Beekeeping

Dividing bee colonies, or artificial swarming, is one of the most important practices beekeepers use to increase the number of their bee colonies. This allows them to expand their hives by approximately 20% annually. What to Do Before Dividing Bee Colonies The first and most important step is maintaining the strength of the bee colonies throughout the year. This ensures they remain safe from diseases, predator attacks, and robber bees . Only strong colonies are suitable for division since weak ones cannot quickly recover from the loss of worker bees and stored food. For instance, if a beekeeper moves their apiary to a location with abundant forage, they should combine weak colonies to create strong or at least moderately strong ones. Strong colonies gather significantly more food than they consume compared to weaker colonies, which require more resources than they collect due to the low number of active bees. Conditions for Dividing Bee Colonies Division should only be carr...

Organizing wax combs plays a significant and essential role in contributing to the activity and rapid growth of colonies , maximizing economic returns from collected honey, pollen, and royal jelly , and other bee products. To learn how to organize them, read the following points: How to Arrange Wax Combs in a Beehive A comb with honey on one side and empty on the other should be placed with the honey-filled side facing outward. Similarly, if one side is sealed and the other side contains unsealed honey, the comb should be placed with the sealed side outward. Combs with sealed honey on both sides are placed on the edges of the brood chamber, or if there is a super, on the edges of the super. If the honey flow is abundant and the combs in the chamber above the brood chamber are filled with honey, a new super is added as a third level. Some sealed...

The beekeeper prepares their bee colonies to face the honey flow season to obtain the largest possible amount of honey. All the beekeeper’s operations aim to ensure that their colonies contain the maximum number of worker bees, especially before the start of the honey flow season, and to provide suitable space for brood rearing and honey storage. To prepare bee colonies for the honey flow season, the beekeeper must follow sequential and important steps that enable them to enter and exit the honey flow season with an economically rewarding success. How to Prepare Bee Colonies for the Honey Flow Season and Benefit from It A) Preparation for the honey flow season begins early in spring, where the beekeeper starts feeding the bee colonies with diluted sugar syrups and pollen if available, or one of the pollen substitutes , to encourage the queen to lay eggs early enough to have forager worker ...

   Bees rely on their own efforts for food. Worker bees collect nectar and pollen from flowers to produce honey and bee bread, which they use to feed the brood, workers, and drones.    Additionally, worker bees secrete royal jelly to nourish the young brood. In times when food sources in the fields become scarce, or the colony's food reserves are depleted, beekeepers provide their colonies with sugar syrups as a substitute for nectar and pollen substitutes to prevent starvation or cold-related mortality and to encourage the queen to lay eggs. Feeding Times for Bee Colonies     It is recommended to feed the colony before its reserve stock of honey and bee bread runs out at any time. However, there are specific periods when feeding becomes essential, such as: In the spring, before the start of the active season (honey flow season) , to accelerate the rearing of new brood. During periods of nectar scarcity...

     There are many  tasks that a beekeeper performs in the apiary . These tasks involve various activities that a beekeeper undertakes to control bee colonies according to his wishes and direct them to produce what he desires at the right time, with maximum productivity and minimal cost. It also includes all methods the beekeeper employs  to preserve  his colonies from weakening or collapsing . These tasks are scheduled, meaning that each has an appropriate time for performance throughout the year. These operations include:  Inspection of Bee Colonies  -  Feeding the Bee Colonies  -  Preparing Colonies for Honey Flow Season  -  Dividing Bee Colonies  -  Uniting Bee Colonies  -  Wintering  -   Queen Renewal   ,   and other operations. In this post, we will discuss the inspection of bee colonies. You can access other topics by clicking on their titles mentioned in the previous paragr...

      The phenomenon of robbing is usually ingrained in strong bee colonies, where they attack weak colonies to steal the honey present in them. This happens during times when nectar sources are scarce outside. Several factors encourage the occurrence of robbing, such as leaving the hives open for too long during inspection, not properly sealing them, exposing feeders full of sugar solution for long periods in the apiary, feeding certain colonies without others, or feeding at different times rather than uniformly. Additionally, offering wax combs with some honey can lead to robbing, so they should be emptied of honey before adding them to the colony, especially when storing them after the collection season. These combs should be offered clean and empty when added to the colonies during the egg-laying season. Robbing can lead to the destruction of a large number of bees, the death of the queen, or the spread of diseases between colonies as a result. How ...

         It is well-known that worker bees are female but sterile, meaning their ovaries are underdeveloped. Additionally, we know that the queen bee secretes the inhibitory scent and royal substance, both of which always prevent the development of the workers' ovaries. If the queen is lost and these scents disappear, and the workers cannot build royal cells around the young larvae, the workers closest to the lost queen, who have received a portion of the royal jelly given to her, will have their ovaries grow quickly and will be able to lay eggs. This results in what is known as laying workers (pseudo-queens). However, these eggs are unfertilized and therefore produce only males. As a result, the colony will gradually decline as the number of bees decreases.       The presence of laying workers can be identified by their egg-laying pattern. A laying worker will lay 4-8 eggs in one hexagonal cel...

        Each member of a honeybee colony has a specific lifespan, after which they die. Each one of them also has unique features in their development and creation. These features are unique to each one, allowing life to proceed as determined by the Creator. To understand the life cycle of each member, read the following: The Queen Bee       The queen lays fertilized eggs in special cells built by the worker bees, called royal cells, which are parallel to the surface of the wax comb and attached to it with wax. The eggs hatch after three days into larvae, which the workers feed with royal jelly for five days. The worker bees gradually extend the royal cell to accommodate the growing queen larva until it reaches the size of a peanut. After this period, the cell is sealed as the larva no longer needs to be fed. Then, the larva spins a cocoon within one day, rests for two days (pre-p...

As is well known, the members of a bee colony consist of the queen, workers, and drones. The origin of these three types of individuals differs based on the following three factors: Type of egg. Type of food. The cell (housing). The Type of Egg Laid by the Queen Bee In terms of egg type, the queen lays two types of eggs: Fertilized eggs, which produce queens and workers. Unfertilized eggs, which produce drones. In terms of food type, fertilized eggs produce only workers and queens, as mentioned earlier. Workers can control the type of bee that emerges from the fertilized egg through the type of food they provide to the larvae during the larval stage. This is because workers are responsible for secreting and preparing food for the young (   royal jelly   ) in the form of a liquid secreted from special glands in their heads. This food is rich in proteins, vitamins, and fats. They can also prepare another type of food known as bee bread, made from a mixture of honey ...

A large proportion of beekeepers complain about the lack of response of the bees with sugar solution and not taking it for some reason water may be deliberate by the beekeeper or reason may ignorant beekeeper that in fact the command of error perpetrated in his dealings with the bee, so this problem may get tired bee colonies leads them to perdition by , on the other

          In winter, temperatures can drop to their lowest (a few degrees Celsius below zero) or slightly above zero, with cold winds blowing and occasional rainfall. In such extreme cold, bee colonies may perish entirely, or at least the number of bees in the colonies may decrease by more than three-quarters. Spring and summer come (   honey flow season  ), and the colony is not ready to collect nectar and pollen, and the abundant forage might exhaust what remains of the bees in the colony due to the abundance of forage and the scarcity of foraging bees in each colony. As a result, the honey flow season passes without benefit. Since honey bees do not hibernate in winter but spend the winter in a state of calm or dormancy inside the hive, where they regulate the temperature to suit their survival by clustering together in a ball, raising the temperature to 32-34°C by releasing energy from feeding on honey and muscle activity. The number of bees perfo...