CATDOLL : CATDOLL: How do you raise bees? (Video on how to raise bees)

1. How to keep bees well?

In order to raise bees well, some key measures must be taken to achieve twice the result with half the effort. 1. Choose suitable bee species. Different bee species have different biological characteristics and production performance, and the same bee species has different performance under different geographical environments and nectar sources. Therefore, in beekeeping production, it is necessary to select high-quality bee species that have been selected to increase the output of bee products. A bee farm should not raise a bee species for a long time to avoid the decline of the production performance of the bee species, but should regularly introduce and change species. 2. Select and breed excellent queen bees. The quality of queen bees is mainly determined by two aspects: one is that the queen bee is young, and the other is that the queen bee is strong. Most young queen bees lay eggs actively, lay a lot of eggs, and lay eggs quickly. The queen bee is strong, its newborn is heavy, has many ovarian tubes, moves steadily, lays many eggs per day, lays eggs quickly and orderly, expands spirally, and lays eggs in the middle of the room eye. It does not lay drone eggs in the worker bee room for two or even three years, does not like to build a platform, does not like to swarm, and has a strong regularity in the time of stopping and starting egg laying. It has the inherent characteristics of this variety or group breeding. 3. Adequate honey, pollen and feed Adequate honey, pollen and feed, in a broad sense, means sufficient food. Food is the source of nutrition for bees' life, reproduction, honey syrup and beeswax to make honeycombs. To keep bees well, they must have sufficient food, which is especially important in the season when external nectar sources are scarce and during the wintering period. 4. Strong bee colonies A strong bee colony means that it can maintain a relatively strong skirt at all times of the year. Strong colonies overwinter, strong colonies multiply in spring, and strong colonies are put into production, which are the basic measures for high-yield beekeeping. Only with a strong bee colony can the mortality rate of overwintering bees be reduced, a strong production colony can be cultivated early in early spring, the ability of the bee colony to resist various diseases can be improved, strong and disease-free bee individuals can be cultivated, and the yield of bee products can be maximized. 5. Healthy bee colonies Healthy bee colonies are the guarantee of high yield in beekeeping. Some beekeepers only pursue the yield of bee products one-sidedly, but do not pay attention to the prevention and diagnosis of bee diseases. Once the bees are sick, even the strongest bee colonies may quickly decline or even the whole colony will be destroyed, which seriously affects the yield of bee products. Therefore, if you want to raise bees well, you must pay attention to the prevention and treatment of bee diseases, and follow the principle of preventing diseases before they occur and treating them early. Only by strengthening the prevention and treatment of bee diseases and ensuring that the bee colonies are healthy and disease-free can we lay a good foundation for high bee production.

2. How to keep bees?

1. Selection of bee colonies: First of all, you need to choose bee colonies that are adapted to the local climate and other conditions according to your living environment. In this way, the survival rate of bees can be basically guaranteed.

2. Selection of beehives: Because beehives need to be placed outdoors, try to choose high-quality and sturdy ones.

3. Bee colony environment: Choose a cooler environment to avoid direct sunlight. It is better if there are flowers and plants around, which is convenient for bees to collect honey and is conducive to improving the quality of honey output. Remember, bee colonies must not be released on rainy days, otherwise a large number of bees will die.

4. Feeding: In addition to releasing the bees to collect honey on their own, they also need to be fed with honey, sugar water, etc. every night. In winter, it is necessary to increase artificial feeding efforts to maintain the survival of the bees and increase honey production.

5. Finally, you must pay attention to your own safety when raising bees, because bees are dangerous and you need to make appropriate protective preparations.

3. What are the techniques and methods of beekeeping?

1. Choose beehives

A basic condition for raising bees is to choose suitable beehives. You should choose boxes made of solid materials and light texture. Since beehives are generally placed in the open air and bees spend most of their lives outdoors, a good environment must be provided.

2. Transfer bee colonies

First, prepare the live-frame beehive in advance, transfer the purchased bee colony or the wild trapped bees into the beehive, and generally put the honeycomb together, so that the bees can quickly adapt to the new environment and resume normal activities.

3. Subsidized feeding

During the period of honey-gathering, bees are fed supplementary food, usually starting with artificial feeding in the evening, such as pollen, sugar water, honey, etc. In winter, bees collect less honey, so the number of feedings needs to be increased. They can be fed once in the morning and once in the evening with diluted sugar water.

4. Planting plants

In the process of raising bees, a large number of flowers and plants, such as peonies, peonies, rape flowers, etc., can be planted around the site to provide sufficient nectar sources to prevent the bees from flying to distant places and reducing economic benefits.

4. Bee breeding management and methods?

1. Cultivate into a production group as soon as possible

For newly purchased bee colonies, timely prevent and treat bee mites and other bee diseases, keep the number of bees greater than the number of combs (very important, beginners like to add combs), and keep the colony strong and disease-free. When there is a lack of nectar and pollen sources in the outside world, supplement the feed, and then reward feeding every day or every other day to stimulate the queen bee to lay more eggs. Healthy worker bees are in high spirits and can raise more strong young bees. Frequent watering in the nest not only saves "labor", but also avoids freezing to death of water-collecting bees or causing illness to the colony due to sewage collected, and can quickly develop the colony into a production colony with supers. At the same time, without breaking up the strong colony, rear the queen, organize the supers for mating, and implement the combination of production, rearing the queen, and mating.

2. Strong colony super box transfer insects to raise queens

When the bee colony develops into a super colony, natural queen cells will often appear. At this time, just let nature take its course, slightly enlarge the opening of the queen cell, take out the larvae in the cell without stirring the royal jelly, and select one-day-old larvae to move into the cell. Beginners need to practice moving larvae several times to ensure that the larvae are not harmed. If they cannot be moved, they can temporarily use a natural cell and select the best queen to keep later.

Multiple natural queen cells (preferably artificially transplanted queen cells) can be used on one comb, and all queen cells on other combs should be destroyed. Put the queen-rearing comb into the super, and place larval combs and honey-pollen combs on both sides. It is best to add a double-layer queen excluder between the nest and the super, and add a gauze cover frame (without gauze) between the two boards, so that there is a certain space between the two queen excluders to reduce the impact of the old queen on the super.

3. Stack the third box to make a crossover box

The day before the new queen comes out, add another super, open the side door or the back door, add a queen excluder between the two supers, lift the honeycomb with queen cells into the new super (i.e. the third box), and then lift two honeycombs and place them on both sides of the honeycomb with the queen cells. When the young queen comes out three days later, remove the queen excluder between the mating box and the original box, replace it with a gauze cover and add a cloth, shake off the worker bees from the two queenless honeycombs, return them to the original group, and leave one honeycomb in the mating box as an independent mating group. Observe the egg-laying situation of the new king after 10 days. If it is normal, the new king has successfully mated.

4. Swarming to increase the colony

There are two methods to isolate the proliferating population:

1. Take the new queen colony out of the original box and move it to a new location. Then add a capped comb that is about to be released from the room. After 3 days, add a second capped comb to form a production colony as soon as possible.

2. Take out the old queen with two sealed honeycombs as a new colony, and shake in two worker honeycombs, and supplement and develop them as soon as possible to become a production colony. At the same time, remove the cloth covering the mating box and the original box, leaving the gauze. After 8-12 hours, spray the whole colony with white wine syrup (500g syrup added to two small cups of white wine), put the honeycomb with the new queen in the super, spray some white wine syrup, sprinkle the mating box, and cover the beehive. Observe the queen on the next day. If she is normal, swap the supers (or the queen enters the hive), and the colony will be successfully multiplied.

5. How to raise bees?

1. Let the bees fly properly. Every spring is a critical period for bee reproduction. During the winter, bees will accumulate a lot of garbage in their intestines, which is not conducive to the growth and reproduction of bees. You can choose to put the beehive in the sun in sunny weather with a temperature above ten degrees to encourage the bees to fly. During the flight, the garbage in their bodies will be excreted.

2. The heat preservation of the beehive is very important. The spring, the breeding season of bees, is a time when the weather and temperature are changeable. Especially in the early spring, the outside temperature is relatively low and cannot reach the temperature required for the growth of bee larvae. At this time, farmers need to heat their beehives. The simplest way to keep warm is to surround the beehive with straw or cover it with a layer of plastic film. In addition, farmers should avoid opening and closing the nest door frequently in early spring, otherwise the heat in the beehive will be lost.

3. Queen breeding and swarming are beneficial to the reproduction of bees. Most of the queens in the spring bee colonies are the queens bred in the previous year. After two seasons of egg-laying, the peak egg-laying period of this queen is basically over. It is best for farmers to do queen breeding and swarming early, so as to greatly increase the number of bee colonies and bees on the basis of bee reproduction.

6. How to raise bees?

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