Beekeeping
The beekeeping industry of agriculture , which involves the breeding of honey bees to exploit the products of the hive. The beekeeper must provide the apiary shelter, care, and watch over his environment. Then he earned a measured part of these products: honey , pollen , wax , royal jelly and propolis.
Performed on every continent, this activity differs between varieties of bees, climate and level of economic development. It is an activity that combines traditional methods such as smoking out, and modern methods such as artificial insemination, or the study of bee flight equipped microrflecteurs radar.
History
The man really does not raise bees that since the eighteenth century. However, consumption of honey dates back to about twelve thousand years. At that time, the man practiced the collection, which often leads to the destruction of the colony, as evidenced by cave paintings found in the "Cueva de la Araa, Spider Cave, near Valencia in Spain , old six thousand years. It shows a man hanging from vines, carrying a basket to collect his harvest, his hand immersed in a tree trunk in search of honeycomb. It is not known exactly when domestication of the bee was held.
The first hive was probably after the removal of the trunk of a hollow shaft containing a swarm. Later, with the mastery of techniques enruchage appeared the first products of artificial hives, probably made from hollowed logs or cork bark.
Apiculture was common in the Upper Egyptian Empire of the XXIV centuryBC. AD. Representations have been unearthed in the temple of the king Do-Re-oUser in Abu Gourab ( ancient Egypt ), where we see a scene depicting the extraction and conservation of honey.
Beekeeping was a farming important in ancient Greece, including Attica The art of beekeeping Beekeeping for the breeding of domestic honey bees of the genus Apis, mainly Apis mellifera , Apis cerana , and some species of stingless, race of Meliponini. The bee is the only insect with the mulberry , the Silkworm , which is termed a servant. Bees can again become wild when they escape from the hive during the spin , or become servants in connection with the capture of a wild swarm. The conduct of a colony is primarily to ensure the state of the demography of the hives to maximize production and ensure the survival of the hive. To reproduce, and survive, a colony of bees trying to accumulate a maximum of provisions during the favorable season, to fill its needs for unfavorable seasons. In northern countries, this period is the winter in the south and in Africa, this period is the dry season. A colony of bees consists of a single queen, many workers, females, drones, males, and brood, eggs, larvae and pupae, she settled in a single hive. The bee was already present there are four million years on Earth: the fossil bees look identical to current have been unearthed. This longevity is a result of the exceptional adaptability of this species, the bee's behavior is governed by innate factors, and its adaptability to environmental conditions. The population of the colony varies with the seasons: it is more important during periods when resources are abundant, from 30 000 to 70 000 individuals to take more crops possible. It decreases in winter, at six thousand individuals, to minimize the consumption of provisions. However, it should not be too low because it is she who must raise the colony in spring. France has about sixty-nine miles beekeepers with hives 1,345,000. Professionals, operating more than 50 hives , represent two percent of the number of beekeepers and operate forty per cent of all hives. Beekeepers come from all walks of life, men, women, peasants and urban. Some have discovered beekeeping random route, and others have often been initiated, youth as they accompanied their father or grandfather to the apiary. Attentive to the ecosystem around their apiaries, the botanical and entomological are often part of their field of interest. It is certainly an activity that is practiced with passion, if not abandonment occurs. They say that the bee is the sentinel of the environment. We ready to Albert Einstein this quote: "When the bee disappears, there will be more than four years of life to man." The beekeeper is the first to see the shortcomings in its colonies, it intervenes to alert the authorities or opinion: In Europe , some pesticides have been banned due to their interventions. The Hive, the shelter it provides and the provisions it contains, attracts more animals or less desired. Among insects, we can count the ants that take advantage of the heat for the development of their larvae and earwigs, which are housed under the cover, but does not penetrate inside the hive. The moth is a moth parasite, which enters the hive: the larva consumes the wax and ruin shortly weak colonies. The largest colonies, however, know how to defend against the moth. In the hive during the winter , the mice like the food and shelter, while the vipers and snakes enjoy, peacefully, the warmth of its temperature. The woodpecker, he does not hesitate to pierce the walls of wooden hives for access larvae are rich in protein. The most recent threat is probably the arrival in France of Asian hornet Vespa velutina. This species has been observed in the summer of 2004 in the southwest. His acclimation to our region seems good, since it nests, reproduces and expands its territory each year. This insect is a predator of social wasps and bees in particular. His method of attack is original, in fact, two or three hornets regroup, hovering at the entrance of a beehive, and when a bee lands, they attack it, make it fall to the ground, then one of them prevails to the nest where it will serve food to the brood. The rapid expansion of this insect does not consider eradication next and leave even predict the next crossing of the Pyrenees, and expansion throughout southern Europe. Damage has already occurred in the southwest quarter of France, more important for small and medium beekeepers. The most successful colonies reproduce by swarming: early spring, some queen cells are established, and about a week before the birth of new queens, the old queen leaves with half the staff of all categories of workers to form a swarm. The workers have a mouthful of provisions, for their departure can not sting: a swarm is harmless, and the rest, in general, all the time of his trip. With the first swarm leave the mated queen. This is the day when a swarm out of the hive that the farmer should carefully mow a large hay field: indeed, the bees are able to predict the weather, three to four weeks in advance and they begin rearing queens, knowing already that the conditions will be favorable when the swarms will seek new shelter. Seven days after fledging of the first swarm, if the colony is thriving, a new swarm with a queen not fertilized will develop. Similarly, two days after the secondary swarm, it will be a third swarm leaves the hive in her turn. During this period, the weather will likely be in great weather, and farmers will pay attention to bees, during these nine days garnered much of their forage, hay that do not mix with the rain. It is possible to meet a swarm in wet weather, but it will certainly be a swarm that has been delayed in its search for shelter. Sometimes swarms, having taken off, are taken aback by showers at night: they will find refuge, hung from the branches of a hedge for the night, protected from rain and wind. The swarm goes in search of shelter: he may be provided by the beekeeper who captures and introduced into a new hive, or he returns to the wild and finds refuge in a hollow tree, an excavation, a disused chimney or even behind shutters. In the hive, the first queen born immediately kills all its rivals still in their cells, except in very large colonies where the bees to protect the young queens to swarm twice. It may indeed be only one queen per colony. A week later, she makes her first mating flight. A colony can produce between early spring and early summer, up to three swarms, they are known respectively primary, secondary and tertiary. When a colony accidentally loses his queen, she finds herself an orphan, and the workers are aware of his absence after one or two days. The colony can not survive without the laying of the queen which ensures the renewal of its population, workers will then select cells containing larvae less than three days, and enlarge them: what are the cells sauvet, and larvae that they contain will be fed exclusively on royal jelly to produce queens sauvet, who will reprise the role of the queen disappeared. This characteristic is exploited by beekeepers to expand their colonies: they collect into a hive prosperous few rays with cells containing eggs less than three days, covered workers, and transfer them into a hive filled with honey-ray. If all goes as planned, a new queen is born two weeks later. They are swarming artificial: it is easy to perform without the risk or manipulation. He who has a hive provides a trough containing sugar and water at a rate of one kilo of granulated sugar to a liter of water, boiled for about ten minutes. On sunny days, keep the trough full, and you should use a watering can accommodate large numbers of bees. If the colony is greedy, it can consume up to ten kilograms of sugar. Feeding continues until the start of the second and third swarms, nine days after the first. After the third spin-off, for at least another week, the watering will be kept full. Then it's time to put up with one last sip of syrup to help the workers in cleaning and building frameworks to contain the rise honey. From the first distribution of syrup, swarms of future housing should be provided with: hives or, better, hives filled with frames of foundation. Beekeepers choose a queen. The bee is a wasp of the genus Apis, which comprises several social species, three of which are native to Asia : Apis dorsata, Apis cerana and Apis Florea. The Apis mellifera (Linnaeus) occurs in Europe , in Africa , the Middle East , and parts of Siberia. His vast geographical spread has produced breeds with diverse behavioral and morphological characters. Brought by the settlers, the Apis mellifera has extended its range to North America and the American South at the Australia and New Zealand. The races of Europe's most well known are identified by geographic areas, separated by mountains, impassable by swarms. They have lived in the native state, with little outside contact. The black bee, Apis mellifera mellifera (Linnaeus, 1758) occupied most of Europe from the Iberian peninsula , the Spain and Portugal , the France , the UK and Germany , the Polish up the European part of Russia. The Italian yellow bee, Apis mellifera ligustica (Spinola, 1806) occupies most of Italy. Carnolienne Bee, Apis mellifera carnica (Pollmann, 1879), is from Slovenia and Austria. The Caucasian with long trunk, Apis mellifera caucasica (Pollmann, 1889), lives primarily in the Caucasus and Georgia. Of mixed races have been created by human action, voluntarily or not. The bee Buckfast , created by Brother Adam is one of the most popular. It is the result of a selection of crosses and combined. This work, which extended over 70 years, and have included several trips to study , have now emerged a method set by several European farmers, scholars who continue the work of Brother Adam. This bee is, at present, the only one whose pedigree is published on the internet. This genealogy is listed by breeders, dates back to 1925. Another example of blending is that the bee called Africanized. She was born in 1957 in Brazil , following the importation of African bee Apis mellifera scutellata (Lepeletier, 1836), which seemed better adapted to tropical climate. She crossed the bee with Creole, descendants of bees brought by the Iberian conquistadors. This cross, which features current and prolificacy confer a significant evolutionary advantage, invaded throughout the tropics and sub-tropical Americas. Beyond these races with a particular denomination, the bees form populations or landraces in each region, and they are not formally listed. The degree of originality of these races, their homogeneity or their degree of hybridization are poorly described. The bee population of a region comes from his inheritance, a combination between the old local breed, and the ongoing contributions of bees original remote or strain selected by the trade of queens and swarms, or transhumance and migration. It is influenced by climatic conditions and local resources, combined with practices more or less extensive beekeepers. The racial characteristics, morphology and behavior are being investigated for biometrics : their contributions in beekeeping are important because they provide information about the influence of genetic traits on the qualities of a race of bees. The selection is performed as in other sectors of agriculture, it tends to improve the bee to meet the needs of beekeeping. The qualities sought in honey bees are the strength, fertility, softness, cleanliness, disease resistant, and have little swarms. Every beekeeper practice in his apiary, a form of selection, in fact, during the artificial swarming, he chose as his stump strongest colonies. To perform a more rigorous selection, he must have a large number of colonies: Some beekeepers have specialized in the production of queens selected. For this, they have dedicated to this breeding hives frames are constructed to contain several drafts artificial queen cell, called wells. Larvae under the age of thirty-six hours, as small as possible, are deposited at the bottom of these wells, this operation is called grafting, and is usually done using a stylus called picking. Frames filled with these wells are introduced into hives of husbandry in the state of orphans, that is to say that we removed the queen. The workers, nurses, concerned about raising queens sauvet, will take care of larvae by providing an abundance of royal jelly composition adapted to their age, then close the cells by a cap. As a precaution, the cells are then surrounded by small cylindrical grates to protect them from attack by a queen born prematurely, and who seek to eliminate its rivals. Before the birth of the queens, each cell is placed in a hive of fertilization. This hive is packed with workers and brood combs, opercula, from which they could not raise new queens. In the months following birth should be inseminated queens, naturally, by males of their environment, the number of fifteen to twenty-five, or artificially. In the first case, the hives are placed preferably in an area saturated drones of the selected strain, possibly on a remote island. In the second case, an instrumental insemination is used to inject the seed - 8-12 mu.l, a good twenty males selected for obtaining a pure strain. Protections The risk of puncture requires the wearing of protective clothing. The bee genus Apis preferentially attack the head and the dark, for they represent the orifices, such as eyes, hair and ears. Holding beekeeper must be clear, usually creamy white. He wears a suit to protect all members, a cap fitted with a metal sufficiently tight veil, and gloves, but they limit the precision handling. Any work within the hive requires smoking out of the colony. The opening of the hive should be done only in good weather and a maximum of bees will be outside the hive, which will facilitate the operation. This is done using a smoker. There are many models, all running on the same principle: the smoke is produced by a fuel trapped in a tin container, the combustion is incomplete and produces a lot of smoke. Bellows smoke blows away from the container through a conical chimney and directing the flow. The material can be burned straw, pine needles, cardboard, untreated ... A smoker Another type of smoker The action of the smoke: For the bee, Fire related to the fire, dedicates the hive to certain destruction, beeswax and honey are highly flammable. The reflex of the bee is smoky to implement the only way to defend against this ruthless enemy, preparing, stuffing themselves in before a swarm of emergency. The beekeeper opens the hive at this point, becomes a secondary aggressor whose smoky bee no longer involved. On the other hand, the smoke alarm pheromones mask issued by the workers during an attack on the colony. This explains the relatively peaceful conduct of the colony during an intervention with smoke. The finished work, ventilate the hive bees to chase the smoke, and after fifteen to twenty minutes, they resume their normal activities. Beekeepers have suffered, sometimes caused by careless introduction of bees parasitized heavy losses due to the global epidemic of varroa in the 1980s . The effective radius of crop to bees, two to three kilometers, limits the production of an apiary fixed. The beekeeping moving the hives from site to site at the option of honey. Very old, it was already practiced by the nomads who carried their hives on the backs of animals. In Italy , the Po , or Egypt , the Nile , the hives were loaded onto boats up the river to areas more favorable to honey. Hives remained on the boats were full and when a line of flotation limit was reached. Today hives are loaded on trailers automobile or truck, the dark, when most of the bees have returned to arrive at its destination by sunrise. They are unloaded and put in place in the apiary pastoral, or to limit handling, remain in place on trailers or vehicles equipped for that purpose. The beekeeper tries to follow the variations of flowering related to the altitude and the progress of the seasons, beginning with the plains and valleys well exposed from April to June, reaching the mountain blooms later in July and August , and ending with the harvest of honeydew fir, before returning to the plain for the winter. Areas of open fields and intensive agriculture have often lost all or part of their wild bees. And synchronous flowering, brutal and short that characterize the vast intensive crops would no longer be fed to bees throughout the year. In some areas such as plantations of almond trees in the United States, orchardists also lack of bees. A hive produces various materials whose virtues are many. The best known is the honey, and there are others, such as royal jelly, the anti-carcinogenic properties, the wax that was used to make candles and for the maintenance of wooden furniture, propolis concentrate of antibiotic, and pollen, edible. Different races of bees are used to optimize crop of honey, propolis or pollen. Some techniques are used to force the bees to the production of propolis. Modern hives are designed so that honey can be extracted without damage to the hive itself. Increases in modern hives can be extracted independently from each other. Increases access to the queen is prevented by the use of a queen, only the workers, thinner, can cross, increases that do not contain honey. The extraction of a panel does not destroy the larva. The transaction requires more than smoking out of the stormy weather, but the smoke can give a taste of honey increases. The cells of the panels must then be uncapped and the honey extracted by centrifugation. Honey is usually still liquid, although it happens in rare cases it crystallizes in the alveoli. It will solidify and crystallize more or less late, depending on the type of honey. Protection and removal of managers Setting The smoking out Opening cells range Discovery of Honey honey extraction Filtering the honey Potting honey (after maturation) The production of royal jelly uses special techniques, because the bees produce the amount needed for brood rearing and do not make provision. It is practiced by beekeepers specialty. The hives are conducted as for rearing queens: the hive is made an orphan by removing the queen. Frames are placed in the hive with drafts of queen cells in which the beekeeper has placed older worker larvae from twelve to thirty-six hours. The workers will give these drafts to the cell size queens. The nurses are of royal jelly in abundance for young larvae. After three days, the cells have reached their maximum abundance. The frames are then removed, royal jelly is removed by aspiration, cell by cell. A hive can give up to three hundred grams of jelly per year. Upon removal, royal jelly is put in glass bottles, bottles which are sealed by a plastic cap, the metal being attacked because royal jelly is acidic and has a pH of 4, then stored cold, between two and five degrees C in an atmosphere free of moisture and protected from light. Under such conditions, royal jelly will keep perfectly for several months. It also contains vitamins, royal jelly is the richest natural product that is vitamin B5, trace elements, acetylcholine (up to 1 mg / g), factors antibiotics particularly active on Proteus and Escherichia coli B, better known as the E. coli. This product is researched and a higher price. In higher plants, the grain of pollen is the male fertilizing element of the flower. Pollen is produced on the anthers of stamens. Its shape, color and size vary considerably from one plant to another. To be pollinated, a flower must receive pollen from the pistil , the female organ of flowering plants. Always present in small amounts in honey, the study identifies its botanical origin. This identification technique honey from pollen in it called melissopalynology. Entomophilous plants rely heavily on insects for pollination. The bee, flitting from flower to flower, pollen grains deposited one over the pistil of another. The bee is widely used for pollination of crops, especially fruit trees. It is estimated that the economic value provided by bees during pollination is twelve to fifteen times higher than bee products. Collect pollen by the bee is possible thanks to the specific adaptation of the hind legs of the worker. It uses the pollen brush located on the inner metatarsal to recover pollen scattered over his body, then pushes the cup and into the pollen basket located on the outer surface of the tibia of the opposite leg. A single hair in the trash is mast that holds the ball of pollen. A ball weighs about fifteen to twenty milligrams, and the bee carries two. In the hive, pollen is packed with the head by other worker bees in the cells. Pollen is primarily a source of protein for bees, it enters into the composition of the food distributed to the brood. Pollen is also rich in other substances, and its average composition is: Other components are present as vitamins , trace elements, enzymes (amylase, invertase, some phosphatases) Substance antibiotics active on all strains of E. coli and some Proteus and Salmonella. There is also the rutin , a substance accelerating the growth substances estrogen , and many pigments that give color of a pollen specific. Gathering pollen is fairly recent. Beekeepers have developed a pollen trap at the entrance of the hive. To enter, the bees must pass through narrow openings, causing the fall of pollen loads in a drawer located underneath. The device is designed so that only ten percent of the pollen is taken because it is essential to the growth of settlements. Drawers are collected every one or two days. Pollen loads are dried at forty degrees C by passing a stream of hot dry air through the racks on which they are plated. They are dry when they no longer adhere to each other. Hydrophilic, but must be stored in airtight containers. A new method to freeze the balls from the collection of drawers. The main species producing propolis in Europe are conifers, like pine, fir and spruce , several species of poplar , which seem to be the largest source, the alder , the willow , the chestnut of India , the birch , the plum tree , the ash , the oak and elm. The propolis collected in the hive is generally composed of: Propolis also contains many other elements such as organic acids, numerous flavonoids, trace elements, many vitamins. The wax is produced by eight excretion wax glands, located under the abdomen of young bees, between the twelfth and nineteenth day of their lives when they build the honeycombs. The bee needs ten to eleven pounds of honey to produce one kilogram of wax. The wax is part of the chemical family cerides, it is composed of fatty acids and alcohols very long chain, from twenty to sixty atoms of carbon. Its melting point is about sixty-four degrees Celsius and a density of 0.97. It is insoluble in water and is resistant to oxidation. Formerly it was used in the manufacture of candles, and is still used for maintenance of wooden furniture. Today it is molded into sheets of corrugated wax which are placed in hives in order to save the bees work and therefore honey. Its use in the hive can also direct the orientation of buildings rays, or the type of cells constructed to support such spawning female cells, which give the bees in hives mainly for honey production. She enters the composition of polishes for furniture and flooring. The Apitherapy is another outlet for beekeepers. Formerly widely used in traditional medicinal preparations, honey fell into disuse with the medicine recently. But in recent years, some healing honey and propolis have been confirmed. In addition, bee venom , pollen and royal jelly are products whose properties have been discovered recently. They could not be with the development of harvesting techniques. Apitherapy remains a minor sector. Honeybee larvae may be consumed by humans , this practice is still very marginal in Western countries, and is much more common in countries where the bees exist in the wild, and where beekeeping is much closer to a hunting-ray Economy Colony
The beekeeper
The Hive and other visitors
Much more worrying is the damage caused in many parts of Europe by a parasitic mite of honey bees, Varroa jacobsoni, become resistant to traditional varroacides. Formic acid is used or essential oils to overcome, but the best prevention is still breeding strains of bees resistant, that is to say able to get rid of the parasite. Careful monitoring of hives and dead bees may detect the mites before it spreads. A mechanical solution by use of expandable hive is given by Maurice boiler in his book on beekeeping alternative.
Another threat appeared with Aethina : This small hive beetle causes significant losses in apiaries in North America. With globalization, which does not spare the world of beekeeping, including exports of queens, and swarms, it is feared his arrival in Europe. The multiplication of colonies
Swarming
The artificial swarming
Swarming simplified
Selection and breeding of queens
Races
Selection
Breeding queens
Operations Bee
The smoking out
Pathology emerging?
Since 2006 the United States, and since 2000 at least in Europe and almost everywhere in the world, and sometimes wild honeybees seem now heavily affected by an unexplained decline of their populations. They talk about " collapse disorder bee colonies , "or" CCD "(for Colony Collapse Disorder) to describe the fact that billions of honeybees do not fit into their hive. The rate of abandoned or nearly abandoned hives reached 70% and 80% in some regions and countries most affected. As part of the Grenelle Environment (who also proposed the establishment of a restoration plan "pollinators", the rapporteur Saddier Martial in October 2008 has proposed to "bring together the various research institutes in order to stop a European and worldwide program of research for the bee "and suggested" special identification of the bee and its role in the world through such a classification of UNESCO World Heritage " . Beekeeping pastoral or transhumant
These farmers are renting hives so that the "landlords of bees" have come close to their fields or orchards during bloom. They offer hives of Apis mellifera , and also producing less honey bees, but stronger and better able to fertilize crops, such as Megachile rotundata , introduced and naturalized in North America, known as the alfalfa leafcutter " and considered the only reliable pollinator for alfalfa in Canada , although it may convey a highly pathogenic fungus to alfalfa ( Verticillium albo-atrum ) ), or drones, considered stronger and more active Low temperature (10 to 18 C) the bees . Nevertheless some species of bumble bees also seem fast receding. The products of the hive
Honey
Royal Jelly
Pollen
Composition of pollen.
Collection and storage of pollen
Propolis
resins and balsams 50-55% wax 30-40% Volatile or essential oils 5-10% pollen 5% various materials 5% Wax
Apitherapy
Consumption of larvae
Product 1964 1969 1974 1979 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004 wax 30 37 41 44,5 47,5 47 52 57,5 60 honey 752 756 793 906 995 1146 1118 1237 1374 Flora bee
Some figures
Glossary
Bibliography
References
See also
Related articles
External Links
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