Beekeeping

General notes

• oil seed rape - Dark bees can work better than Italian bees
  • Summer - crystallises easily

Recommended reading

• Guide to Bees & Honey by Ted Hooper
  • Read - excellent introduction to bees and their ways
  • Feeding etc not necessarily the recommended way today
• Principles of Practical Beekeeping by Robert Couston
  • Especially useful for northern beekeepers
  • excellent somewhat dated/difficult to get - out of print
• Practical Beekeeping by Clive De Bruyn
• Beekeeping Study Notes by J.D. Yates and B.D. Yates
  • for exam

Beekeeping year

Spring

• Check for normal laying pattern

Summer

• Verroa strips impermeate wax don't use during heather honey collection

Autumn

• cover hive in chicken wire - protect from woodpeckers

Winter

• Don't insulate during winter so bees will properly hibernate - Dark bees in the north
  • Otherwise use up all stores and starve
  • Insulation can work well for larger colonies

Essential equipment

• Hat
• Smoker
• Hive tool or two
• Queen cage
• Bee escapes
• Tool box
• Bee brush
• Queen excluder

Can expect 30lbs of honey per hive per year

Community

Castes

Type	number
Queen	1
Drone	250 to 2000
Female foragers	20,000
Female house bees	40,000
Lave	9000
Pupae	20,000
Eggs	6,000
Total	90,000 to 100,000

Identification

• Queen - size bigger especially abdomen, thorax wider, may be reddish, wings longer
• Drones - Blunt, rounded abdomen, thorax wider bigger rounded eyes, wing shape

Queen excluder relies on size of thorax - also stops drones

Bee Space

4.3mm	Queen excluder spacing
4.5 - 5mm	Single bee space
5mm	Pollen stripping space
7mm	Good gap for top bars
9mm	Back to back bee space
>9mm	Brace comb

http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/bsp.html

Anatomy

• Antennae - Taste, smell, hearing (Johnston's organ)
  • Antennae cleaner notch on front leg
• Tongue - five parts forms a tube
• Eyes - compound, movement sensitive - more UV biased - no red
• Honey stomach- carrying nectar home
• Bristles on back leg to collect pollen from body
• Pollen basked on hind leg
• Notch in knee to compact pollen
• Breath through spiracles (holes in body) by pulsating
• Nasonov gland - scent to call bees to gather - Lemon balm similar scent
  • Use crushed lemon balm leaves on hands to help calm bees when handling
  • Used to attract bees to hive - Esp in Africa
• Stings gives off attack scent - scrape out with hive tool asap

Bee's ingeniously built - a flying swish army knife

Tanging - banging pots/pans to make a swarm land - Theory is sound of thunder causes bees to try and find somewhere to settle

Angry Bees

Reasons for angry/aggressive bees

1. Handling at wrong time of day
2. Lack of pheromones - weak queen
3. Bad handling
4. Bad smells (for bees) Alcohol/perfume etc
5. Lack of crops - Bees are loyal to a particular crop if this goes out of season while many bees are still loyal to it...
6. Noise
7. They are an aggressive strain - genetic

Keeping tips

• Let the bees get cold in winter - don't over insulate
  • Don't make it too cosy or they keep too many over winter, they eat all their stores, they stave
  • Only for northern bees
• Feed them honey over winter not sugar
  • The honey is a better food and will keep them healthier
  • Use only local honey - foreign may cause illness
  • Over heated honey (shop) will kill antibiotic properties
• Use chicken wire to stop wood peckers
• Bang tray/pans to capture/stop a swarm
  • Sound of thunder makes the swam land
  • Bees can hear - recently discovered
• Bees nasanov gland is a call to other bees
  • Lemon balm can be used to capture bees - similar scent

Making food - sugar syrup

Over heading sugar syrup (boiling) creates HMF (HydroxyMethylFurfuraldehyde) toxic to bees Also commercial product: Ambrosia syrup

Shopping List

• Protective clothing
• Smoker
• Hive tool
• Feeder
• Marker pen
• Queen cage
• Bee escapes
• Tool box
• Bee brush/feather
• Queen excluder