SUMMARY This chapter has discussed the following points: The colony or beehive should contain a queen bee, worker bees and drone bees. The queen bee mates on the wing with up to 20 or more drone bees (the more the better) from a wide radius in order to maintain genetic diversity. She stores the sperm and uses it to fertilize eggs. She can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day. She is fed and groomed by worker bees and, in this way, spreads pheromones around the colony. She has a sting which she uses only to fight rival queens. After mating she won’t fly again unless part of a swarm – which we look at in Chapter 6. There is usually only one queen in the hive. All fertilized eggs result in bees that have the potential to be a queen. The worker bee is an incomplete female who is unable to mate. She carries out all the other tasks inside and outside the hive, such as cleaning, caring for and feeding brood, foraging for food and colony defence. She has a sting and will use it in defence of the colony. Thecolony may contain many thousands of workers – perhaps 60,000– 80,000 or more in a good colony. Worker bees start off with the potential to be queens, but diet change causes them to veer from this course and they fail to develop as queens. The drone bee is a male bee optimized for mating with a virgin queen bee. He has no sting and is fed by workers. In times of lack of food, drones are often ejected from the hive by workers. There are usually a few hundred in a colony. A colony of bees requires a cavity in which to live and in which they construct wax combs for the storage of food (honey and pollen) and for the rearing of young brood. The cavity or beehive must be well sited in an area where forage and water are available and where it is protected from the elements. The beekeeper’s role is to ensure that the bees’ living requirements
SUMMARY Bees can produce honey, honeydew, pollen, propolis, venom and silk, and all except silk (at the moment) can be a profitable commodity for beekeepers. With experience you will be able to decide just what you want your bees to produce for you and will learn the best ways of getting your bees to produce surplus. There are other money-earning avenues for the experienced beekeeper, such as pollination services or producing queen bees for sale, and these activities are explained later in this book.
Equipment
beehive(s) beekeeping tools suitable clothing bees beehive sites and, finally, somewhere to keep all your equipment.
Buy a complete beginner’s kit, or individual items from a good bee-supply company. This is the most expensive way. (See the list of suppliers at the end of this book.) Obtain second-hand equipment from a local beekeeper or beekeeping association auction. This is cheaper than the previous way but runs the risk of such diseases as AFB. Having said that, if you buy a hive of bees at an auction, it should have had a disease inspection before the sale. Most auctions insist on this and have a visiting inspector. Ask about this. Used, empty hives on their own won’t have been inspected and so may contain unnoticed diseases. Make your own equipment. This is an economical option, and all plans can be found at www.beedata.com. While this way is possible with the hives, I recommend buying the other tools and clothing new unless items in excellent condition can be had at a bee auction or from another beekeeper. Buy bees in a nucleus (or two) from a reputable supplier, obtain a swarm from a beekeeper or buy a package of bees for installation in a prepared hive from a bee breeder/producer. Or you could buy an existing colony in a hive. All these sellers will advertise in the beekeeping magazines or you can ask your local beekeeping association for the swarm. Arrange for the bees to arrive only when you have everything ready.
Ensure easy access by foot or, preferably, by vehicle. Permanent sites must have good nectar sources within 2 km (1 mile). Sites must have a water source in the vicinity. This should preferably be in full sun and out of the wind. In temperate climates, place hives in the sun. Some dappled shade, however, is useful. Sites should have early sources of pollen for brood rearing, such as rock rose, willow or gorse. Books that detail useful plants for nectar and pollen are listed on pages 278-80. Sites should be sheltered from the wind. Ensure the site is not prone to flooding. Make sure the site is not in a winter/spring frost hollow. Sites should preferably be out of sight of roads. Don’t place hives under trees where they can be dripped on during and after rain. Keep sites away from HT power lines. Keep the area around the hives clear of tall weeds or grass. Cut grass and weeds – don’t use spray of any kind.
Avoiding complaints To minimize complaints from neighbours, observe the following rules: Don’t keep too many hives on the property. Keep two or three at the most. Provide a water source. Keep gentle bees. Maximize your swarm-prevention techniques (explained in Chapter 6). Collect any swarms quickly if they do occur. Stop bees from robbing (explained in Chapter 8). Put the hives in a sunny, sheltered position, out of sight of neighbours. Erect a high fence around them to make them fly high after leaving the hive. Talk about your bees and their amazing pollination abilities with fruit and crops. Give your honey to your neighbours.
SUMMARY Ideally you should now have the following: Two modern, complete, removable box hives common to your area, or two Langstroth hives. Hives situated in an urban or country location. Hives consisting of a ‘full’ brood box and a ‘half’ super, with a queen excluder in between the boxes. (Other half supers should be made available as the season goes on.) Each ‘full’ brood box containing a frame feeder with sugar syrup, plus nine Hoffman frames with foundation wax, some of which that have been replaced with the frames that came with a nucleus of bees. Each ‘half’ super or honey super having eight Manley frames filled with foundation. A gentle strain of bees with a young, laying queen. The queen should be a new queen, mated and laying. Other equipment as described above so that, after the week you have given your bees to settle down, you will be able to open your hive ready to inspect your bees, to see what is going on and to really start learning about bees.
SUMMARY In the spring you manage your hives so that they can take advantage of the honey flow. The following, therefore, are the main tasks for spring: Inspect your colonies to ensure that: they have a young queen no older than two years (a marked queen will make this task easier); there are no signs of disease; they have sufficient stores of honey and pollen; they have sufficient room for the queen to lay eggs and for the foragers to store honey; the colony is growing; and there are no signs of swarming. Treat your hives against varroa. Carry out swarm-prevention measures and, if required, swarm-control measures. Every time you pass your hives, carry out a quick, external hive inspection. Utilize methods to increase your honey harvest and to make apiary management easier. At this time of the year you should carry out these inspections at least every two weeks. Don’t hurry them, however, and make sure you are satisfied that you have seen everything you want to see before closing a hive. Commercial beekeepers with thousands of hives often take at most a couple of minutes over a hive inspection and are able to ‘read’ immediately the signs of something being amiss. They need to do this because of time and money factors, although I have seen apiaries with hives full of American foul brood that have been missed in the early stages of the disease because of hurried inspections. These bees have to be destroyed and the hives burnt or otherwise treated, which leads to huge extra costs and a very much reduced harvest. So, even for the experts, hurried inspections can be a case of more haste, less speed, causing a large hole in their wallets!
THE YEAR SO FAR: A SUMMARY January/March–June/July: Assemble all the required equipment and hives. Prepare an apiary site in either an urban or rural location. Decide on your source of bees. April/May–September/October: Receive your package/nucleus of bees and install them. After installation, carry out a full hive inspection. Remember what was discussed in Chapter 6.
May/June–November/December: You may be starting out at this point if you are being given a swarm. If so, install it and carry on. Carry out swarm-prevention and, if required, swarm-control activities. Continue with hive inspections. July/August–December/January: Super up as and when required. Keep up the checks. Prepare your harvest equipment. Harvest as required if separate honeys are needed, or especially for any fast granulating crops. August/September–January/February: Harvest and post-harvest activities. Store the empty boxes taking precautions against the dangers of wax moths.
