CATDOLL : CATDOLL: Why should we vigorously develop the beekeeping industry?

Why should we vigorously develop beekeeping?

(1) The export of bee products can help the country earn foreign exchange. my country is the world's largest beekeeping country, ranking first in the world in terms of both the number of bee colonies and the output of bee products. There are about 7 million bee colonies in the country, of which about 4 million are Western bee species. In 1999, the total honey production was 180,000 tons, of which about 100,000 tons were exported abroad; the total royal jelly production was about 1,300 tons, of which about 700 tons were exported abroad, accounting for more than 95% of the world's royal jelly production; the bee pollen production was about 1,200 tons, of which about 400 tons were exported abroad; the propolis production was about 300 tons, of which about 100 tons were exported abroad; the total output value reached 2 billion yuan, and the annual foreign exchange earnings were 100 million US dollars.

(2) Beekeeping is a good sideline business that does not occupy arable land, requires little investment, and has quick returns. It is an important way to help farmers in poor mountainous areas get rid of poverty and become rich. If a group of bees is well raised, a net profit of more than 150 yuan a year can be obtained, and generally a net profit of more than 50 yuan can be obtained.

(3) The development of beekeeping can promote pollination and increase crop yields. The development of beekeeping can not only produce bee products, but more importantly, beekeeping has become an indispensable and important part of agricultural development and is known as the "wings of agriculture". With the development of modern agriculture and the widespread use of pesticides, the number of insects in nature is decreasing, and honey bees and bumblebees have become the most important pollinating insects in nature. According to statistics from the US Department of Agriculture in 1980, honey bee pollination increased crop production by about US$20 billion, while the value of bee products themselves was about US$140 million, which is 143 times higher than the value of bee products themselves. Through honey bee pollination, crops can not only increase yields, but also improve quality; for example, using bumblebees to pollinate vegetables such as tomatoes, eggplants, and green peppers in greenhouses can increase yields by more than 15%, improve fruit quality, and reduce fruit contamination caused by spraying hormones.

(4) Beekeeping can provide humans with a large number of nutritious health products, such as honey, royal jelly, bee pollen, propolis, bee pupae, bee venom, etc. These products play a positive role in nourishing the human body and treating diseases.

(5) The development of beekeeping is conducive to the improvement of the ecological environment. Since bees help plants to cross-pollinate, they enhance the vitality of plants and promote their reproduction. This is especially important for planting forage grass and restoring vegetation in the northwest region. In short, bee pollination has become an indispensable and important supporting measure in the development of modern facility agriculture and ecological agriculture.

It is mainly used for pollination of crops, especially in the northwest region where there are fewer pollinating insects. The development of beekeeping can generate income while solving ecological and environmental problems.

Who was the first person to keep bees in Chinese history?

There seems to be no exact record of this. Beekeeping has been around since ancient times.

Human beings have been using and raising bees for a long period of history, which can be roughly divided into three stages: ancient beekeeping, movable-frame beehive beekeeping and modern beekeeping. Each stage can be divided into different development periods.

In primitive societies, people hunted wild beehives for honey and beeswax for food and as sacrificial offerings;

Bee pupae and honey are both excellent foods for humans. Ancient Chinese people started dealing with bees very early. In 1953, bee fossils were found in Beibozi, Laiyang City, Shandong Province, and Shanwang, Linxiong County, China, proving that bees existed in the temperate zone of eastern China 20 million years ago. The word "honey" was recorded in the oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty from the 16th to 11th centuries BC, indicating that China's beekeeping industry has a history of more than 3,000 years. Over the long years, with the improvement of social productivity and the advancement of science and technology, the traditional breeding characteristics of Chinese honey bees have gradually formed.

The development of beekeeping in ancient China can be said to have a long history. People began to hunt wild bees in a primitive way, and gradually transitioned to extensive breeding of Chinese honey bees and simple processing and utilization of bee products.

From primitive society to fishing and hunting society, the ancestors of the Chinese nation initially destroyed beehives, burned bees, and plundered honey and bee larvae; afterwards, people consciously used the reproduction capacity of bee colonies, learned to use smoke to drive away bees, retain part of the beehive, and obtain honey, wax, and bee larvae. With the progress of mankind and the continuous improvement of social productivity, people learned to smear the beehive holes with mud, grass, cow dung, etc., and leave a small hole for bees to enter and exit. Finally, they carved marks on the tree trunks as a mark to show that the beehive had an owner and to harvest bee products on time. This fact shows that the ancestors of the Chinese nation had already developed a primitive beekeeping consciousness at that time. This method of harvesting bee products is still used by some ethnic minorities in Yunnan.

After a long time, people have some basic understanding of the habits of bees, and the use of natural products such as honey and bee roe has been continuously improved. In the "Book of Songs·Zhou Song·Xiaobi", there is a poem "Don't give me the well bees, ask for the spicy crabs yourself", which warns people not to anger the bees to avoid being stung. In the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, people began to use bee stings to treat diseases, and bee sting therapy was recorded in the "Yellow Emperor's Internal Classic". At that time, the use of bee products was mainly for food. "Notes·Nei Ze" records that "sons serve their parents, and eat dates, chestnuts and honey to make them sweet", "sparrows, geese, crabs, and crabs are all available, and they have been eaten since ancient times", and "the king eats fresh crabs and crabs at feasts". These facts show that 2,300 years ago, sweet honey was used to honor the elderly and the elderly, and the larvae of bees and cicadas with high nutritional value were precious foods for emperors and nobles. In the "Chu Ci: Zhao Hun", there are the lines "Yaojiang honey spoon" and "Guimei honey bait", which means ancient honey foods such as honey troughs made with honey, honey, rice and flour made into honey bait. In the Western Han Dynasty, the craft of making candles with beeswax was already in place in Lingnan (now Guangdong Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region). At that time, craftsmen also used beeswax to make seals and handicrafts. In addition to these uses, the ancient Chinese invented the wax decoration (i.e. batik silk fabric) technology in the Han Dynasty. Since then, batik textiles have become tributes to the imperial palaces of successive dynasties.

During the Eastern Han Dynasty, beekeeping pioneers began to transfer bees to facilitate the collection of bee products. They cut down tree trunks with wild beehives nearby and hung them under the walls of their houses for breeding. This progress created favorable conditions for in-depth observation of the living habits of bees, improving breeding methods, and improving beekeeping techniques. From harvesting bee products from wild bee nests in a state of self-preservation to gradually changing to taking wild bees back home for domestication and breeding, it marked the beginning of ancient Chinese beekeeping and also showed a leap in the understanding of bees by the ancestors of the Chinese nation. From then on, the foundation was laid for the development of Chinese beekeeping science and the formation of traditional breeding methods for Chinese honey bees.

During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Zhang Hua's "Natural History" recorded that beekeepers in mountainous areas "made tools out of wood", "coated the inside and outside of the tools with beeswax, placed sugar or persimmons in the garden to attract wild bees, and built mulberry trees in spring to breed bees". Zheng Jizhi's "Geographical Records of Yongjia" also recorded the family's technique of attracting bee colonies by "coating buckets with honey" and "bringing all the bees to come".

Huangfu Yi of the Jin Dynasty wrote in the Biography of Eminent Scholars that Jiang Zhi, a pioneer of beekeeping in the Han Dynasty, taught beekeeping techniques and taught the world. There were more than 300 people engaged in the business, and thousands of people followed him to live in the beekeeping industry. Huangfu Yi praised him as "a herder raising bees, laughing at the world". This shows that people in ancient China already paid attention to teaching beekeeping techniques. At that time, people made records of observations on the biological characteristics of bee colonies, such as nesting and swarming. From 276 to 324, Guo Cou's Fu on Bees first recorded the division of labor in bee colonies, such as "sucking the pearl", "camping hall", and "guarding the gate", and realized that bees are social insects. There is also the phrase "chewing the honey and brewing it into honey". During this period, beekeeping had progressed from the semi-artificial state of transplanting to the primary stage of family beekeeping using logs to imitate honeycombs to attract bees.

With the advancement of technology and in-depth observation, the ancient Chinese observed bees more carefully. Duan Chengshi, a beekeeper in the Tang Dynasty, recorded biological characteristics such as "Xiang bees (i.e. male bees) are born in March and April and are black" and "When Xiang bees overwinter, the bee colony will be empty" in his book "Youyang Zajie".

Han E began to list "bee honey production in June" as a farmer's matter in his book "Four Seasons Compendium". The Song and Yuan dynasties were important periods for artificial breeding of Chinese honey bees. Since the Song Dynasty, there have been records of how to prevent and control spider sisters, ants, snakes, birds, pupae scorpions, foxes and other bee enemies.

With the development of the times, ancient Chinese beekeeping production technology and scientific theories have become increasingly advanced, and even professional apiaries have emerged.

The book "Yu Li Zi Ling Qiu Zhang Ren" written by Liu Ji, a famous scholar in the Yuan Dynasty, records the rise and fall of a professional bee farm run by two generations of Ling Qiu Zhang Ren, and summarizes the methods and principles of building a farm and selecting a site according to the nectar source, managing and breeding bee colonies in all seasons, merging bee colonies to strengthen the colony, and collecting honey. The book also records how to prevent and control bee enemies. The book records the words "wood is used as a palace for bees, and it is not a house." This shows that primitive wooden beehives had already appeared in China at that time, and beekeeping had a certain scale and layout. The book also records "if it wilts, let it go and separate it, if it is weak, it will be kept together, and it is not convenient to have two kings." This means that if the colony is strong, artificial swarming can be carried out, and if the colony is weak, it should be fed more to strengthen it. In addition, there are some important inventions in beekeeping technology, such as two people working together to collect swarms by smoke and honey, and there are also methods such as sprinkling water and dust on three sides to block the bee path and spreading soil to chase the bee colony.

In 1819, naturalist Hao Mixing compiled "Bee Office Notes" which recorded the biological characteristics of bees, beekeeping techniques, beekeeping experience, etc., becoming the first monograph on beekeeping in China. At that time, the scale of beekeeping production was already considerable, and the average farmer kept more than ten beehives (groups). In production practice, beekeepers observed the biological characteristics of bees more deeply and meticulously, and conducted some scientific research at the same time. Some scholars in the Ming and Qing dynasties described the insect stages of the four stages of individual development of bees.

In the Ming Dynasty, Xu Guangqi studied the relationship between rain, flowers and honey, and summarized the method of using phenology to predict the abundance or scarcity of honey in a given year. Pu Songling (1640-1715) pointed out in his "Nongsang Jing" that "clean doors, no frequent visits, and no hard work" are signs of swarming. In 1760, Zhang Zongfa recorded in "Sannong Ji" that when swarming, the new queen bee should "live in a separate place, and the mother and the young should not face each other side by side." This indicates that the queen bee is a female bee, which solves the long-standing controversy over the queen bee's gender. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, there were about 200,000 colonies of Chinese honey bees raised in China. The development of beekeeping science and technology during this period laid a solid foundation for the introduction of Western honey bees and movable frame beekeeping technology in the 1930s.

There seems to be no exact record of this. Beekeeping has been around since ancient times.

Human beings have been using and raising bees for a long period of history, which can be roughly divided into three stages: ancient beekeeping, movable-frame beehive beekeeping and modern beekeeping. Each stage can be divided into different development periods.

In primitive societies, people hunted wild beehives for honey and beeswax for food and as sacrificial offerings;

Queen Bee

Xiaolongnu, Jade Bee...how about it?