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 nurse bees, and fed to all larvae in the colony, regardless of sex or caste.
During the process that a hive is creating new queens, the
workers construct special queen cells. The larvae in these cells are fed
with copious amounts of royal jelly. This type of feeding triggers the
development of queen morphology, including the fully developed ovaries needed to lay eggs.
Royal jelly is widely marketed as a dietary supplement. It is an alternative medicine that falls under the category of apitherapy. Both the European Food Safety Authority and United States Food and Drug Administration
have concluded that the current evidence does not support the claim of
health benefits, and have actively discouraged the sale and consumption
of the jelly. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has
taken legal action against companies that have used unfounded claims of
health benefits to market royal jelly products. There have also been
documented cases of allergic reactions, namely hives, asthma, and anaphylaxis, due to consumption of royal jelly.
Production
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.
Major royal jelly proteins (MRJPs) are a family of proteins secreted
by honey bees. The family consists of nine proteins, of which MRJP1
(also called royalactin), MRJP2, MRJP3, MRJP4, and MRJP5 are present in
the royal jelly secreted by worker bees. MRJP1 is the most abundant, and largest in size. The five proteins constitute 83–90% of the total proteins in royal jelly. Royal jelly has been used in traditional medicine since ancient times, and the MRJPs are shown to be the main medicinal components. They are synthesised by a family of nine genes (mrjp genes), which are in turn members of the yellow family of genes such as in the fruitfly (Drosophila)
and bacteria. They are attributed to be involved in differential
development of queen larva and worker larvae, thus establishing division of labour in the bee colony.
Epigenetic effects
The honey bee queens and workers represent one of the most striking examples of environmentally controlled phenotypicpolymorphism.
Even if two larvae had identical DNA, one raised to be a worker, the
other a queen, the two adults would be strongly differentiated across a
wide range of characteristics including anatomical and physiological
differences, longevity, and reproductive capacity.
Queens constitute the female sexual caste and have large active
ovaries, whereas female workers have only rudimentary, inactive ovaries
and are functionally sterile. The queen–worker developmental divide is
controlled epigenetically
by differential feeding with royal jelly; this appears to be due
specifically to the protein royalactin. A female larva destined to
become a queen is fed large quantities of royal jelly; this triggers a
cascade of molecular events resulting in development of a queen. It has been shown that this phenomenon is mediated by an epigenetic modification of DNA known as CpG methylation.
Silencing the expression of an enzyme that methylates DNA in newly
hatched larvae led to a royal jelly-like effect on the larval
developmental trajectory; the majority of individuals with reduced DNA
methylation levels emerged as queens with fully developed ovaries. This
finding suggests that DNA methylation in honey bees allows the expression of epigenetic information to be differentially altered by nutritional input.
Use by humans
Royal jelly is collected and sold as a dietary supplement for humans, but the European Food Safety Authority
has concluded that the current evidence does not support the claim that
consuming royal jelly will give health benefits in humans. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has taken legal action against companies that have used unfounded claims of health benefits to market royal jelly products.
Cultivation
Royal
jelly is harvested by stimulating colonies with movable frame hives to
produce queen bees. Royal jelly is collected from each individual queen
cell (honeycomb)
when the queen larvae are about four days old. These are the only cells
in which large amounts are deposited; when royal jelly is fed to worker
larvae, it is fed directly to them, and they consume it as it is
produced, while the cells of queen larvae are "stocked" with royal jelly
much faster than the larvae can consume it. Therefore, only in queen
cells is the harvest of royal jelly practical. A well-managed hive
during a season of 5–6 months can produce approximately 500 g of royal
jelly. Since the product is perishable, producers must have immediate
access to proper cold storage (e.g., a household refrigerator or
freezer) in which the royal jelly is stored until it is sold or conveyed
to a collection center. Sometimes honey or beeswax is added to the royal jelly, which is thought to aid its preservation.
Adverse effects
Royal jelly may cause allergic reactions in humans ranging from hives, asthma, to even fatal anaphylaxis.
The incidence of allergic side effects in people who consume royal
jelly is unknown. The risk of having an allergy to royal jelly is higher
in people who have other allergies.
Beekeeping (or apiculture) is the maintenance of bee colonies, commonly in man-made hives, by humans. Most such bees are honey bees in the genus Apis, but other honey-producing bees such as Melipona stingless bees are also kept. A beekeeper (or apiarist) keeps bees in order to collect their honey and other products that the hive produce (including beeswax, propolis, flower pollen, bee pollen, and royal jelly), to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary or "bee yard".
Depictions of humans collecting honey from wild bees date to 10,000 years ago. Beekeeping in pottery vessels began about 9,000 years ago in North Africa. Domestication of bees is shown in Egyptian art from around 4,500 years ago. Simple hives and smoke were used and honey was stored in jars, some of which were found in the tombs of pharaohs such as Tutankhamun.
It wasn't until the 18th century that European understanding of the
colonies and biology of bees allowed the construction of the movable
comb hive so that honey could be harvested without destroying the entire
colony.
At some point humans began to attempt to maintain colonies of wild bees in artificial hives made from hollow logs, wooden boxes, pottery vessels, and woven straw baskets or "skeps". Traces of beeswax are found in potsherds throughout the Middle East beginning about 7000 BCE.
Honeybees were kept in Egypt from antiquity. On the walls of the sun temple of Nyuserre Ini from the Fifth Dynasty, before 2422 BCE, workers are depicted blowing smoke into hives as they are removing honeycombs. Inscriptions detailing the production of honey are found on the tomb of Pabasa from the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (c. 650 BCE), depicting pouring honey in jars and cylindrical hives. Sealed pots of honey were found in the grave goods of pharaohs such as Tutankhamun.
Stele showing Shamash-resh-ușur praying to the gods Adad and Ishtar with an inscription about beekeeping in Babylonian cuneiform
I am Shamash-resh-ușur, the
governor of Suhu and the land of Mari. Bees that collect honey, which
none of my ancestors had ever seen or brought into the land of Suhu, I
brought down from the mountain of the men of Habha, and made them settle
in the orchards of the town 'Gabbari-built-it'. They collect honey and
wax, and I know how to melt the honey and wax – and the gardeners know
too.
Whoever comes in the future, may he ask the old men of the town, (who
will say) thus: "They are the buildings of Shamash-resh-ușur, the
governor of Suhu, who introduced honey bees into the land of Suhu."
— translated text from stele, (Dalley, 2002)
In prehistoric Greece (Crete and Mycenae),
there existed a system of high-status apiculture, as can be concluded
from the finds of hives, smoking pots, honey extractors and other
beekeeping paraphernalia in Knossos.
Beekeeping was considered a highly valued industry controlled by
beekeeping overseers—owners of gold rings depicting apiculture scenes
rather than religious ones as they have been reinterpreted recently,
contra Sir Arthur Evans.
Archaeological finds relating to beekeeping have been discovered at Rehov, a Bronze and Iron Age archaeological site in the Jordan Valley, Israel. Thirty intact hives, made of straw and unbaked clay, were discovered by archaeologistAmihai Mazar
in the ruins of the city, dating from about 900 BCE. The hives were
found in orderly rows, three high, in a manner that could have
accommodated around 100 hives, held more than 1 million bees and had a
potential annual yield of 500 kilograms of honey and 70 kilograms of
beeswax, according to Mazar, and are evidence that an advanced honey
industry existed in ancient Israel 3,000 years ago.
Beekeeping has also been practiced in ancient China since antiquity. In the book "Golden Rules of Business Success" written by Fan Li (or Tao Zhu Gong) during the Spring and Autumn period
there are sections describing the art of beekeeping, stressing the
importance of the quality of the wooden box used and how this can affect
the quality of the honey. The Chinese word for honey (蜜mì, reconstructed Old Chinese pronunciation *mjit) was borrowed from Indo-Europeanproto-Tocharian language, the source of "honey", from proto-Tocharian *ḿət(ə) (where *ḿ is palatalized; cf. Tocharian B mit), cognate with English mead.
The ancient Maya domesticated a separate species of stingless bee. The use of stingless bees is referred to as meliponiculture, named after bees of the tribe Meliponini—such as Melipona quadrifasciata in Brazil. This variation of bee keeping still occurs around the world today. For instance, in Australia, the stingless bee Tetragonula carbonaria is kept for production of their honey.
Scientific study of honey bees
It
was not until the 18th century that European natural philosophers
undertook the scientific study of bee colonies and began to understand
the complex and hidden world of bee biology. Preeminent among these
scientific pioneers were Swammerdam, René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, Charles Bonnet, and François Huber.
Swammerdam and Réaumur were among the first to use a microscope and
dissection to understand the internal biology of honey bees. Réaumur was
among the first to construct a glass walled observation hive to better
observe activities within hives. He observed queens laying eggs in open
cells, but still had no idea of how a queen was fertilized; nobody had
ever witnessed the mating of a queen and drone and many theories held
that queens were "self-fertile,"
while others believed that a vapor or "miasma" emanating from the
drones fertilized queens without direct physical contact. Huber was the
first to prove by observation and experiment that queens are physically
inseminated by drones outside the confines of hives, usually a great
distance away.
Following Réaumur's design, Huber built improved glass-walled
observation hives and sectional hives that could be opened like the
leaves of a book. This allowed inspecting individual wax combs and
greatly improved direct observation of hive activity. Although he went
blind before he was twenty, Huber employed a secretary, François
Burnens, to make daily observations, conduct careful experiments, and
keep accurate notes over more than twenty years. Huber confirmed that a
hive consists of one queen who is the mother of all the female workers
and male drones in the colony. He was also the first to confirm that
mating with drones takes place outside of hives and that queens are
inseminated by a number of successive matings with male drones, high in
the air at a great distance from their hive. Together, he and Burnens
dissected bees under the microscope and were among the first to describe the ovaries and spermatheca, or sperm store, of queens as well as the penis
of male drones. Huber is universally regarded as "the father of modern
bee-science" and his "Nouvelles Observations sur Les Abeilles (or "New
Observations on Bees") revealed all the basic scientific truths for the biology and ecology of honeybees.
Invention of the movable comb hive
Rural beekeeping in the 16th century
Early forms of honey collecting entailed the destruction of the
entire colony when the honey was harvested. The wild hive was crudely
broken into, using smoke to suppress the bees, the honeycombs
were torn out and smashed up — along with the eggs, larvae and honey
they contained. The liquid honey from the destroyed brood nest was
strained through a sieve or basket. This was destructive and unhygienic,
but for hunter-gatherer
societies this did not matter, since the honey was generally consumed
immediately and there were always more wild colonies to exploit. But in
settled societies the destruction of the bee colony meant the loss of a
valuable resource; this drawback made beekeeping both inefficient and
something of a "stop and start" activity. There could be no continuity
of production and no possibility of selective breeding, since each bee
colony was destroyed at harvest time, along with its precious queen.
During the medieval period abbeys and monasteries were centers of beekeeping, since beeswax was highly prized for candles and fermented honey was used to make alcoholic mead
in areas of Europe where vines would not grow. The 18th and 19th
centuries saw successive stages of a revolution in beekeeping, which
allowed the bees themselves to be preserved when taking the harvest.
Intermediate stages in the transition from the old beekeeping to
the new were recorded for example by Thomas Wildman in 1768/1770, who
described advances over the destructive old skep-based beekeeping so
that the bees no longer had to be killed to harvest the honey.
Wildman for example fixed a parallel array of wooden bars across the
top of a straw hive or skep (with a separate straw top to be fixed on
later) "so that there are in all seven bars of deal" [in a
10-inch-diameter (250 mm) hive] "to which the bees fix their combs".
He also described using such hives in a multi-storey configuration,
foreshadowing the modern use of supers: he described adding (at a
proper time) successive straw hives below, and eventually removing the
ones above when free of brood and filled with honey, so that the bees
could be separately preserved at the harvest for a following season.
Wildman also described
a further development, using hives with "sliding frames" for the bees
to build their comb, foreshadowing more modern uses of movable-comb
hives. Wildman's book acknowledged the advances in knowledge of bees
previously made by Swammerdam, Maraldi, and de Réaumur—he included a
lengthy translation of Réaumur's account of the natural history of
bees—and he also described the initiatives of others in designing hives
for the preservation of bee-life when taking the harvest, citing in
particular reports from Brittany dating from the 1750s, due to Comte de
la Bourdonnaye.
However, the forerunners of the modern hives with movable frames that
are mainly used today are considered the traditional basket top bar
(movable comb) hives of Greece, known as “Greek beehives”. The oldest
testimony on their use dates back to 1669 although it is probable that
their use is more than 3000 years old.
The 19th century saw this revolution in beekeeping practice completed
through the perfection of the movable comb hive by the American Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth.
Langstroth was the first person to make practical use of Huber's
earlier discovery that there was a specific spatial measurement between
the wax combs, later called the bee space, which bees do not
block with wax, but keep as a free passage. Having determined this bee
space (between 5 and 8 mm, or 1/4 to 3/8"), Langstroth then designed a
series of wooden frames within a rectangular hive box, carefully
maintaining the correct space between successive frames, and found that
the bees would build parallel honeycombs in the box without bonding them
to each other or to the hive walls. This enables the beekeeper to slide
any frame out of the hive for inspection, without harming the bees or
the comb, protecting the eggs, larvae and pupae contained within the
cells. It also meant that combs containing honey could be gently removed
and the honey extracted without destroying the comb. The emptied honey
combs could then be returned to the bees intact for refilling.
Langstroth's book, The Hive and Honey-bee, published in 1853, described his rediscovery of the bee space and the development of his patent movable comb hive.
The invention and development of the movable-comb-hive fostered
the growth of commercial honey production on a large scale in both
Europe and the US.
Evolution of hive designs
Bees at the hive entrance
Langstroth's design for movable comb hives was seized upon by apiarists and inventors on both sides of the Atlantic and a wide range of moveable comb hives were designed and perfected in England, France, Germany and the United States. Classic designs evolved in each country: Dadant hives and Langstroth hives are still dominant in the US; in France the De-Layens
trough-hive became popular and in the UK a British National hive became
standard as late as the 1930s although in Scotland the smaller Smith
hive is still popular. In some Scandinavian countries and in Russia the
traditional trough hive persisted until late in the 20th century and is
still kept in some areas. However, the Langstroth and Dadant designs
remain ubiquitous in the US and also in many parts of Europe, though Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France and Italy
all have their own national hive designs. Regional variations of hive
evolved to reflect the climate, floral productivity and the reproductive
characteristics of the various subspecies of native honey bee in each
bio-region.
Honey-laden honeycomb in a wooden frame
The differences in hive dimensions are insignificant in comparison to
the common factors in all these hives: they are all square or
rectangular; they all use movable wooden frames; they all consist of a
floor, brood-box, honey super, crown-board and roof. Hives have traditionally been constructed of cedar, pine, or cypress wood, but in recent years hives made from injection molded dense polystyrene have become increasingly important.
Hives also use queen excluders between the brood-box and honey
supers to keep the queen from laying eggs in cells next to those
containing honey intended for consumption. Also, with the advent in the
20th century of mite pests, hive floors are often replaced for part of
(or the whole) year with a wire mesh and removable tray.
Flow Hive 2 with honey pouring into jars
In 2015 the Flow Hive system was invented in Australia by Cedar Anderson and his father Stuart Anderson, allowing honey to be extracted without expensive centrifuge equipment.
Pioneers of practical and commercial beekeeping
The
19th century produced an explosion of innovators and inventors who
perfected the design and production of beehives, systems of management
and husbandry, stock improvement by selective breeding, honey extraction and marketing. Preeminent among these innovators were:
Petro Prokopovych
used frames with channels in the side of the woodwork; these were
packed side by side in boxes that were stacked one on top of the other.
The bees traveled from frame to frame and box to box via the channels.
The channels were similar to the cut outs in the sides of modern wooden
sections (1814).
Jan Dzierżon was the father of modern apiology and apiculture. All modern beehives are descendants of his design.
François Huber
made significant discoveries regarding the bee life-cycle and
communication between bees. Despite being blind, Huber brought to light a
large amount of information regarding the queen bee's mating habits and
her communication with the rest of the hive. His work was published as New Observations on the Natural History of Bees.
L. L. Langstroth
revered as the "father of American apiculture"; no other individual has
influenced modern beekeeping practice more than Lorenzo Lorraine
Langstroth. His classic book The Hive and Honey-bee was published in 1853.
Moses Quinby often termed "the father of commercial beekeeping in the United States", author of Mysteries of Bee-Keeping Explained. He invented the Bee smoker in 1873.
Amos Root author of the A B C of Bee Culture,
which has been continuously revised and remains in print. Root
pioneered the manufacture of hives and the distribution of bee-packages
in the United States.
A. J. Cook author of The Bee-Keepers' Guide; or Manual of the Apiary, 1876.
Dr. C.C. Miller
was one of the first entrepreneurs to actually make a living from
apiculture. By 1878 he made beekeeping his sole business activity. His
book, Fifty Years Among the Bees, remains a classic and his influence on bee management persists to this day.
Honey Extractor
Franz Hruschka
was an Italian military officer who made one crucial invention that
catalyzed the commercial honey industry. In 1865 he invented a simple
machine for extracting honey from the comb by means of centrifugal
force. His original idea was simply to support combs in a metal
framework and then spin them around within a container to collect honey
as it was thrown out by centrifugal force. This meant that honeycombs
could be returned to a hive undamaged but empty, saving the bees a vast
amount of work, time, and materials. This single invention greatly
improved the efficiency of honey harvesting and catalysed the modern
honey industry.
Walter T. Kelley
was an American pioneer of modern beekeeping in the early and mid-20th
century. He greatly improved upon beekeeping equipment and clothing and
went on to manufacture these items as well as other equipment. His
company sold via catalog worldwide and his book, How to Keep Bees & Sell Honey, an introductory book of apiculture and marketing, allowed for a boom in beekeeping following World War II.
In the U.K. practical beekeeping was led in the early 20th century by a few men, pre-eminently Brother Adam and his Buckfast bee and R.O.B. Manley, author of many titles, including Honey Production in the British Isles
and inventor of the Manley frame, still universally popular in the U.K.
Other notable British pioneers include William Herrod-Hempsall and
Gale.
Dr. Ahmed Zaky Abushady
(1892–1955), was an Egyptian poet, medical doctor, bacteriologist and
bee scientist who was active in England and in Egypt in the early part
of the twentieth century. In 1919, Abushady patented a removable,
standardized aluminum honeycomb. In 1919 he also founded The Apis Club
in Benson, Oxfordshire, and its periodical Bee World, which was to be edited by Annie D. Betts and later by Dr. Eva Crane. The Apis Club was transitioned to the International Bee Research Association (IBRA). Its archives are held in the National Library of Wales. In Egypt in the 1930s, Abushady established The Bee Kingdom League and its organ, The Bee Kingdom.
In India, R. N. Mattoo was the pioneer worker in starting beekeeping with Indian honeybee, (Apis cerana indica) in the early 1930s. Beekeeping with European honeybee, (Apis mellifera)
was started by Dr. A. S. Atwal and his team members, O. P. Sharma and
N. P. Goyal in Punjab in the early 1960s. It remained confined to
Punjab and Himachal Pradesh up to the late 1970s. Later on in 1982, Dr.
R. C. Sihag, working at Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar
(Haryana), introduced and established this honeybee in Haryana and
standardized its management practices for semi-arid-subtropical
climates. On the basis of these practices, beekeeping with this honeybee
could be extended to the rest of the country. Now beekeeping with Apis mellifera predominates in India.
Traditional beekeeping
Wooden hives in Stripeikiai honeymaking museum, Lithuania
A
fixed comb hive is a hive in which the combs cannot be removed or
manipulated for management or harvesting without permanently damaging
the comb. Almost any hollow structure can be used for this purpose,
such as a log gum, skep,
wooden box, or a clay pot or tube. Fixed comb hives are no longer in
common use in industrialized countries, and are illegal in places that
require movable combs to inspect for problems such as varroa and American foulbrood.
In many developing countries fixed comb hives are widely used and,
because they can be made from any locally available material .
Beekeeping using fixed comb hives is an essential part of the livelihoods of many communities in poor countries. The charity Bees for Development recognizes that local skills to manage bees in fixed comb hives[26]
are widespread in Africa, Asia, and South America. Internal size of
fixed comb hives range from 32.7 liters (2000 cubic inches) typical of
the clay tube hives used in Egypt to 282 liters (17209 cubic inches) for
the Perone hive. Straw skeps,
bee gums, and unframed box hives are unlawful in most US states, as the
comb and brood cannot be inspected for diseases. However, skeps are
still used for collecting swarms by hobbyists in the UK, before moving
them into standard hives. Quinby
used box hives to produce so much honey that he saturated the New York
market in the 1860s. His writings contain excellent advice for
management of bees in fixed comb hives.
Modern beekeeping
Topbar hives
Top bar hives have been widely adopted in Africa where they are used
to keep tropical honeybee ecotypes. Their advantages include being
light weight, adaptable, easy to harvest honey, and less stressful for
the bees. Disadvantages include combs that are fragile and cannot
usually be extracted and returned to the bees to be refilled and that
they cannot easily be expanded for additional honey storage.
A growing number of amateur beekeepers are adopting various top-bar hives
similar to the type commonly found in Africa. Top bar hives were
originally used as a traditional beekeeping method in Greece and Vietnam
with a history dating back over 2000 years.
These hives have no frames and the honey-filled comb is not returned
after extraction. Because of this, the production of honey is likely to
be somewhat less than that of a frame and super based hive such as
Langstroth or Dadant. Top bar hives are mostly kept by people who are
more interested in having bees in their garden than in honey production
per se. Some of the most well known top-bar hive designs are the Kenyan
Top Bar Hive with sloping sides, the Tanzanian Top Bar Hive with
straight sides, and Vertical Top Bar Hives, such as the Warre or
"People's Hive" designed by Abbe Warre in the mid-1900s.
The initial costs and equipment requirements are typically much
less than other hive designs. Scrap wood or #2 or #3 pine can often be
used to build a nice hive. Top-bar hives also offer some advantages to
interacting with the bees and the amount of weight that must be lifted
is greatly reduced. Top-bar hives are being widely used in developing
countries in Africa and Asia as a result of the Bees for Development program. Since 2011, a growing number of beekeepers in the U.S. are using various top-bar hives.
Vertical stackable hives
There are three types of vertical stackable hives: hanging or top-access frame, sliding or side-access frame, and top bar.
Hanging frame hives include Langstroth,
the British National, Dadant, Layens, and Rose, differing primarily by
size or number of frames. The Langstroth was the first successful
top-opened hive with movable frames. Many other hive designs are based
on the principle of bee space first described by Langstroth, and is a descendant of Jan Dzierzon's Polish hive designs. Langstroth hives are the most common size in the United States and much of the world; the British National is the most common size in the United Kingdom;
Dadant and Modified Dadant hives are widely used in France and Italy,
and Layens by some beekeepers, where their large size is an advantage.
Square Dadant hives–often called 12 frame Dadant or Brother Adam
hives–are used in large parts of Germany and other parts of Europe by
commercial beekeepers.
Any hanging frame hive design can be built as a sliding frame
design. The AZ Hive, the original sliding frame design, integrates
hives using Langstroth-sized frames into a honey house so as to
streamline the workflow of honey harvest by localization of labor,
similar to cellular manufacturing.
The honey house can be a portable trailer, allowing the beekeeper to
haul the hives to a site and provide pollination services.
Top bar stackable hives simply use top bars instead of full
frames. The most common type is the Warre hive, although any hive with
hanging frames can be made into a top bar stackable hive by using only
the top bar and not the whole frame. This may work less-well with
larger frames, where crosscomb and attachment can occur more-readily.
Protective clothing
Beekeepers often wear protective clothing to protect themselves from stings
Most beekeepers also wear some protective clothing. Novice beekeepers
usually wear gloves and a hooded suit or hat and veil. Experienced
beekeepers sometimes elect not to use gloves because they inhibit
delicate manipulations. The face and neck are the most important areas
to protect, so most beekeepers wear at least a veil. Defensive bees are
attracted to the breath, and a sting on the face can lead to much more
pain and swelling than a sting elsewhere, while a sting on a bare hand
can usually be quickly removed by fingernail scrape to reduce the amount
of venom injected.
Traditionally beekeeping clothing was pale colored and this is
still very common today. This is because of the natural color of cotton
and cost of coloring was an expense not warranted for workwear, though
some consider this is to provide better differentiation from the
colony's natural predators (such as bears and skunks) which tend to be
dark-colored. It is now known that bees see in ultraviolet and are also
attracted to scent. So the type of fabric conditioner used has more
impact than the color of the fabric.
'Stings' retained in clothing fabric continue to pump out an alarm pheromone
that attracts aggressive action and further stinging attacks. Washing
suits regularly, and rinsing gloved hands in vinegar minimizes
attraction.
Smoker
Bee smoker with heat shield and hook
Smoke is the beekeeper's third line of defense. Most beekeepers use a
"smoker"—a device designed to generate smoke from the incomplete
combustion of various fuels. Smoke calms bees; it initiates a feeding
response in anticipation of possible hive abandonment due to fire.
Smoke also masks alarm pheromones released by guard bees or when bees
are squashed in an inspection. The ensuing confusion creates an
opportunity for the beekeeper to open the hive and work without
triggering a defensive reaction. In addition, when a bee consumes honey
the bee's abdomen distends, supposedly making it difficult to make the
necessary flexes to sting, though this has not been tested
scientifically.
Many types of fuel can be used in a smoker as long as it is
natural and not contaminated with harmful substances. These fuels
include hessian, twine, burlap,
pine needles, corrugated cardboard, and mostly rotten or punky wood.
Indian beekeepers, especially in Kerala, often use coconut fibers as
they are readily available, safe, and of negligible expense. Some
beekeeping supply sources also sell commercial fuels like pulped paper
and compressed cotton, or even aerosol cans of smoke. Other beekeepers
use sumac as fuel because it ejects lots of smoke and doesn't have an odor.
Some beekeepers are using "liquid smoke" as a safer, more
convenient alternative. It is a water-based solution that is sprayed
onto the bees from a plastic spray bottle.
Torpor may also be induced by the introduction of chilled air
into the hive – while chilled carbon dioxide may have harmful long-term
effects.
Effects of stings and of protective measures
Some
beekeepers believe that the more stings a beekeeper receives, the less
irritation each causes, and they consider it important for safety of the
beekeeper to be stung a few times a season. Beekeepers have high levels
of antibodies (mainly IgG) reacting to the major antigen of bee venom, phospholipase A2 (PLA). Antibodies correlate with the frequency of bee stings.
The entry of venom into the body from bee-stings may also be
hindered and reduced by protective clothing that allows the wearer to
remove stings and venom sacs with a simple tug on the clothing. Although
the stinger is barbed, a worker bee is less likely to become lodged
into clothing than human skin.
If a beekeeper is stung by a bee, there are many protective
measures that should be taken in order to make sure the affected area
does not become too irritated. The first cautionary step that should be
taken following a bee sting is removing the stinger without squeezing
the attached venom glands. A quick scrape with a fingernail is effective
and intuitive. This step is effective in making sure that the venom
injected does not spread, so the side effects of the sting will go away
sooner. Washing the affected area with soap and water is also a good way
to stop the spread of venom. The last step that needs to be taken is to
apply ice or a cold compress to the stung area.
Natural beekeeping
The
natural beekeeping movement believes that bee hives are weakened by
modern beekeeping and agricultural practices, such as crop spraying,
hive movement, frequent hive inspections, artificial insemination of queens, routine medication, and sugar water feeding.
Practitioners of "natural beekeeping" tend to use variations of
the top-bar hive, which is a simple design that retains the concept of
having a movable comb without the use of frames or a foundation. The
horizontal top-bar hive, as championed by Marty Hardison, Michael Bush,
Philip Chandler, Dennis Murrell and others, can be seen as a
modernization of hollow log hives, with the addition of wooden bars of
specific width from which bees hang their combs. Its widespread adoption
in recent years can be attributed to the publication in 2007 of The Barefoot Beekeeper
by Philip Chandler, which challenged many aspects of modern beekeeping
and offered the horizontal top-bar hive as a viable alternative to the
ubiquitous Langstroth-style movable-frame hive.
The most popular vertical top-bar hive is the Warré hive, based
on a design by the French priest Abbé Émile Warré (1867–1951) and
popularized by Dr. David Heaf in his English translation of Warré's book
L'Apiculture pour Tous as Beekeeping For All.
Honey bee in Toronto
Urban or backyard beekeeping
Related to natural beekeeping, urban beekeeping is an attempt to revert to a less industrialized way of obtaining honey by utilizing small-scale colonies that pollinate urban gardens.
Urban apiculture has undergone a renaissance in the first decade of
the 21st century, and urban beekeeping is seen by many as a growing
trend.
Some have found that "city bees" are actually healthier than
"rural bees" because there are fewer pesticides and greater biodiversity
in the urban gardens.
Urban bees may fail to find forage, however, and homeowners can use
their landscapes to help feed local bee populations by planting flowers
that provide nectar and pollen. An environment of year-round,
uninterrupted bloom creates an ideal environment for colony
reproduction.
Urban beekeepers are testing modern types of beehives, testing
for urban contest and ease of use. In 2015 the FlowHive appeared and in
2018 Beeing, a hive made in Italy, that allows the beekeeper to extract honey without having contact with the bees.
Modern
beekeepers have experimented with raising bees indoors, in a controlled
environment or in indoor observation hives. This may be done for
reasons of space and monitoring, or in the off-season. In the
off-season, large commercial beekeepers may move colonies to "wintering"
warehouses, with fixed temperature, light and humidity. This helps the
bees remain healthy, but relatively dormant. These relatively dormant
or "wintered" bees survive on stored honey, and new bees are not born.
Experiments in raising bees for longer durations indoors have
looked into more detailed and varying environment controls. In 2015, MIT's Synthetic Apiary
project simulated springtime inside a closed environment, for a number
of hives over the course of a winter. They provided food sources and
simulated long days, and saw activity and reproduction levels comparable
to the levels seen outdoors in warm weather. They concluded that such
an indoor apiary could be sustained year-round if needed.
Bee colonies
Species
There are more than 20,000 species of wild bees. Many species are solitary (e.g., mason bees, leafcutter bees (Megachilidae), carpenter bees and other ground-nesting bees). Many others rear their young in burrows and small colonies (e.g., bumblebees and stingless bees). Some honey bees are wild e.g. the little honeybee (Apis florea), giant honeybee (Apis dorsata) and rock bee (Apis laboriosa).
Beekeeping, or apiculture, is concerned with the practical management
of the social species of honey bees, which live in large colonies of up
to 100,000 individuals. In Europe and America the species universally managed by beekeepers is the Western honey bee (Apis mellifera). This species has several sub-species or regional varieties, such as the Italian bee (Apis mellifera ligustica), European dark bee (Apis mellifera mellifera), and the Carniolan honey bee (Apis mellifera carnica). In the tropics, other species of social bees are managed for honey production, including the Asiatic honey bee (Apis cerana).
Castes
A colony of bees consists of three castes of bee:
a queen bee, which is normally the only breeding female in the colony;
a large number of female worker bees, typically 30,000–50,000 in number;
a number of male drones, ranging from thousands in a strong hive in spring to very few during dearth or cold season.
Queen bee (center)
The queen is the only sexually mature female in the hive and all of
the female worker bees and male drones are her offspring. The queen may
live for up to three years or more and may be capable of laying half a
million eggs or more in her lifetime. At the peak of the breeding
season, late spring to summer, a good queen may be capable of laying
3,000 eggs in one day, more than her own body weight. This would be
exceptional however; a prolific queen might peak at 2,000 eggs a day,
but a more average queen might lay just 1,500 eggs per day. The queen is
raised from a normal worker egg, but is fed a larger amount of royal jelly
than a normal worker bee, resulting in a radically different growth and
metamorphosis. The queen influences the colony by the production and
dissemination of a variety of pheromones
or "queen substances". One of these chemicals suppresses the
development of ovaries in all the female worker bees in the hive and
prevents them from laying eggs.
Mating of queens
The
queen emerges from her cell after 15 days of development and she
remains in the hive for 3–7 days before venturing out on a mating
flight. Mating flight is otherwise known as "nuptial flight". Her first
orientation flight may only last a few seconds, just enough to mark the
position of the hive. Subsequent mating flights may last from 5 minutes
to 30 minutes, and she may mate with a number of male drones on each
flight. Over several matings, possibly a dozen or more, the queen
receives and stores enough sperm
from a succession of drones to fertilize hundreds of thousands of eggs.
If she does not manage to leave the hive to mate—possibly due to bad
weather or being trapped in part of the hive—she remains infertile and
becomes a drone layer, incapable of producing female worker bees.
Worker bees sometimes kill a non-performing queen and produce another.
Without a properly performing queen, the hive is doomed.
Mating takes place at some distance from the hive and often
several hundred feet in the air; it is thought that this separates the
strongest drones from the weaker ones, ensuring that only the fastest
and strongest drones get to pass on their genes.
Worker bees
Worker bee
Most of the bees in a hive are female worker bees. At the height of
summer when activity in the hive is frantic and work goes on non-stop,
the life of a worker bee may be as short as 6 weeks; in late autumn,
when no brood is being raised and no nectar is being harvested, a young bee may live for 16 weeks, right through the winter.
Over the course of their lives, worker bees' duties are dictated
by age. For the first few weeks of their lifespan, they perform basic
chores within the hive: cleaning empty brood cells, removing debris and
other housekeeping tasks, making wax for building or repairing comb, and
feeding larvae. Later, they may ventilate the hive or guard the
entrance. Older workers leave the hive daily, weather permitting, to
forage for nectar, pollen, water, and propolis.
Entrance guards; nectar, pollen, water and
propolis foraging; robbing other hives
Drones
Larger drones compared to smaller workers
Drones are the largest bees in the hive (except for the queen), at
almost twice the size of a worker bee. Note in the picture that they
have much larger eyes than the workers have, presumably to better locate
the queen during the mating flight. They do not work, do not forage for
pollen or nectar, are unable to sting, and have no other known function
than to mate with new queens and fertilize them on their mating
flights. A bee colony generally starts to raise drones a few weeks
before building queen cells so they can supersede a failing queen or
prepare for swarming. When queen-raising for the season is over, bees in
colder climates drive drones out of the hive to die, biting and tearing
their legs and wings.
Differing stages of development
Stage of development
Queen
Worker
Drone
Egg
3 days
3 days
3 days
Larva (successive molts)
8 days
10 days
13 days
Cell Capped
day 8
day 8
day 10
Pupa
4 days
8 days
8 days
Total
15 days
21 days
24 days
Structure of a bee colony
A
domesticated bee colony is normally housed in a rectangular hive body,
within which eight to ten parallel frames house the vertical plates of
honeycomb that contain the eggs, larvae, pupae and food for the colony.
If one were to cut a vertical cross-section through the hive from side
to side, the brood nest would appear as a roughly ovoid ball spanning
5–8 frames of comb. The two outside combs at each side of the hive tend
to be exclusively used for long-term storage of honey and pollen.
Within the central brood nest, a single frame of comb typically
has a central disk of eggs, larvae and sealed brood cells that may
extend almost to the edges of the frame. Immediately above the brood
patch an arch of pollen-filled
cells extends from side to side, and above that again a broader arch of
honey-filled cells extends to the frame tops. The pollen is
protein-rich food for developing larvae, while honey is also food but
largely energy rich rather than protein rich. The nurse bees that care
for the developing brood secrete a special food called "royal jelly"
after feeding themselves on honey and pollen. The amount of royal jelly
fed to a larva determines whether it develops into a worker bee or a
queen.
Apart from the honey stored within the central brood frames, the
bees store surplus honey in combs above the brood nest. In modern hives
the beekeeper places separate boxes, called "supers", above the brood
box, in which a series of shallower combs is provided for storage of
honey. This enables the beekeeper to remove some of the supers in the
late summer, and to extract the surplus honey harvest, without damaging
the colony of bees and its brood nest below. If all the honey is taken,
including the amount of honey needed to survive winter, the beekeeper
must replace these stores by feeding the bees sugar or corn syrup in autumn.
Annual cycle of a bee colony
The
development of a bee colony follows an annual cycle of growth that
begins in spring with a rapid expansion of the brood nest, as soon as
pollen is available for feeding larvae. Some production of brood may
begin as early as January, even in a cold winter, but breeding
accelerates towards a peak in May (in the northern hemisphere),
producing an abundance of harvesting bees synchronized to the main nectar flow
in that region. Each race of bees times this build-up slightly
differently, depending on how the flora of its original region blooms.
Some regions of Europe have two nectar flows: one in late spring and
another in late August. Other regions have only a single nectar flow.
The skill of the beekeeper lies in predicting when the nectar flow will
occur in his area and in trying to ensure that his colonies achieve a
maximum population of harvesters at exactly the right time.
The key factor in this is the prevention or skillful management
of the swarming impulse. If a colony swarms unexpectedly and the
beekeeper does not manage to capture the resulting swarm, he is likely
to harvest significantly less honey from that hive, since he has lost
half his worker bees at a single stroke. If, however, he can use the
swarming impulse to breed a new queen but keep all the bees in the
colony together, he maximizes his chances of a good harvest. It takes
many years of learning and experience to be able to manage all these
aspects successfully, though owing to variable circumstances many
beginners often achieve a good honey harvest.
Formation of new colonies
Colony reproduction: swarming and supersedure
A swarm about to land
All colonies are totally dependent on their queen, who is the only
egg-layer. However, even the best queens live only a few years and one
or two years longevity is the norm. She can choose whether or not to
fertilize an egg as she lays it; if she does so, it develops into a
female worker bee; if she lays an unfertilized egg it becomes a male
drone. She decides which type of egg to lay depending on the size of the
open brood cell she encounters on the comb. In a small worker cell, she
lays a fertilized egg; if she finds a larger drone cell, she lays an
unfertilized drone egg.
All the time that the queen is fertile and laying eggs she
produces a variety of pheromones, which control the behavior of the bees
in the hive. These are commonly called queen substance, but
there are various pheromones with different functions. As the queen
ages, she begins to run out of stored sperm, and her pheromones begin to
fail.
Inevitably, the queen begins to falter, and the bees decide to
replace her by creating a new queen from one of her worker eggs. They
may do this because she has been damaged (lost a leg or an antenna),
because she has run out of sperm and cannot lay fertilized eggs (has
become a "drone laying queen"), or because her pheromones have dwindled
to where they cannot control all the bees in the hive. At this juncture,
the bees produce one or more queen cells by modifying existing worker
cells that contain a normal female egg. They then pursue one of two
ways to replace the queen: supersedure, replacing or superseding the queen without swarming, or swarm cell production, dividing the hive into two colonies through swarming.
Supersedure is highly valued as a behavioral trait by beekeepers.
A hive that supersedes its old queen does not lose any stock. Instead
it creates a new queen and the old one fades away or is killed when the
new queen emerges. In these hives, the bees produce just one or two
queen cells, characteristically in the center of the face of a
broodcomb.
Swarm cell production involves creating many queen cells,
typically a dozen or more. These are located around the edges of a
broodcomb, often at the sides and the bottom.
New wax combs between basement joists
Once either process has begun, the old queen leaves the hive with the
hatching of the first queen cells. She leaves accompanied by a large
number of bees, predominantly young bees (wax-secretors), who form the
basis of the new hive. Scouts are sent out from the swarm to find
suitable hollow trees or rock crevices. As soon as one is found, the
entire swarm moves in. Within a matter of hours, they build new wax
brood combs, using honey stores that the young bees have filled
themselves with before leaving the old hive. Only young bees can secrete
wax from special abdominal segments, and this is why swarms tend to
contain more young bees. Often a number of virgin queens accompany the
first swarm (the "prime swarm"), and the old queen is replaced as soon
as a daughter queen mates and begins laying. Otherwise, she is quickly
superseded in the new home.
Different sub-species of Apis mellifera exhibit differing
swarming characteristics. In general the more northerly black races are
said to swarm less and supersede more, whereas the more southerly
yellow and grey varieties are said to swarm more frequently. The truth
is complicated because of the prevalence of cross-breeding and
hybridization of the sub species.
Factors that trigger swarming
Some
beekeepers may monitor their colonies carefully in spring and watch for
the appearance of queen cells, which are a dramatic signal that the
colony is determined to swarm.
A swarm attached to a branch
This swarm looks for shelter. A beekeeper may capture it and
introduce it into a new hive, helping meet this need. Otherwise, it
returns to a feral state, in which case it finds shelter in a hollow tree, excavation, abandoned chimney, or even behind shutters.
A small after-swarm has less chance of survival and may threaten
the original hive's survival if the number of individuals left is
unsustainable. When a hive swarms despite the beekeeper's preventative
efforts, a good management practice is to give the reduced hive a couple
frames of open brood with eggs. This helps replenish the hive more
quickly and gives a second opportunity to raise a queen if there is a
mating failure.
Each race or sub-species of honey bee has its own swarming
characteristics. Italian bees are very prolific and inclined to swarm;
Northern European black bees have a strong tendency to supersede their
old queen without swarming. These differences are the result of
differing evolutionary pressures in the regions where each sub-species
evolved.
Artificial swarming
When a colony accidentally loses its queen, it is said to be
"queenless". The workers realize that the queen is absent after as
little as an hour, as her pheromones fade in the hive. Instinctively,
the workers select cells containing eggs aged less than three days and
enlarge these cells dramatically to form "emergency queen cells". These
appear similar to large peanut-like structures about an inch long that
hang from the center or side of the brood combs. The developing larva in
a queen cell is fed differently from an ordinary worker-bee; in
addition to the normal honey and pollen, she receives a great deal of
royal jelly, a special food secreted by young "nurse bees" from the
hypopharyngeal gland. This special food dramatically alters the growth
and development of the larva so that, after metamorphosis and pupation,
it emerges from the cell as a queen bee. The queen is the only bee in a
colony which has fully developed ovaries, and she secretes a pheromone
which suppresses the normal development of ovaries in all her workers.
Beekeepers use the ability of the bees to produce new queens to increase their colonies in a procedure called splitting a colony.
To do this, they remove several brood combs from a healthy hive, taking
care to leave the old queen behind. These combs must contain eggs or
larvae less than three days old and be covered by young nurse bees,
which care for the brood and keep it warm. These brood combs and
attendant nurse bees are then placed into a small "nucleus hive" with
other combs containing honey and pollen. As soon as the nurse bees find
themselves in this new hive and realize they have no queen, they set
about constructing emergency queen cells using the eggs or larvae they
have in the combs with them.
Losses
Diseases
The common agents of disease that affect adult honey bees include fungi, bacteria, protozoa, viruses, parasites, and poisons.
The gross symptoms displayed by affected adult bees are very similar,
whatever the cause, making it difficult for the apiarist to ascertain
the causes of problems without microscopic identification of
microorganisms or chemical analysis of poisons. Since 2006 colony losses from colony collapse disorder have been increasing across the world although the causes of the syndrome are, as yet, unknown. In the US, commercial beekeepers have been increasing the number of hives to deal with higher rates of attrition.
Parasites
Galleria mellonella and Achroia grisella
“wax moth” larvae that hatch, tunnel through, and destroy comb that
contains bee larvae and their honey stores. The tunnels they create are
lined with silk, which entangles and starves emerging bees. Destruction
of honeycombs also results in honey leaking and being wasted. A healthy
hive can manage wax moths, but weak colonies, unoccupied hives, and
stored frames can be decimated.
Small hive beetle(Aethina tumida) is native to Africa but has now spread to most continents. It is a serious pest among honey bees unadapted to it.
Varroa destructor,
the Varroa mite, is an established pest of two species of honey bee
through many parts of the world, and is blamed by many researchers as a
leading cause of CCD.
Acarapis woodi, the tracheal mite, infests the trachea of honey bees.
Predators
Most
predators prefer not to eat honeybees due to their unpleasant sting,
but they still have some predators. These include large animals such as
skunks or bears, which are after the honey and brood in the nest as well
as the adult bees themselves.
Some birds will also eat bees (for example, bee-eaters, which are named
for their bee-centric diet), as do some robber flies, such as Mallophora ruficauda, which is a pest of apiculture in South America due to its habit of eating workers while they are foraging in meadows.
World apiculture
According to U.N. FAOdata,
the world's beehive stock rose from around 50 million in 1961 to around
83 million in 2014, which comes to about 1.3% average annual growth.
Average annual growth has accelerated to 1.9% since 2009.
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