look upon this obsession of mine with incomprehension, some with

amusement or curiosity, while I in turn pity them, for they lack the capacity

for these particular joys so fulfilling to me.

The Joys of Beekeeping – Richard Taylor³ 78

References

1. The Buzz about Bees – Jürgen Tautz

2. Manuka: The Biography of an Extraordinary Honey - Cliff Van Eaton

3. The Joys of Beekeeping - Richard Taylor

4. Anatomy and Dissection of the Honeybee -Harry Arthur Dade.

5. Bee - Rose Lynn Fisher. Princeton Architectural Press.

6. My blog https://ccardew.wordpress.com/79

Questions?

beekeeping may 16th 2015 smallholder's fair

task of bees

bee emergingworker bee

cells19 worker bees

species of honey bee

builder bees

cleaner bees

guard bees

brood care bees

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