Beekeeping
Beekeeping is the activity dedicated to raising bees and providing them with the necessary care in order to obtain and consume the products that they are capable of producing and collecting. The main product obtained from this activity is honey. Honey is a beneficial factor for humans.
An indirect benefit resulting from the foraging activity carried out by bees corresponds to the pollination carried out by these insects. The similar cultivation of other honey-producing bees (meliponids) is called meliponiculture. Vespiculture is the exploitation of the few species of honey wasps.
History of beekeeping
The use of beeswax dates back to the stone age according to studies carried out on remains of ceramic objects in more than 150 archaeological sites in Europe, in regions below the fifty-seventh parallel (i.e., excluding Scotland and Fennoscandia).
In the Mesolithic cave paintings present in the Cueva de la Araña, in Bicorp (Valencia), scenes of honey harvesting proliferate, although it is difficult to determine their origin, it is estimated that these paintings could date between seven thousand and eight thousand years old. In the Mesolithic ten thousand to five thousand years a. C., the human being begins the collection of honey from wild hives and in the Neolithic when he learned to control bees and swarms.
There is historical data that indicates the existence of beekeeping practices in the predynastic period of Egypt, moving their hives in boats along the Nile River. There are papyri dating from the year 2400 BC. C. where we can observe the practice.
The Greeks, who founded Ephesus in 1100 B.C. C.-1000 BCE C. in Asia Minor in Anatolia today Turkey, beekeeping was venerated since the Goddess Artemis (later Diana for the Romans) was represented on coins with the stamp of a bee in the years 480 BC. C. In Thrace it was also very common to mint coins with a bee. The Romans also practiced beekeeping and in general inherited Hellenic practices and made an object of worship out of them. The Georgic poets dedicated works to the description of the instincts, habits, intelligence of bees and the rational exploitation of these animals that never ceased to amaze them. In general, always in the accounts of the most advanced societies of all times, vestiges of the knowledge of bees and the rational exploitation of honey and wax have been found.
Beekeeping reached its heyday when the only known sweetener was honey. The discovery of America and the planting of sugar cane in the tropical regions of this continent, made the importance of beekeeping decrease appreciably. However, his practice was not interrupted at any time.
Modern beekeeping begins with the creation of honeycombs and mobile frames, by virtue of the fact that they are not destroyed when harvesting honey, sheets of stamped wax and mechanical extractors, reaching its peak at the end of the century. XIX and early XX century thanks to the works of scholars such as Jan Dzierżon, Arturo Wulfrath Brockhoff, Huber, Dzierzon, Quimby, Langstroth, Brother Adam, Fabre, Hoffman, Miller, Alley, Doolittle, De Hruschka, Mehring, Root, Munn, Miner, Harbison, Wolf, Phillips, Smith, Dadant, Fabre and Farrar, Georges de Layens.
Inhabitants of a hive
Bees are social insects that always live in groups in the hive. In a hive there are three types of bees: queen bee, worker bee and drone, depending on the food provided by the worker bees to the larva once the egg has hatched.
Queen Bee
The function of the queen bee is to lay eggs from which the rest of the inhabitants of the hive hatch. It is larger than the worker bee, with a longer abdomen and shorter wings. Another of its functions is to secrete a pheromone that keeps all the inhabitants of the hive together. The production of this pheromone will decrease with the age of the bee, ceasing around the age of four.
Once the egg hatches, the larva will be fed throughout its cycle with royal jelly prepared by the worker bees. The egg from which the queen hatches is placed in a cell that the worker bees transform to give it a suitable shape and size, called realera.
The queen develops over a period of sixteen days (days required to reach adulthood). Three days after laying, the larva hatches, will have a life of five and a half days and will remain in its open cell. Later, this larva will become a nymph that will have a life of seven and a half days, developing in a cell covered by the worker bees (the cell's operculum is made up of a mixture of wax and pollen).
Once the adult stage has been reached, the queen will destroy the larvae of the rest of the queens or the formed queens found in the colony if there has been a queen renewal between the third and twentieth day after birth, unless the colony goes to swarm in which case many other queens will be born to accompany the successive swarms, leaving some in the mother colony, finally and after eliminating each other, only one will remain in charge of each colony; the queen leaves in "nuptial flight" (the only way out of the hive unless there is a swarm). She mates in full flight with the drones of the hive, filling her spermatheca with the necessary semen to fertilize the eggs that she will lay throughout her life, that is, the queen is fertilized for her entire life (a maximum of five years).. Throughout its development, the queen bee feeds on royal jelly, which provides the ability to lay eggs.
Worker bees
The worker bees have a large number of troops in the hive (20,000-60,000). Once the larva hatches, they will only receive royal jelly for two and a half days and will then be fed by a mass of honey, pollen, and water.
The worker bee develops over a period of twenty-one days, following three phases: egg (three days), larva (six days) and nymph (twelve days). Once they reach adulthood, they carry out different tasks in the hive depending on their age: the first three days they clean the cells, the next six days they secrete royal jelly with the glands on their heads, feeding the larvae and also to the queen, maintain the temperature and humidity of the nest by ventilating the hive if necessary, and accompany the queen, prepare bee bread to feed the larvae after their third day of life, secrete wax with their special glands on the back external abdomen, segments four to seven in the so-called wax mirrors, which are highly polished surfaces on which four pairs of wax-producing glands are located, they make the nectar brought from the flowers by reducing the humidity to turn it into honey, They build the honeycombs both to raise new bees and to store honey and they will build the royal cells so that new queens are born and the colony can swarm or renew. r his queen too old or with some defect. When they are nineteen to twenty days old, they watch over the hive so that other insects do not enter and after twenty-one days they go out into the field in search of pollen, nectar and resins. The pollen is deposited in a kind of baskets on the sides of the hind legs and the nectar in a crop prior to the intestine. With the resins of the trees they make propolis.
The worker bees that are born in spring live about seven or eight weeks and those that are born in autumn, about five or seven months because they spend the winter in the hive being relieved in spring.
Drone bees
The drones hatch from an unfertilized egg laid by the queen (parthenogenesis) and receive royal jelly for three days, then bee bread like the workers. They require twenty-four days to reach adulthood, going through three phases: egg (three days), larva (five and a half days) and nymph (fifteen and a half days). Their function is to fertilize the queen bee and to keep the brood warm, although they spend many hours in the field and it is the workers that maintain adequate humidity and temperature. They live only in spring and summer, they do not have a sting, so they do not collaborate in the defense of the hive and do not collect nectar or make honey. Unlike the workers or queen, drones frequently wander freely into hives to which they do not belong. This behavior is key to enable genetic exchange between different colonies; however, it also turns males into vectors for the transmission of parasites and diseases.
In disorganized colonies, some workers activate their atrophied ovaries and deposit several eggs in each cell from which drones smaller than their brothers will hatch.
Beekeeping products
Various products are obtained from the tireless work of these admirable Hymenoptera.
But the bee not only produced honey, the role played by wax was perhaps greater, due to its use in the manufacture of lamps or wax candles and other properties and other important applications, such as waterproofing wood, ropes, leather, fabrics, etc.
However, with the development of new conservation techniques, handling and mechanisms for its collection, pollen, propolis, royal jelly and bee venom (apitoxin) have also begun to be collected. Products such as face cream, shampoo, hair conditioner, and polyhoney have also been made from honey.
Honey is a sweet, viscous fluid produced by bees from the nectar of flowers or from secretions of living parts of plants or from excretions of plant-sucking insects. The bees collect it, transform it and combine it with the invertase enzyme that contains the saliva of the bees and store it in the combs where it matures.
Waxes are esters of fatty acids with high molecular weight alcohols, that is, they are molecules obtained by esterification, a chemical reaction between a carboxylic acid and an alcohol, which in the case of waxes occurs between a fatty acid and a long chain linear monohydric alcohol.
Pollen is the dust, more or less coarse, that contains the microgametophytes of seed plants (spermatophytes) The pollen grain has a resistant cover that facilitates its viability while it is transported from the plant that originated it to another for the pollination process to take place.
Propolis (gr. propolis) are resinous mixtures obtained by bees from tree buds and then processed in the hive as a sealant for small holes (6 mm or less), sometimes mixed with wax and for varnish the entire interior of the hive. For larger holes, the bees use wax. The color of propolis depends on the source from which it was obtained, the most common being dark brown. At room temperature (20 °C), propolis is sticky and at lower temperatures it solidifies.
Royal jelly is a substance secreted by the hypopharyngeal glands of the head of young worker bees, between five and fifteen days old, which, mixed with stomach secretions, serves as food for all the larvae during the first three days of life. Only the queen bee and the royal cell larvae that will give rise to a new queen are always fed royal jelly. It is a viscous mass of a soft yellow color and an acid taste.
Apitoxin is the poison secreted by the workers of various species of bees, which use it as a means of defense against predators and for combat between bees. In venomous species, the ovipositor of the workers has been modified to become a barbed stinger.
The beekeeper
The beekeeper is the person who practices beekeeping.
There are various activities carried out by the beekeeper, during the spring and summer he normally works with the bees carrying out population control and honey extraction work, but during the winter or recess season, the work consists of preparing the wooden material, for the coming season where it will house the new families, as well as warning of possible diseases or pests of the bee populations in order to treat them in time.
History of beekeepers
For many centuries beekeepers enjoyed great prestige, different cultures from Ancient Egypt valued this occupation, since it provided the only sweetener, honey, known until the Middle Ages when, after the discovery of America, the sugar cane and sugar beet.
Beekeeper Materials
For the practice of beekeeping, the beekeeper needs a series of elements and tools.
The hive is the main element, since it is the new house where the colony of bees will be confined, which can come from a natural swarm, from a colony or rustic hive, or from a nucleus or pack of bees that are buy from other beekeepers.
There are different types of hives, which differ mainly in their width, length and height measurements, the most currently used are the langstroth, dadant, Layens hive, African and others. A hive consists of a floor, supers, frames and a roof.
The Langstroth hive is named after its inventor, Lorenzo Langstroth. It was patented in the United States in 1852. This vertical type hive revolutionized the world with its mobile frames and mobile risers.
The Dadant hive, exactly called the modified Dadant hive, is the standard hive with a large volume and frames of different sizes in chambers and supers. It is marketed in several countries although hives with equal frames are more popular.
The Layens hive is the hive used mainly in Spain for transhumance (movement of hives following flowering). It is widely introduced in the Valencian Community, Region of Murcia, Andalusia and Extremadura.
Other elements necessary for the practice of beekeeping are:
- Smoker
- Pinza or lever for the handling of frames
- Brush for disobey
- Apicultor suit
- Elements for honey extraction
- Elements for casting wax
- Exclusive grid of queens
- Printed wax
- Piquera
- Poisonous trap
- Trap for tips
On the other hand, we have innovative tools to control the hives that can replace manual notes, so we have computer programs for mobile phones or tablets, which facilitates the beekeeper's work in the field or for PCs that, after entering data into Spreadsheets allow you to know exactly both the health situation and economic studies.
Bee diseases
Bees, like other living beings, contract various diseases. Currently it is not possible to carry out advanced beekeeping without proper management of sanitary practices.
- The current problem of bees
Over the last few years[when?], the world has witnessed an alarming decline in bees. Their number fell by 57% from 1985 to 1997 and they continue to decline. An example of the above is information from the United Kingdom Bumblebee Conservation Fund, which states that two species of bees have become extinct in this country in the last seventy years, six species are in danger of extinction and some could disappear very soon if there is no urgent action.
It is worrisome since, together with the wind, these insects are the largest carriers of pollen from different plant species, which is why they represent an important part of the food chain. The reasons behind the decline in the number of bees are many, but one of the main ones lies in the problem of colony collapse. It is a disorder in which adult bees suddenly decrease even when the colony was in perfect condition. Although it has not yet been discovered what causes this disorder, it is believed to be related to a virus called Israel Acute Paralysis, Nosema ceranae and Varroasis are also very likely causes.. The decrease in the number of bees has also been related to the use of pesticides in crops (chemicals that would be ingested by insects during pollination), with electromagnetic radiation, which would affect the course of bees; and with global warming, that could alter your seasonal patterns. Albert Einstein is credited with the phrase: "if the bees disappeared, humanity would only have four years to live" but with new data it is known that this is not the case since that phrase has another origin. In the archives it is not possible to find it.
Beekeepers
- Jan Dzierżon. Apidologist, famous for his discovery of mid-genesis in bees.
- Karl R. von Frisch. Ethologist who described the bee dance.
- Konrad Lorenz. Ethologist. Animal Behavior.
- Nikolaas Tinbergen. Ethologist. Animal behavior.
- Karl Kehrle, Brother Adam or Frayle Adam. Buckfast Bee.
- Harry Arthur Dade. Specialist in bees anatomy.
- Arturo Wulfrath B.. Specialist in modern abyss and Author of the Encyclopedia.
- Elton James Dyce. He developed a procedure for controlled honey granulation.
- Francesco De Hruschka. Inventor of the centrifugal extractor.
- Everett Franklin Phillips. Prosessor of USDA and Cornell University.
- August Freiherr von Berlepsch (1815-1877).
- Jean Mehring. Dutch. Printed wax inventor.
- Eddie Woods: inventor of the Apidictor
- Lorenzo Langstroth: inventor of the Langstroth Colmena
- Carlos Dadant: inventor of the Dadant Beehive
- Gaston Eugène Marie Bonnier: Ethologist and Botanics
- Georges de Layens: Botanical Naturalist and Apicultor inventor of the Layens hive