beekeeping

/bee"kee'ping/, n.

the rearing and breeding of honeybees; apiculture.

[1830-40; BEE¹ + KEEPING]

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or apiculture

Care and manipulation of honeybees to enable them to produce and store more honey than they need so that the excess can be collected.

Beekeeping is one of the oldest forms of animal husbandry. Early efforts at collecting the honey required destroying the hive; modern beekeepers use an extractor that empties the cells of the honeycomb without damaging them. To collect honey, beekeepers need a veiled helmet for protection, a tool for cutting comb, and a smoker for tranquilizing the bees. Maintaining the hive includes protecting the colony against diseases, parasites, and predators.

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Introduction

 care and management of colonies of honeybees. They are kept for their honey and other products or their services as pollinators of fruit and vegetable blossoms or as a hobby. The practice is widespread: honeybees are kept in large cities and villages, on farms and rangelands, in forests and deserts, from the Arctic and Antarctic to the Equator. Honeybees are not domesticated. Those living in a man-made domicile called a beehive or hive are no different from those living in a colony in a tree.

      In antiquity people knew that bees produce delicious honey, that they sting, and that they increase their numbers by swarming. By the 17th century they had learned the value of smoke in controlling them and had developed the screen veil as protection against stings. From the 17th to the 19th century, the key discoveries upon which modern beekeeping is founded were made. These included the mystery of the queen bee as the mother of nearly all the occupants of the hive, her curious mating technique, parthenogenetic development, the movable frame hives, and the fact that bees rear a new queen if the old one disappears.

      Given this knowledge people were able to divide a colony instead of relying on natural swarming. Then the development of the wax-comb foundation, the starter comb on which bees build straight, easily-handled combs, and the discovery that honey can be centrifuged or extracted from them and the combs reused, paved the way for large-scale honey production and modern commercial beekeeping. The identification of bee diseases and their control with drugs, the value of pollen and pollen substitutes in producing strong colonies, and the artificial insemination of queens have increased the honey-production efficiency of colonies.

Honeybees (honeybee) and their colonies

Honeybees

 Honeybees belong to the order Hymenoptera (hymenopteran) and to one of the Apis species. (For a complete discussion of honeybees, see the article hymenopteran.) Honeybees are social insects noted for providing their nests with large amounts of honey. A colony of honeybees is a highly complex cluster of individuals that functions virtually as a single organism. It usually consists of the queen bee, a fertilized female capable of laying a thousand or more eggs per day; from a few to 60,000 sexually undeveloped females, the worker bees; and from none to 1,000 male bees, or drones. The female of most species of bees is equipped with a venomous sting.

      Honeybees collect nectar, a sugary solution, from nectaries in blossoms and sometimes from nectaries on the leaves or stems of plants. Nectar may consist of 50 to 80 percent water, but when the bees convert it into honey it will contain only about 16 to 18 percent water. Sometimes they collect honeydew, an exudate from certain plant-sucking insects, and store it as honey. The primary carbohydrate diet of bees is honey. They also collect pollen, the dustlike male element, from the anthers of flowers. Pollen provides the essential proteins necessary for the rearing of young bees. In the act of collecting nectar and pollen to provision the nest, the bees pollinate the flowers they visit. Honeybees also collect propolis, a resinous material from buds of trees, for sealing cracks in the hive or for covering foreign objects in the hive that they cannot remove. They collect water to air-condition the hive and to dilute the honey when they consume it. A populous colony in a desirable location may, in a year's time, collect and carry into the hive as much as 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms) of nectar, water, and pollen.

      Bees secrete beeswax in tiny flakes on the underside of the abdomen and mold it into honeycomb, thin-walled, back-to-back, six-sided cells. The use of the cell varies depending on the needs of the colony. Honey or pollen may be stored in some cells, while the queen lays eggs, normally one per cell, in others. The area where the bees develop from the eggs is called the broodnest. Generally, honey is stored toward the top of the combs and pollen in cells around the broodnest below the honey.

      The bees maintain a uniform temperature of about 93° F (34° C) in the broodnest regardless of outside temperature. The colony can survive daily maximum temperatures of 120° F (49° C) if water is available with which they can air-condition the cluster. When the temperature falls below about 57° F (14° C) the bees cease flying, form a tight cluster to conserve heat, and await the return of warm weather. They can survive for several weeks in temperatures of −50° F (−46° C).

      When summer flowers bloom in profusion, the queen's egg-laying is stimulated, the cluster expands, and honey accumulates in the combs. When the large number of young bees emerge, the domicile becomes crowded.

Swarming

      When the colony becomes crowded with adult bees and there are insufficient cells in which the queen can lay large numbers of eggs, the worker bees select a dozen or so tiny larvae that would otherwise develop into worker bees. These larvae are fed copiously with royal jelly, a whitish food with the consistency of mayonnaise, produced by certain brood-food glands in the heads of the worker bees. The cell in which the larva is developing is drawn out downward and enlarged to permit development of the queen. Shortly before these virgin queens emerge as adults from their queen cells, the mother queen departs from the beehive with the swarm. Swarming usually occurs during the middle of a warm day, when the queen and a portion of the worker bees (usually from 5,000 to 25,000) suddenly swirl out of the hive and into the air. After a few minutes' flight, the queen alights, preferably on a branch of a tree but sometimes on a roof, a parked automobile, or even a fire hydrant. All the bees settle into a tight cluster around her while a handful of scouts reconnoitre a new homesite.

      When the scout bees have located a new domicile, the cluster breaks, the swarm takes to the air and in a swirling mass proceeds to the new home. Swarming is the bees' natural method of propagation or increase.

Queen bee

      Back in the parent colony, the first queen to emerge after the mother queen departs with the swarm immediately attempts to destroy the others. If two or more emerge at the same time, they fight to the death. When the surviving virgin is about a week old, she soars off on her mating flight. To maintain genetic diversity within a colony, a queen frequently mates with more than one drone (called polyandry) while in the air. She may repeat the mating flights for two or three successive days, after which she begins egg laying. She rarely ever leaves the hive again except with a swarm. Normally, sufficient sperm are stored in her sperm pouch, or spermatheca, to fertilize all the eggs she will lay for the rest of her life. The drones die in the act of mating.

      The queen can live up to five years, although many beekeepers replace the queen every year or two. If she is accidentally killed or begins to falter in her egg-laying efficiency, the worker bees will rear a “supersedure” queen that will mate and begin egg laying without a swarm emerging. She ignores the mother queen, who soon disappears from the colony.

Worker bees

      Worker bees live about six weeks during the active season but may live for several months if they emerge as adults in the fall and spend the winter in the cluster. As the name implies, worker bees do all of the work of the hive, except the egg laying.

Drones

      Drones are reared only when the colony is populous and there are plentiful sources of nectar and pollen. They usually live a few weeks, but are driven from the hive to perish when fall or an extended period of adversity comes upon the colony. The only duty of the drone is to mate with the queen.

      The queen can lay drone (unfertilized) eggs in the drone cells. If she is not allowed to mate or if her supply of sperm is exhausted, she will lay unfertilized eggs in worker cells. The development of unfertilized eggs into adult drones is known as parthenogenesis. Occasionally a colony may become queenless and unable to develop another queen. Then, some of the worker bees begin to lay eggs, often several to a cell, and these develop into drones. A colony that has developed laying workers is difficult to requeen with a laying queen.

Colony manipulation

The yearly work cycle

      The beekeeper's year starts in early fall. At that time he requeens the colonies whose queens are not producing adequate amounts of brood and makes sure that each colony has sufficient stores: at least 50 pounds (22 kilograms) of honey and several frames filled with pollen. Some beekeepers also feed the drug fumagillin to reduce possible damage to the adult bees by nosema disease (see below Disease and pest control (beekeeping)). The colonies need a sunny exposure and protection from cold winds. Some beekeepers in northern and mountainous areas wrap their colonies with insulating material in winter. A few beekeepers kill their bees in the fall, harvest the honey, store the empty equipment, then restock with a two- or three-pound (0.8- or 1.4-kilogram) package of bees and a young queen the following spring.

      If the colonies are well prepared in the fall they need little attention during the winter. But in early spring, an examination of the colonies by the beekeeper is important. Frequently, strong colonies exhaust their food supply and starve only a few days before flowers begin to bloom in abundance. Only a few pounds of sugar syrup, 50-50 sugar water, or a honey-filled comb from another more prosperous colony might save such a starving colony. Again fumagillin may be fed to the colony, and some beekeepers also feed a cake of pollen substitute or pollen supplement. Honey is not fed to the colonies unless the beekeeper is sure about its source. Honey from colonies affected by the brood disease American foulbrood could infect his colonies and cause a serious loss.

      As the spring season advances, the cluster size increases from the low population of 10,000 to 20,000 bees that survived the winter. To accommodate the increased size of the cluster and broodnest, the keeper adds more supers, or boxes of combs. If the combs are so manipulated that the queen can continually expand her egglaying area upward, the colony is unlikely to swarm. This can be achieved by placing empty combs or combs in which brood is about ready to emerge at the top of the cluster and combs filled with eggs or young brood toward the lower part of the broodnest. The beekeeper wants the colony to reach its peak of population, 50,000 to 60,000 bees, at the beginning of the major nectar flow.

      The bees in a swarm, having departed the hive with a full stomach of honey, rarely sting. The usual way to capture them is to place a hive or upturned box beneath or nearby, then shake or smoke the bees to force the queen and a majority of the bees into it. The others follow. After the swarm is safely inside the box it can be removed to a permanent location.

      Regulations governing the keeping of bees usually require the bees to be kept in hives with movable combs. If the bees are captured in a box they are generally transferred into a movable-frame hive within a few days so the new honey and comb will not be lost in the transfer.

Requeening a colony

      When a beekeeper requeens a colony, he removes the failing or otherwise undesirable queen and places a new one in a screen cage in the broodnest. After a few days the colony becomes adjusted to her and she can be released from the cage. A strange queen placed in the cluster without this temporary protection usually will be killed at once by the workers. Queens usually are shipped in individual cages of about three cubic inches (50 cubic centimetres) with about half a dozen attendant bees and a ball of specially prepared sugar candy plugging one end of the cage. When the cage is placed in the hive, the bees from both sides eat the candy. By the time the candy is consumed and the bees reach each other, their odours have become indistinguishable, the queen emerges from the cage into the colony and begins her egglaying duties.

beekeeping equipment

 Standard tools of the beekeeper are: the smoker to quell the bees; a veil to protect the face; gloves for the novice or the person sensitive to stings; a blunt steel blade called a hive tool, for separating the frames and other hive parts for examination; the uncapping knife, for opening the cells of honey; and the extractor, for centrifuging the honey from the cells.

Bee stings

      The worker bee sting is barbed, and in the act of stinging it is torn from the bee. It has a venom-filled poison sac and muscles attached that continue to work the sting deeper into the flesh for several minutes and increase the amount of venom injected. To prevent this, the sting should be scraped loose (rather than grasped and pulled out) at once. Bee stings are painful, and no one becomes immune to the pain. Immunity to the swelling is usually built up after a few stings, however.

      Normal reaction to a bee sting is immediate, intense pain at the site of the sting. This lasts for a minute or two and is followed by a reddening, which may spread an inch or more. Swelling may not become apparent until the following day. Occasionally, acute allergic (allergy) reactions develop from a sting, usually with persons who have other allergic problems. Such a reaction becomes evident in less than an hour and may consist of extreme difficulty in breathing, heart irregularity, shock, splotched skin, and speech difficulty. Such persons should obtain the services of a medical doctor immediately.

Bee products

honey production

      Honey is marketed in several different forms: liquid honey, comb honey, and creamed honey. Sometimes the predominant floral type from which the honey was collected is indicated.

Liquid honey

      If liquid (strained, extracted) honey is desired, additional supers are added directly above the brood nest. When one is largely filled, it is raised and another is placed underneath. This may continue until several have been filled, each holding from 30 to 50 pounds (14 to 23 kilograms), or until the nectar flow has ended. After the bees have evaporated the water until the honey is of the desired consistency and sealed in the cells, the combs are removed, the cells uncapped with the uncapping knife, and the honey extracted. The removed honey is immediately heated to about 140° F (60° C), which thins it and destroys yeasts that can cause fermentation. It is then strained of wax particles and pollen grains, cooled rapidly, and packaged for market.

Comb honey

      In production of honey in the comb, or comb honey, extreme care is necessary to prevent the bees' swarming. The colony must be strong, and the bees must be crowded into the smallest space they will tolerate without swarming. New frames or sections of a frame with extra-thin foundation wax, added at exactly the right time for the bees to fill without destroying them, are placed directly above the brood nest. The bees must fill and seal the new comb to permit removal within a few days, or it will be of inferior quality. As rapidly as sections are removed, new sections are added, until the nectar flow subsides; then these are removed and the colony given combs to store its honey for the winter.

Creamed honey

      Almost all honey will granulate or turn to sugar. Such honey can be liquefied without materially affecting its quality by placing the container in water heated to about 150° F (66° C). Liquid and granulated honey is sometimes blended, homogenized, and held at a cool temperature, which speeds uniformly fine granulation. If properly processed, the granules will be extremely fine; the honey, which has a smooth, creamy appearance, is referred to as creamed honey.

Floral types (flower)

      Some honeys are sold by floral type; that is, they are given the name of the predominant flowers visited by the bees when they accumulated the honey. The beekeeper has no way to direct the bees to a particular source of food but through experience learns which plants are the major sources of honey. Different flowers produce different colours and flavours of honey. It may be heavy-bodied or thin-bodied, dark or light, mild-flavoured or strong-flavoured. Most honey has been blended by the beekeeper to a standard grade that can be supplied and marketed year after year.

beeswax

      Beeswax is a by-product of beekeeping in most areas. When beekeepers uncap or break honeycombs or have unusable combs, they try to salvage the beeswax. First, they recover as much honey from the combs as possible by drainage or extraction. Then they place the material in water heated to slightly over 145° F (63° C). This melts the wax, which rises to the surface. After it cools and hardens, the cake of wax is removed and refined for reuse in comb foundation. Beeswax has many other uses: in quality candles, cosmetics, agriculture, art, and industry. In some areas bees are manipulated primarily for wax production. Wax is a highly stable commodity that can be transported long distances under unfavourable conditions without damage.

Bees reared for sale

      Queens are reared for sale to other beekeepers for requeening established colonies or for adding to a two- or three-pound (0.9- or 1.4-kilogram) package of 8,000 to 10,000 live bees to form new colonies or replenish weak ones. The queens are produced when the beekeeper cages the reigning queen in a colony, then inserts into the cluster from 30 to 60 queen cell bases into which young (one-day-old) worker larvae have been transferred. Queens can be artificially inseminated (artificial insemination) with sperm from drones of a known source, but most beekeepers let the queens mate naturally. The live bees are shaken from the combs of the colony through a funnel into screen-wire cages.

pollination

      The greatest value of bees is in their service as pollinators. Some 90 crops grown in the United States alone are dependent on insect pollination, performed primarily by the honeybee. The average colony of bees is worth from 20 to 40 times as much in the pollination of crops as it is in the production of honey. The value of bees in the pollination of ornamental plants has never been calculated. Bees are also valuable in the pollination of some forest and range plants that produce seeds on which birds and other wildlife feed.

      When bees are used in the pollination of crops, the beekeeper places the colonies within or adjacent to the field to be pollinated. The majority of the roughly 1,000,000 colonies that are used for pollination are used in alfalfa-seed (alfalfa) fields and almond and apple orchards. The colonies are distributed at the rate of two or more per acre in groups every 0.1 mile (0.16 kilometre) throughout alfalfa fields. Two colonies per acre are recommended for almond orchards and about one colony per acre in apple orchards.

      Some growers prefer to have the colonies placed alongside the orchard; others want them distributed in small groups within the orchard. Bees also are used regularly by growers of many other crops: blueberries, cantaloupes, cherries, clovers, cucumbers, cranberries, cutflower seed, plums and prunes, vetch, and watermelon.

Disease and pest control

      Honeybees have diseases and enemies: diseases of the brood; diseases that affect only the adult bees; insect enemies of the adults and of the comb; and other enemies, including toads, lizards, birds, mice, skunks, and bears.

Diseases

      American foulbrood, caused by a spore-forming bacterium, Bacillus larvae, is the most serious brood disease. It occurs throughout the world wherever bees are kept and affects workers, drones, and queens. The spores are highly resistant to heat and chemicals. A comb containing brood severely infected with this disease has a mottled appearance caused by the mixture of healthy capped brood interspersed with diseased or empty cells formerly occupied by diseased brood. The decayed mass has a typical ropiness when dug into, which is one of its identifying characteristics.

      American foulbrood can be spread to healthy colonies by transferring equipment or allowing the bees to feed on honey from infected colonies. Sulfathiazole and Terramycin are widely used to control the disease. Many countries and most states in the U.S. require the destruction by fire of diseased colonies and have apiary inspectors to enforce the regulations.

      European foulbrood is caused by a nonsporeforming bacterium, Streptococcus pluton, but Bacillus alvie and Acromobacter eurydice are often associated with Streptococcus pluton. This disease is similar in appearance to American foulbrood. In some instances it severely affects the colonies, but they recover so that colony destruction is not necessary. Terramycin can control the disease.

      Sacbrood is caused by a virus and is superficially similar to the foulbrood diseases. It can appear and disappear spontaneously but is seldom serious. No chemical control is needed, but if the problem persists the beekeeper usually requeens the colony.

      Chalk brood is caused by the fungus Ascosphaera apis. The larvae victims of this disease have a chalky, white appearance. Stonebrood, which affects both brood and adults, is also caused by a fungus, Aspergillus flavus, which can usually be isolated from bees that have stonebrood.

      Nosema disease, caused by the protozoan Nosema apis, is the most serious disease of adult bees. It is widespread, causes heavy losses in honey production, and severely weakens colonies. The external symptoms of bees with nosema disease are not apparent. The disease is transmitted from adult to adult by ingestion of the spores that soon germinate in the ventriculus, or main, stomach. An infected ventriculus is normally swollen, soft, and grayish white. A degree of control may be obtained by feeding the colony the drug fumagillin.

      Acarine disease is caused by the mite Acarapis woodi that gets into the tracheae of the bee through its breathing holes or spiracles in its thorax or midsection. Bees affected by this mite are unable to fly, have disjointed wings and distended abdomens. There is presently no good control for this mite. The only U.S. federal law pertaining to bees was passed to prevent the importation of adult bees carrying this mite into the United States. Two other mites, Varroa destructor and Tropilaelaps clareae, which are native to Asia, are serious problems for beekeepers. V. destructor is now commonly found in Europe and North America, where it is capable of devastating entire colonies of honeybees.

      There are other minor diseases of adult bees, but they seldom cause serious problems.

Pests

      The greater wax moth, Galleria mellonella, is a lepidopterous insect that, in its larval stage, destroys combs. It does not attack adult bees but may begin destruction of combs of a weak colony long before the bees are gone. It can also destroy stored combs of honey. When the larvae are ready to pupate, they often eat out a place to spin their cocoons in the soft wood of the beehive, damaging frames and other hive parts. The best control for this pest is keeping colonies strong. Stored combs are fumigated, kept in a cold room, or stacked in such a way that a strong air draft flows around them.

      The larvae of the lesser wax moth, Achroia grisella, cause damage to stored combs similar to that of the greater wax moth. The Mediterranean flour moth larva, Anagasta kuehniella, feeds on pollen in the combs and causes some damage. Control for both of these moths is the same as for the greater wax moth.

      The bee louse, Braula caeca, is a tiny, wingless member of the fly family that is occasionally found on bees. It feeds on nectar or honey from the mouthparts of its host. Its larvae burrow in the cappings of honey combs.

      Ants sometimes invade hives and disrupt or kill the bees. Termites can damage or destroy hive parts placed on the soil. Other insects, such as dragonflies (Odonata), robberflies (Diptera), praying mantises (Orthoptera), ambush bugs (Hemiptera), and certain wasps and yellow jackets (Hymenoptera) are natural enemies of the honeybee.

Predators (predation)

      Mice (mouse) frequently enter the hive in winter when the bees are clustered, or they get into stored combs and despoil or damage them by chewing the frames and combs to construct their nest. Skunks (skunk) devour large numbers of bees at the hive entrance, usually at night. Fences, traps, and poison are used against them. Bears (bear) eat the honeybees and the brood in the hive, usually destroying it and its contents in the process. In bear country, electric fences and traps are used to protect bee colonies.

      At times bees become their own deadly enemy. If honey is exposed to them when no flowers are in bloom and the weather is mild, the bees from different colonies will fight over it. Sometimes this fighting, or robbing, becomes intense and spreads from hive to hive in moblike action. If all the bees in one colony are killed, the honey is quickly stolen and carried into other hives. This further intensifies the robbing so that a cluster that was carrying honey into its hive a few minutes earlier is attacked, all of its occupants killed, the honey again stolen, and the process repeated. Usually, once robbing becomes intense, only darkness or foul weather will stop it.

Colony collapse disorder

      One of the most mysterious disorders to strike honeybee colonies in the modern era is colony collapse disorder (CCD). It is characterized by sudden colony death, with a lack of adult bees inside the hive or on the ground in front of the hive. While the underlying cause is not known, it appears that the disorder affects the adult bees' ability to navigate. They leave the hive to find pollen and never return. Honey and pollen are usually present in the hive, and there is often evidence of recent brood rearing. In some cases the queen and a small number of survivor bees may remain in the brood nest. CCD is also characterized by delayed robbing of the honey in the dead colonies by other, healthy bee colonies in the immediate area, as well as slower than normal invasion by common pests, such as wax moths and small hive beetles. The disorder appears to affect only the European honeybee (Apis mellifera).

      CCD was first reported in autumn 2006 by a commercial beekeeper in Pennsylvania, who had colony losses estimated at 80 to 90 percent. Colony losses continued to be reported by other beekeepers in 35 states throughout the United States during the spring and summer of 2007, with many beekeepers losing anywhere from 30 to 90 percent of their hives. Other countries, including Canada, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Greece, Germany, Poland, France, and Switzerland, also reported substantial losses of honeybees. The potential economic impact on agriculture is great; annually in the United States alone an estimated $15 billion of crops are pollinated by honeybees.

      Studies of adult honeybee carcasses from affected colonies indicate that the bees are infected with a number of pathogens, including viruses. One virus that appears to be associated with CCD is Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV). However, scientists have not reached a definitive conclusion on whether a single pathogen is the root cause of the disorder, and many scientists suspect that a combination of factors are involved, such as a weakened immune system, brought on by colony stress, and the presence of pathogens, which are a constant threat and can be numerous in honeybee colonies. Causes that have been ruled out include mites and nosema disease. In addition, pesticides (pesticide) such as neonicotinoids (insecticides (insecticide) based on derivatives of nicotine), which can be toxic to honeybees, seem unlikely. Studies of the effects of pesticides on whole colonies have been inconclusive, as bees living in hives with high pesticide content appear to be healthy and CCD is still rampant in France, where neonicotinoids have been banned since 1999.

Samuel Emmett McGregor Ed.

Additional Reading

Books that concern the life history of the individual bee and the colony, honey and wax production, diseases of bees, flora that provide nectar and pollen, and economics of beekeeping include John E. Eckert and Frank R. Shaw, Beekeeping (1960); Dadant & Sons (eds.), The Hive and the Honey Bee, extensively rev. (1975); and Eva Crane, Bees and Beekeeping: Science, Practice, and World Resources (1990). A.I. Root, The ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture: An Encyclopedia Pertaining to the Scientific and Practical Culture of Honey Bees, 40th ed. edited by Roger A. Morse and Kim Flottum (1990); and Roger A. Morse and Ted Hooper (eds.), The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Beekeeping (1985), are useful reference works.Samuel Emmett McGregor Ed.

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