CATDOLL : CATDOLL: How to keep bees?

The first thing is to choose a site for beekeeping. First, there must be a good nectar source. The apiary should be chosen in a place that is sheltered from the wind and facing the sun, with woods around. It should not be too humid or too sunny, and it should not be near a large pond or river.

The construction and maintenance of the honeycomb should be started in late spring when the climate is stable and the temperature is around 15°C. The honeycomb needs to be protected from bee robbers and rats, and it is best to use drug fumigation to preserve it.

First, check whether there are many bees. If the number of bees is decreasing, it should be taken seriously. It may be due to swarming, pests and diseases, or the queen bee has been lost and is not producing any more bees. When checking bees, beginners are advised to wear bee-proof clothing and hats to avoid being stung.

Beekeeping management in spring is very important. The key to beekeeping in spring is also very important. Spring is the breeding season for bees. Therefore, it is particularly important to do a good job of spring management. The main tasks of spring management are to provide sufficient feed, strengthen management, find problems and deal with them in time.

In spring, bee management should pay attention to strengthening warmth and preventing bee mites. Regular inspections should be conducted to find problems, and dead bees should be removed every half a month. If honeycomb residues are found to be accumulated, the lid should be opened for inspection in time. Generally, this is caused by mice, and the honeycombs that are bitten by mice should be replaced in time.

The bees that fly out in the spring need good and normal defecation. Normal defecation looks like sorghum grains or lines. If the bees have swollen stomachs and lie in front of the nest to defecate with loose spots, it means that the feed of the bee colony is poor or damp, and it should be replaced in time.

There are many tools for beekeeping and management. In addition to beehives, there are also nest foundations, honey dividers, nets, scrapers, bee brooms, queen excluders, etc. They are all necessary and should be selected according to the scale of the bees. Other bee tools, such as tools for producing royal jelly and bee pollen, can be purchased as needed. Special tools for beekeeping. One end is a curved knife, and the other end is a flat knife. Use it to pry, scrape, and shovel things. For example, pry the sub-cover and scrape the dirt inside the beehive and on the nest frame.

Beekeeping knowledge:

Preliminary understanding: Before beekeeping, let's first learn some knowledge about bees. At present, there are 7 million colonies of bees in my country, of which 90% are European bees imported from abroad, including Italian bees and Northeast black bees, and 10% are Chinese bees. Italian bees, referred to as Italian bees. They are widely raised in North China and Northeast China. Northeast black bees are an intermediate type of European black bees. They have strong reproductive capacity and good wintering performance in cold areas. But they cannot maintain strong colonies in areas with low latitudes. Chinese bees are referred to as Chinese bees, which are suitable for living in Northeast, Northwest, North China, East China, Southwest and other regions of my country.

Social insects: A group of bees usually consists of a queen bee, 1% drones, and 99% worker bees. The queen bee, drones, and worker bees each have their own specialties in the group, work together, and depend on each other. The queen bee is the female bee in the bee colony. Under normal circumstances, there is only one queen bee in a group of bees. The queen bee's duty is to lay eggs. After the queen bee mates once, the sperm stored in the spermatheca can meet the needs of reproduction throughout her life. She starts laying eggs 2 to 3 days after mating. A queen bee can lay 1,500 to 2,000 eggs a day and night.

Understanding bee eggs: One is a fertilized egg, which can develop into a worker bee, and the other is an unfertilized egg, which can develop into a drone. The queen bee develops from the fertilized eggs in the queen cell. The queen cell is also called the queen cell. The eggs in the queen cell grow up eating royal jelly, so they develop into the queen bee.

Queen bee breeding: The breeding of new queen bees is usually carried out in autumn (usually in summer) to prepare for high production in the next year. When two queen bees appear in a bee colony, they will fight each other until only one queen bee is left. Worker bees are incompletely developed female bees in the bee colony. After the worker bee larvae hatch, they are fed royal jelly by adult worker bees for the first three days, and then fed a mixture of honey and pollen from the fourth day.

Drone characteristics: Drones have no working instincts and specialize in mating with virgin queens. Most drones begin to fly at 7 to 10 days old and become sexually mature at 12 days old. Mating usually takes place between 1 and 5 p.m. on sunny days.

Development stage: Every bee goes through four stages of development: egg, larva, pupa, and adult bee. After the queen bee lays the fertilized eggs in the hive, worker bees will instinctively secrete some royal jelly around the eggs within 6 hours.

Bee breeding equipment:

Beehive: Beehive is also known as honeycomb, which is the place where bees live, reproduce and store food. Beehive consists of a large cover, straw curtain, cover cloth, sub-cover, honeycomb, partition, queen excluder and other parts. There are thousands of neatly arranged and interconnected hexagonal cells on both sides of the honeycomb.

Honeycomb: Honeycomb fixed on a wooden frame is called a frame of honeycomb. According to the amount of honey, pollen, and larvae on the honeycomb, it is called honeycomb, pollen comb, and brood comb. According to the age of the brood comb, it is divided into egg comb, worm comb, capped comb, and empty comb. The beehive with 10 frames of honeycomb is the most widely used standard beehive. The hive can be expanded in time by stacking supers.

Bee path: The distance between each honeycomb is called the bee path.

Queen excluder: Queen excluder is used to separate the insect breeding area and the honey storage area, which is beneficial to the maturation and collection of honey and improves production efficiency.

Additional information:

Beekeeping is the process of raising bees to obtain products such as honey, royal jelly, propolis, pollen, beeswax, bee pupae and bee venom. It is included in the category of livestock in a broad sense, so bees are also livestock in a broad sense. The history of beekeeping is thousands of years old, and the use of honey began in the fishing and hunting era.

In the Middle Stone Age in 7000 BC, there are pictures of women climbing vines to collect honey in the murals in Spain. In the temples of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt in 2600 BC, there are reliefs of beekeepers blowing smoke into the hive to drive away the bees. This is the earliest historical fact of beekeeping in the world. Historians and researchers have inferred from the results of studying oracle bones that beekeeping has existed in my country since the Shang Dynasty.

Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia of Beekeeping

1. When purchasing bee colonies, you must choose the type of bee based on the local nectar source, climate and other conditions. In the plains of Northwest, North China and Northeast my country, where the summer is dry and there are large nectar sources with a long nectar flow period, Italian bees can be chosen. In the mountainous areas of Northeast China, the winter is long and cold, the spring is short, and the main nectar source blooms early, so you can choose the Northeast Black Bee, which has strong cold resistance. If the local area is located in the mountains and there is no concentrated large nectar source, you can choose the Chinese bee.

2. No. Just choose the right peak group according to the local climate and nectar source.

3. We need beehives, which are places for bees to live, reproduce and store food. The beehive consists of a large cover, straw curtains, covering cloth, auxiliary cover, honeycomb, partitions, queen excluder and other parts. There are thousands of neatly arranged and interconnected hexagonal cells on both sides of the honeycomb.

Additional information:

The environmental conditions of the beekeeping site are closely related to the success or failure of beekeeping and the output of bee products, so the bee farm should be established in a place with abundant nectar sources and suitable environment. Within a radius of 2.5 kilometers around the beekeeping site, there should be at least one or two large areas of major nectar plants throughout the year. The beekeeping site should be sheltered from the wind and facing the sun, with high and dry terrain, no water accumulation, and a suitable microclimate.

It is best to have a courtyard wall or dense forest on the northwest side. In mountainous areas, you should choose a south-facing slope at the foot of the mountain or on the hillside, with a windbreak behind it, an open area in front with plenty of sunshine, and sparse small trees in the middle of the site.

It is an ideal place to build a bee farm because it can protect against cold winds in winter and spring and provide shade from the scorching sun in summer. There should be a clean water source near the bee farm. It is even better if there is a stream with water flowing all year round, which can provide water for the bees. The bee farm should not be close to reservoirs, lakes, or rivers.

Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia_Beekeeping

A strong colony of Chinese bees, the picture comes from a bee friend

1. To raise bees, you need a place to place the bees. You can't just place the bees anywhere. If you have a small number of bees, you can choose any place to place the bees. For fixed-point beekeeping, choosing a site is also very important. The site you choose should be high to avoid flooding during the rainy season. The location where the beehive is placed should be shaded. There should be sufficient pollen and nectar sources within a few kilometers. There should be a clean water source near the site for the bees to collect. The site should be quiet.

Beekeeper's apiary

2. To raise bees, you need to have sufficient feed. Bees’ feed is pollen and honey. Only with sufficient feed can bees grow normally. Therefore, when it is found that the bees’ feed is insufficient, it is necessary to supplement the feed artificially.

3. Choose a good bee species, preferably one that is adapted to your local environment. Only a good bee species can raise a strong colony, and raising a strong colony of bees can produce high honey.

4. When raising bees, always keep more bees than combs. Do not add combs randomly. When the bees have built combs, and there are abundant pollen and nectar sources outside, add combs when there are many young worker bees, because the young worker bees who secrete beeswax to build combs are just a few days old. Being greedy for combs will make the bees weaker and more susceptible to diseases.

5. Prevent pests and diseases. Chinese bees have no resistance to nest worms, so the bottom of the beehive should be cleaned frequently, and too old honeycombs should be discarded. Honeycombs are generally replaced once a year. Chinese bees love new honeycombs and hate old ones. Old honeycombs are prone to nest worms. In the season when wasps are rampant, we should also pay attention to the harm of wasps to bees. There are also various other diseases and pests. If you don't understand, consult a local experienced beekeeper. Don't blindly use drugs on bees.