Posts Tagged ‘Beekeeping’

There are many great reasons for keeping honey bees. From harvesting honey, to collecting beeswax, and even crop pollination, bees serve many helpful purposes. Here are a few helpful tips for keeping honey bees on your property.

This Great Bee Keeping Guide “Modern Beekeeping” Teaches You All You Need To Know so as to keep Your Own Healthy Bees and Produce Your Own Great Honey! Click Here To Download Adam Mills’s Modern Beekeeping Guide.

1. Feed Your Bees: While the bees are getting used to their new hive, or during cold weather months, you will need to provide food.  You will need to mix sugar syrup and administer it to the bees through use of a Boardman feeder, or by placing the syrup inside the top cover near the opening in the inner cover.

This type of feeding allows your bees to have access to the syrup, without attracting pests or intruders. It is important to note that bees consume a great deal when they are first establishing a hive, so make sure to check the syrup level often. Once the bees begin to produce honey, you will no longer need to supply syrup, however you should leave some honey in the hive as a food source during the winter and early spring months.

2. Make Sure Water Is Handy: Bees need to have a proper water source, especially during warm weather months. Bees use water to cool down their hive during periods of hot and humid weather, and also use it as a dilution material during honey production. That being said, you should never place a container of water too close to the hive because bees can drown quite easily.

3. Be Considerate: When keeping honey bees, you should always be considerate of others. Remember, you want the bees, your neighbors do not necessarily feel the same way.

A wooden fence around your hive can prove quite beneficial. Make sure you set the fence up in the same direction as the hive opening so the bees can fly over the fence and above nearby homes.

For More Bee Keeping Tips, Click Here To Download Adam Mills’s Modern Beekeeping Guide.

1. How large beekeepers can make a profit
To be able to make a good profit large beekeepers cannot just sell their products within the local community but will have to spread their wings and get business from the super markets and grocery stores too. Only then can they cope with the financial expenditure and remain solvent financially. For this to happen the beekeepers have to pay heed to the packaging of the honey and other by products which should meet the standards set by USDA.

2. How do they decide on the packaging?
The container is what makes the package attractive and this is what the beekeeper has to bear in mind when thinking of the packing. These packings can be in various types of containers like glass bottles, plastic containers and cans. The sizes of the containers can vary from a few hundred grams to several kilos. The smaller containers come in attractive shapes and colors and can be reused for storing anything else by the buyer later. Another aspect is to keep the bottles and containers firmly sealed so that they can be shipped to any destination without fear of leakage.

3. Labels are equally important as a visual effect
After the container has been decided on you will have to think about the label which is what makes the container colorful and attractive and gives the buyer details about the product. Before designing the label or going to an artist who will help you with the design you should check with the government of your state about the laws that govern certain requirements. This will decide about the information that you are supposed to put on every label. The name of the product, which in this case is “Honey”, should be mentioned boldly on the label.

If you are using a distribution or packaging company their name and address as well as the name and address of your farm should also be on the label. Apart from all this the date of packaging the honey and the net weight should also be mentioned clearly. The size of the font on the label will be according to the size of the container and the label.
For those beekeepers who harvest honey of different flavors, the name of the flavor should also be mentioned on the label, as different people would prefer different flavors. Ig the honey is not filtered then you would have to mention that it is raw, natural or unfiltered on the label too.

4. USDA grades
The beekeepers who have the USDA certification will also have their honey graded and the grades will have to be mentioned on the labels too. These grades are based on the defects, quality of flavor, clarity and the amount of moisture in the honey.

Some time ago I downloaded this ebook from Adam Mills and started to read it one summers evening. The first thing I found was that there was a warmth and enthusiasm to the writing which I found engrossing. This Great Bee Keeping Guide “Modern Beekeeping” Teaches You All You Need To Know so as to keep Your Own Healthy Bees and Produce Your Own Great Honey! Click Here To Download Adam Mills’s Modern Beekeeping Guide.

Harvesting honey is an exciting and fun process. This is the time when all of your hard work pays off, and you finally get to enjoy this sweet treat. However, before you begin, there are a few things you should know to make the process easier. Here are three simple tips for harvesting honey.

Prepare Your Area: As we all know, honey is extremely sticky. Every item you handle will become sticky (counter tops, tools, doorknobs, etc.) so you should contain the stickiness by working in a clean barn, on the porch, or in the garage rather than working in your kitchen. Keep a bucket of water handy to rinse your hands and a clean towel to dry off with. Set up all pieces of equipment and tools before handling the comb, and lay down a few drop cloths or newspapers on the floor.

Harvest In A Confined Area: Harvesting honey should be done in a closed room.  This keeps the honey clean, and it helps to keep the bees from stealing it, and bringing it back to the hive.

Warm The Honey: Warm honey flows much easier than cold honey. This will allow you to spin the honey out of the comb faster, which results in more honey being extracted from the comb. Warm honey also flows through strainers and filters much faster, without clumping up. Honey should be heated to about eighty degrees Fahrenheit (twenty-seven degrees Celsius) for optimal flow. Use caution to ensure you do not heat the honey too much or else you may melt the wax comb.

For More Bee Keeping Tips, Click Here To Download Adam Mills’s Modern Beekeeping Guide.

Now every one knows that you are not doing nature a service by providing the bees a place to live by setting up a bee hive, they are quite capable of doing that themselves. Your main intention is to harvest honey, and a lot of it. The best way is to set up a bee hive and regularly inspect it for the produce.

By inspecting the supers in the hive you will know that it is time to collect your share of the honey hive when you notice the supers have honey comps and are closed with caps of wax. All you need to do is to take out the honey combs and get to the honey – easier said than done!

Now harvesting the honey fro the bee hive will not be such a problem for the experienced bee keeper. You will need to wear special be keeping gear that will prevent you from getting stung by the ferocious little creatures that can get pretty aggressive if someone tries to steal their food.

Bee keeping gear consists of light colored clothes, because bees are attracted to bright colors. You must also stay calm if they swarm over your face mask. You will also need some additional tools such as a scraping tool and a smoker.

When you are sure the supers are full, you can proceed to encourage the bees to leave the super. Some chemicals available in the market will make this task easier. One very popular chemical that is used to scare the bees away is called ‘bee go’. This is applied to what is called a fumer board when the bees get a scent of the ‘Bee Go’ the bees move to the base of the hive. This leaves the hive free from any bees ready for you to take out the honey combs. Fisher Bee Quick is another good chemical that assists in removing he bees from the hive without harming them. They just find the scent very offensive and move to the bottom of the hive.

Once you have safely removed the honey filled honeycombs from the hive you need to extract the honey from it. You must first remove the wax caps from the cells. These wax caps seal the honey within the combs. You can use a metal knife to remove the wax caps, this is better achieved if the knife has been slightly heated on a fire as it melts the wax a little. It is, in fact, better to warm the knife by dipping it into a basin of hot water.

The honey will begin to drip from the comb once the caps are removed. It is best that you place the comb on a cheese cloth that has been placed over a pot to collect the honey. The honey will strain through the cloth leaving the caps behind.

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From midsummer in a good year, many hives will be approaching a crisis point. The worker/gatherer bees, numbering anything around 50,000 in a decent colony, will have brought back home huge quantities of nectar and pollen, and the vacant cells are overflowing.

The Queen has increased by many thousands the number of her brood, and now finds herself encroached upon, and pushed for space in her domain. The hive is extremely crowded, all the combs are fully occupied, and the “fanner” bees, who have the unenviable task of keeping the colony cool, are finding it difficult to cope, and returning bees cluster around the entrance, unwilling to enter this situation.

To add to the pressure, a newly hatching brood due in a week will add to the congeston even more. Something has to be done about this state of affairs, and it has to be done at once. Inactivity (except in winter) is anathema to the bee, and not tolerated in their world.

So the bees prepare to swarm. Of course, the bees who remain with the hive to form the nucleus of a new colony must have a Queen. The original Queen will go with the swarm. Ever efficient, the bees cater for any unexpected accident by preparing for many new Queens. The workers construct special cells by sacrificing other cells around them. These special cells are larger, with thicker walls.

The existing Queen then lays into these specially prepared cells eggs, which would usually hatch into worker bees. However, the nurse bees feed these eggs with richer food, and more of it, enlarge the cells more as the larvae grow. Until the cells are capped, with the new virgin Queens emerging in a week.

At this time restlessness seizes the old Queen, who rushes about, trying in vain to assert her authority, even threatening the young Queens-to-be, and order breaks down. The temperature rises to a point where things are all but intolerable and the bees swarm from the hive. The Queen, having finally left her old home, will settle not too far away initially, in some nearby bush, tree, old log or suchlike, the bees will cluster around her, forming the familiar ball shape of the swarm. This is the time that the beekeeper, if he has been watchful, can gather them up and transport them to a new hive to start anew. Otherwise, within a short time scouts will have found a new permanent home, and the swarm will be lost.

The original hive, now depleted by more than half, now returns to it’s life as though nothing had happened. A few days later the strongest of the new Queens-to-be lets it be known that she is ready to emerge. She will cut the capping of her cell, which has previously been thinned and smoothed by the nurses to aid her exit, press against it, force it open like a hinged lid, and step out onto the comb. The nearest honey cell has her first attention, feeding hungrily. She then devotes her attention to her sisters, finding all the other Queen cells, ripping them open and killing her rivals. If she is not quick enough, or is not allowed by the other bees, she will wait to fight to the death any other potential Queens that may emerge. Alternatively she may decide not to fight for the position of Queen here and join an “afterswarm”. The bee law remains intact. A law of bee life, having very few exceptions, has been upheld. “One Queen – one kingdom”.

1. The unique life cycle of the honey bee
The queen bee lays eggs in the octagonal shaped cells and the eggs get attached to the wall of the cell with a strand of mucus. During spring when the eggs are being laid, the queen bee can lay up to 1900 eggs in a day. The egg remains in the cell until it hatches and there emerges a larva. There are nurse bees that have to care for the larvae and feed the larvae with honey and secretions from the glands which are referred to as bee bread.
There are five stages to the development of a larva, and the larva sheds the outer skin after each of these stages. On the sixth day of this procedure the larva is cocooned by one of the worker bees in its cell where it stays for the next eight to ten days and then emerges as a fully formed bee from its cocoon.
2. The life span of a honey bee
The life span of the honey bees depends on the purpose that they are in the hive for. Different jobs have different honeybees doing it and their life spans also differ accordingly. The queen bee has a life span of two years but this is only if she has been inseminated with a sufficient amount of sperm while she was on her nuptial flight. The queen bee if she is in a good condition can lay up to 2000 eggs in a day and is also responsible for killing her mother and sisters too. The queen bee has nothing to do as there are enough bees in her entourage to feed her and to clean the waste matter too. An older queen bee will leave the nest while the rest of the bees from the hive are going to swarm. This usually happens during spring time. Those who are proficient in bee keeping, think that the queen bee generates some sort of pheromone that avoids the worker bees from the hives in becoming interested in sex. The virgin queen bee is one who has not had her nuptial flight. The drone bees are the ones that survive only until they have impregnated the queen bee during her nuptial flight. The drone bee dies after mating with the queen bee.
3. Life of the worker bee
The worker bee lives for one hundred and forty days only during the winter, and during summer it is only forty days. They have a short life span because they literally work themselves to death. There are many different duties that the worker bees have to perform. The nurse bees take care of the larvae while others have to go out and collect pollen to make honey. Other workers have to be capping the honey combs while some have to attend on the queen bee. These worker bees also have to starve the drone bees to death and clean the hives. All worker bees are always sterile and in case they lay an egg are drone bees. Each hive has between twenty thousand to two hundred thousand bees in a one hive. The bees only survive if their queen life, if anything happens to the queen bee then the whole hive dies.

When the bee keeper removes the honey from the honey combs he has to process the raw honey immediately to prevent it from crystallizing. Once the row honey comes into contact with the oxygen in the air it reacts and begins to crystallize immediately. This does not happen in the honey comb as the wax caps over each cell in the comb keeps the honey away from the air.
Apart from processing the raw honey to prevent crystallization, the bee keeper has to kill some very potent bacterium in the honey to prevent poisoning. This is the bacteria that cause the symptoms of botulism in humans. These symptoms are better known as ‘food poisoning’ and are removed by heating the raw honey for some time at temperatures between 150 to 170 degrees centigrade.
Honey is naturally sweater than processed sugar and is stored in its natural color. Sugar made from sugarcane is bleached to remove the natural brown color of sugar. This is why table sugar is white and crystallized.
Honey is a whitish substance that is very gooey in nature in its raw form. It is only the pasteurizing process that causes it to get that yellowish color. When the honey is processed on a hot fire it begins to caramelize, very much the same way sugar does. Honey has a very long shelf life and cam be kept for years after processing. People buy honey for it’s medicinal value as it has many vitamins and an extremely high amount of antioxidants and digestive enzymes. The healthy properties of honey cannot be enumerated in this short article.
Honey is fast taking its rightful place in society by replacing many substances that aggravate diabetes. For instance corn syrup is being replaced by honey as corn syrup is a known cause of diabetes. Corn syrup is a product of man through many automated and mechanical processes where as honey is only processed to remove bacteria from its constituents. Any sweet produced by man is a sure cause of diabetes. Natural sugars are not.
Honey has a lot of medicinal values too. For instance it is used as a topical application to treat conditions like MRSA, this is a type skin infection. Honey is also known to be very good for the treatment of laryngitis. A bit of honey mixed with a bit of lemon will sooth your throat as it does contagious conjunctivitis.
Beekeepers across the world like to stick to the organic way of processing honey because they do not believe in using harmful chemicals to purify their produce. These chemicals if used will destroy the many benefits of honey in its natural form. This is something the large manufacturers of honey cannot guarantee, many of them do use harmful chemicals to process the honey they sell. This is the reason people stick to local farmers for their supply of honey.

Bee keeping dates back to the 13th century BC when it was practiced by ancient Egyptians. Once it was introduced by John Harbison to the United States, it became more modernized with updated techniques and became the main profession and financial sustenance for beekeepers. There are other by products that are derived from honey which is propolis and royal jelly which are used for medicinal purposes. Not much has changed since ancient times in the use of products derived from beehives.
1. Different varieties of bees brought into the US
Bees of different species were brought from various countries like New Zealand and Europe. This was more of a hobby for those who lived on farms than a main means of earning their keep. Farming was the main occupation and beekeeping was just a side hobby that was followed by the relatives of the farmers, who had access to space on the farm and found it easy to keep bees. This hobby then was passed from generation to generation.
2. From honey and bee wax the bee hive changed with science
In early days, bees were maintained just for their honey and for the bee’s wax that they produced for their hives, and which was used for making candles and various other products. Later L. L. Langstroth an American scientist brought more scientific methods into bee keeping and brought into practice the beehive frame that was removable. Later it was found that bees could be influenced into building their own frames that were straight by giving them some wax as a foundation. The bees would then make use of this foundation and build their own honey comb with holes that were octagonal in shape to keep their larvae in until they had developed enough and hatched. The methods for beekeeping kept getting more and more developed and a helpful and practical invention was the smoker, which assisted the beekeepers as a safety device.
3. The art of beekeeping
For any successful beekeeper, this art should be second nature to them and they should know all that there is about bee keeping. It is always easier for those who are born into beekeeping families to work on such projects as this has been their life from the time they were born. With beekeeping being the family business the new generation will have no problem in picking up the strings as easily as it would be to learn how to walk and talk!
4. Apiculturists are agriculturists who are bee keepers
Bee keepers are agriculturists of sorts as their profession is closely related to the farmer’s profession, who breed cows and grow food side by side on the same farm. The same way, many farmers have bee keeping as an additional source of income and a hobby for the others in the family to carry on some trade and earn some extra money. Of course bee keeping is also a full time profession for some. The Department of agriculture refers to bee keepers as apiculturists.
Beekeepers who know about entomology and biology are more successful in their bee keeping business and can advice those who are in need of some more know how on bee keeping. They can help many a bee keeper with their knowledge and if they pass it on to other apiculturists they will be helping them with their business too.

Bee keeping is a hobby, believe it or not. These little stinging creatures can be a lot of fun if handled with care and there are a lot of sweet returns too. However, if you intend to take up this hobby iyou are best advised to get some basic knowledge about bee keeping – and the necessary mandatory equipment too if you do not want the post office calling you to collect your bees from their viscinity.
Now, the most basic piece of equipment that is required for bee keeping is the bee hive itself. Let us take some time to understand the structure and the necessity of the bee hive. It is not like you are required to go out and get yourself a natural bee hive from out of a tree. THis is not at all recommended as these little creatures are very possesive of theit home and the occupants so you may just as well land yourself in bed with multiple stings that may also prove fatal at times. The hive we are talking about is contruced out of wood and looks like a small wooden cabinet to be kept outdoors.
The beehive you need should have 5 supers. These are the most important part of a bee hive as this is the part of the hive that the bees use to store their product – honey. These 5 supers are placed between the base of teh hive and the top cover. Each of the 5 supers contain 9 to 10 frames where theb bees keep their off spring and honey. You decide if you want to have deep supers or shallow supers. Deep supers mean that you will have to get yourself a one – size foundation unlike the shallow super where you wil need multiple size foundations. The bad part of a deep super is that you will have to lug out a hundred pound weight when it is full.
When you are ready to set up yur hive ensure that you place it on a flat surface where it will be pretty difficult for the hive to tip over when a strong wind blows. Also place it in a place where people and animals will not be able to reach it and disturb the bees.
Now for something called a spacer. these are bits of equipment or rather wooden planks that are used to space out the frames in the super. You will need a few of these but do not wory a beehive kit will usually have all that you wil require to set up your bee hive.
Now when the bees have created enough honey and you need to get it out of the hive you will need to have a ‘smoker’. This is not a cigarette puffing human but a piece of bee keepng equipment that is used to ‘smoke’ the bees away from the hive so that you can safely cllect the produce inside the supers. Smokers are simple in design and are constructed out of a funnel and bellows. You will need to use some smoking material such as ‘Brlap’ to create a lot of smoke, dried corn cobs are another good alternative to create a lot of smoke.
Your bee hive will come with a metal hive tool used to pry open the beehive and scrape the honey from the frames. A furmer board is used to engourage the bees to leave a super and let you take their honeycombs. Now for the bees themselves, You could order them or set up your bee hive and wait patiently until they find it and build their colony themselves.
Go to the net and find the best way to order your bee hive and also the inmates. This may be the start of a very interesting hobby.

1. The new beekeeper
The new beekeeper will be more than enthusiastic to have his new bees arrive by post.
Before the bees arrive he would have chosen a suitable place to put his new bees in along with the new hive. The place for the bee hive would have to be in a secluded area where the bees will not be disturbed by both humans and animals. The hive also has to be in a place where strong winds will not knock it down.
Before the bees arrive it would be a good thing to try out the safety equipment and specially the body suit so that you are well protected and do not get stung. The post office will keep you informed on the arrival of the bees, and once they come will ask you to come and take your dangerous parcel away as soon as possible.
2. The newly arrived bees
In the container you will probably find a few bees lying dead, but this is to be expected after the stressful journey that they have undertaken. The rest of the bees will be alright and will have to be transferred to the new hive that you have set up for them from the container that they were shipped in. Before trying to transfer the bees make sure that you have the safety gear on and also the smoker ready. Inside the shipping container there will be a smaller container; this has the queen bee in it. This box will be closed with a cork, and if you remove the cork there will be another stopper inside that is made of sugar.
3. Placing the queen in the hive
The queen’s container should be hung inside the hive that has been prepared for the new bees. Now pierce a hole in the sugar so that the worker bees will be able to free the queen bee easier and allow her to escape into the hive. Care should be taken that the queen bee is not damaged in anyway while you pierce the sugar cube as it is not easy to find a replacement for the queen bee during winter months.
After the queen bee has been put into the hive, blow a puff of smoke into the container with the other bees and allow them out into the hive. The bees will automatically spill out of the container into the hive and settle down there. Make sure you put a feeder filled with ordinary sugar n to the hive. If there are any bees still in the container just leave the container near the hive and they will go into it on their own. The bees prefer being changed from the container to the hive wither early in the morning or in the evening time.
4. A week for the bees to settle down
The bees will take at least a week to settle down to their new hive and then the queen bee will start laying her eggs and the bees will also start making honey.