CATDOLL : CATDOLL: Basic knowledge of bee breeding (Basic knowledge of bee breeding)

1. How do beginners raise bees?

1. Understand the habits of bees

Bees are a kind of insects that live in groups and have different living habits from many common insects. When raising bees, novices must fully understand their living habits in order to increase their success rate. Bee breeding techniques are usually based on their living habits.

2. Choose bee species

The selection of bee species is very important. Generally, the quality of bee species directly determines whether the breeding is successful. As I just said, the main bee species in my country are Italian bees and Chinese bees. When we choose bee species, we should decide based on various factors such as the local environment and conditions.

3. Choose the location of the apiary

Chinese bees generally live in a quiet environment and have certain requirements for temperature and humidity. Therefore, we must build a bee farm reasonably according to these requirements. Finally, we must also pay attention to the prevention of bees from enemies, such as wasps, ants, etc. These need to be considered when choosing the location of the bee farm. After completing the preliminary preparations, the next step is to obtain the bee colony.

2. Beekeeping knowledge and techniques?

1. The bees raised are mostly Italian honey bees and Chinese honey bees. Italian honey bees have strong colonies and are good at using large quantities of nectar sources. Chinese honey bees are highly adaptable and good at using sporadic nectar sources.

2. Beekeeping requires beehives, bee hats, bee brooms and other tools. Beehives are the most important and basic tools.

3. When raising bees, you should choose a site with abundant and relatively continuous nectar sources around it. The surrounding environment should not be noisy, full of enemies or seriously polluted.

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. What are the technical knowledge and methods of beekeeping?

Step/Method 1

Collecting bees: Collecting bees mainly includes trapping wild bee colonies and collecting wild bee colonies. Trapping wild bee colonies mainly includes luring beehives and digging luring holes due to different methods. To collect wild bee colonies, you must first find the wild bee nests or clustered bee colonies. In addition, after the bee colony naturally swarms, the beekeeper is also required to be able to collect the swarmed bees in time.

Step/Method 2

Transferring bees: Transferring bees refers to transferring new bee colonies or native bee colonies into live-frame beehives. When transferring native bee colonies, all the honeycombs in the original beehives must be cut off and tied to the frames of the live-frame beehives. New bee colonies can transfer to the hives with empty honeycombs or with honeycombs borrowed from other bee colonies. However, they must be fed in time after transfer to help the colonies quickly stabilize in the hive.

Step/Method 3

Swarming: Swarming can be divided into natural swarming and artificial swarming due to different methods. Natural swarming is to wait for the bee colony to swarm on its own and then capture the swarm in time, while artificial swarming means that a bee colony is split into multiple colonies in a certain way. In addition, artificial swarming can be divided into queenless swarming, queen cell swarming, queen swarming, etc. due to different methods.

Step/Method 4

Merging colonies: Merging colonies means merging two or more bee colonies into one. The principle is to merge queenless colonies into queeny colonies, weak colonies into strong colonies, and sick colonies into healthy colonies. Due to different operations, there are two ways of merging colonies: direct and indirect. Direct merging is simple to operate but the bees are prone to fighting, while indirect merging is more troublesome but relatively safe.

Step/Method 5

Queen replacement: Queen replacement refers to the introduction of a new queen bee into a bee colony after it loses its queen. There are two methods of queen replacement: direct and indirect. Direct queen replacement is simple but prone to worker bees surrounding the queen, while indirect queen replacement is more complicated but much safer. In particular, when introducing high-quality queen bees, it is recommended to use the relatively safe indirect queen replacement method.

Step/Method 6

Disease prevention: Bee disease and pest control is the highlight of beekeeping production. In fact, in order to achieve high beekeeping yields, disease and pest control must be done well. For example, during the peak period of disease and pests, it is necessary to treat diseases if there are any, and prevent diseases if there are none. In addition, beehives, nest frames and other beekeeping tools must be disinfected regularly and wax scraps, bee corpses and other debris accumulated at the bottom of the hive must be cleaned up in time.

Step/Method 7

Feeding: Feeding technology is a key technology that must be mastered in bee breeding. There are three types of feeding, namely, supplementary feeding, reward feeding and soothing feeding, depending on the purpose. Subsidized feeding is to provide the bee colony with food to sustain its survival, reward feeding is to stimulate the queen bee to lay eggs and encourage worker bees to raise larvae, and soothing feeding is to quickly stabilize the panicked bee colony.

Step/Method 8

Queen breeding: Queen breeding technology is a technique that must be mastered when breeding high-quality queen bees. Due to different operations, there are mainly two methods: artificial selection and artificial queen breeding. Artificial selection refers to the artificial selection of bee colonies with excellent genetic characteristics as the population, while artificial queen breeding is to artificially make queen cells with beeswax and then use worm transfer needles to move in larvae to breed queen bees on a large scale.

5. How to keep bees well?

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.