Bee Keeping

The practice of keeping or rearing, caring and management of honey bees on a large scale for obtaining honey and wax is called apiculture.

Cell builder choice – choose right and build it right.

1. Picking a hive with too few bees will not accomplish the cell building task.
2. Picking a small nest hive with a small amount of nursery bees will result in bees not building good or very many cells.
3. If there are no festooning bees, you will not be successful. WAX BUILDING IS KEY.
4. To be queenless is better according to most experts in the field, but many do operate with double-screened queen-right hives with good success.
   1. You will need a hive to build the cells. This hive is called a “cell builder hive.” Again, many individual methods exist for raising queens in cell builders.
   2. Some prefer what is called a “queen-right” colony.
   3. Others prefer queenless hives.
   4. You many even run into the term “cell-finishing colony.”
   5. Your method will vary according to the number of queens you want to raise.
5. We will teach in this class a queenless type method.
6. Requirements for raising good queen cells
   1. Fertilized eggs or larvae.
   2. A cell builder hive supplied with a large population of well-fed nurse bees.
   3. Hive well supplied with syrup and pollen.
   4. Conditions created to cause the bees to build queen cells.
   5. Close attention to calendar dates.
   6. Each queen to be raised must have a separate compartment or hive of her own.
7. Let’s look at all of these points! Getting the right HIVE larvae
   1. If you are going to raise queens, why not try to raise the best you can!
   2. Select for characteristics that are important to you.
   3. Avoid any stock that is aggressive, prone to swarm, etc.
   4. Size matters; know the size of the earliest day one larva.
   5. Picking wrong will throw off your harvest time and see torn-down cells in your cell builder, besides the loss of the cell builder. A start-over do-over will be in order.
8. A cell builder hive supplied with a large population of well-fed nurse bees.
   1. Our cell builder was used to start and finish queen cells. Thus, the cell bars (or, in the Alley, Miller methods, the frame with young eggs or larvae) is placed into the center of this hive and it remains there until the queen cells are ready for harvest.
   2. Ours will be the Doolittle grafting method.
   3. When queen cells are harvested, you can use the bees and frames to build nucs.
9. The hive must be supplied with plenty of pollen and syrup to imitate a big nectar flow.
   1. It is important that the cell builder hive is supplied with syrup before queen cells are started and after they are placed into the hive.
   2. It is important to provide frames of pollen to the hive. (Note – some individuals use pollen patties.)
10. Conditions created to cause the bees to build queen cells.
    1. “To produce good queen cells, the conditions that exist in nature when a strong colony produces cells under the swarming impulse should be approximated.”
    2. From Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding by Harry H. Laidlaw Jr and Robert Page Jr. Page 44
11. Thus, the following need to be observed…
    1. Crowded condition of the brood nest
    2. An over-abundance of nurse bees – to create the production of royal jelly
    3. Comb builders stimulated by feeding syrup (lots of festooning nurse bees)
    4. Good supply of pollen – used producing royal jelly
    5. Good ventilation
    6. Lack of queen substance (pheromones). If present, it suppresses queen rearing. (In other words, a queen-less hive)
    7. Presence of selected young larvae
12. How I build my builder
    1. I start with a bottom board, an empty deep box, and a pail-type top feeder.
    2. I fill the pail feeder with syrup and keep it full.
    3. I shake 6 or 8 pounds of bees to put into my cell builder. The number of worker bees determines the number of queens to be raised.
    4. I collect 5 frames of capped brood. I try to avoid any with eggs, but sometimes it cannot be avoided. I get 2 good frames of honey and pollen. I also insert one frame of new foundation, which is removed when the cell bars are placed into the hive. This is a great way to get new foundation started.
    5. I check for emergency queen cells two days later and place my grafted cell bars into the hive.
    6. I add a shallow super with new foundation above the deep hive body. It provides cluster space above the cell bars. I use no queen excluder. This is an excellent way to get new foundation drawn.
    7. A hive like this one will produce over 100 queen cells.
    8. The bees are used to stock new nucs several days before the queen cells are harvested. There are a lot of bees on the outside of this hive because I shake all bees off frames checking for unwanted emergency queen cells.
13. Close attention to calendar dates
    1. Queens are produced from an egg in approximately 16 days.
    2. Thus, if we graft a young larva (4 days old – 3 days as an egg and 1 day as a new small larva), the new virgin queen produced from that larva will emerge from her queen cell in 12 days +/– a few hours.
    3. Queens must be harvested before they emerge. This is usually 10 to 11 days after the graft.
    4. Otherwise, the first to emerge will kill the other queens by cutting down queen cells.
14. Each queen to be raised must have a separate compartment or hive of her own.
    1. My nucs are five-frame deep boxes. I can move standard deep frames into them and use the frames at the end of the year to build additional hives with the bees and queens still remaining.
    2. They are easy to build and often from scrap lumber.
15. Virgin queens
    1. Emerge from cell. They don’t hatch!
    2. Mate in good weather, usually after the temperatures have warmed a bit.
    3. Must mate within 20 days or they become drone-laying queens.
    4. Will begin laying within several weeks after mating.
    5. Young queens may lay several eggs per cell at first.
    6. However, a brood pattern can be detected within several days. The term “untested” usually refers to a queen who has not been a proven productive queen. “Tested” indicates that the queen has produced brood which has been examined and certified by the breeder that she is producing good brood.

Basic Beekeeping Equipment

The Hive and Its Parts

Honeybees can live in hollow trees, wall voids in buildings, attics, or any other protected place. Several types of hives have been designed to manage honeybees. Old-fashioned hives were simple devices, such as plain boxes, short sections of hollow logs called gums, or straw baskets called skeps. These hive styles have many disadvantages and are rarely used now. Combs in them were usually irregular and braced together with bur comb. Individual combs could not be removed from the hive without damaging other pieces or even injuring or killing the queen. It was also difficult to inspect the hives for diseases and other problems.

Modern hives with movable frames allow easy inspection and honey removal. Hive design is efficacious for other management practices and for the bees. The inner dimensions of the hive and its parts are very precise. They are based on a dimension called the “bee space,” which is about 5/16-inch wide or deep. Proper spacing is important. If gaps are too wide, bees build brace comb and glue down movable frames. The modern hive consists of several parts.

structure of a modern bee hive

• A hive stand keeps the hive off the ground so it is less likely to rot, flood, or be attacked by termites. It can be as simple as a few bricks stacked under each hive corner, or it might be a wood frame with an alighting board. The alighting board allows heavily loaded field bees to land more easily before crawling into the hive.

The hive rests on the three rails of the bottom board. The open side is the hive entrance. This opening can be closed or narrowed with an entrance cleat when necessary. Reducing the entrance opening in the fall keeps out field mice looking for shelter. The standard hive body or brood chamber holds 10 frames of comb. Besides being the nursery, it is also pantry, kitchen, living room, dining room, bedroom, and workshop for the bees. If it becomes too crowded, the bees might begin rearing brood in the supers. If colonies get very large, provide extra hive bodies for the brood chamber.

• A queen excluder is sometimes placed above the brood chamber to keep the queen in the brood chamber. Slots in the excluder are wide enough workers can go back and forth but too narrow for the queen to pass through. Beekeepers who produce extracted honey do not use excluders because they reduce the bees’ efficiency. For comb honey and chunk honey production, the excluder assures that brood are not in the honey product.

Chambers above the brood chamber are called supers. They are the same size as the brood chamber and are used for storage of surplus honey. Deep supers are used by those who primarily produce extracted honey. Larger boxes require less handling but are heavy when full of honey. Shallow supers are easier to lift and convenient for harvesting small honey yields from a particular nectar source.

The inner cover is a flat piece with an oblong hole in the center. A bee escape can be put in the hole when needed. The hole provides ventilation and a place to puff smoke when opening the hive. The edges of the inner cover have railings on both faces. The railing on one side is higher than the other. The tall railing should be on the outside. If the tall rail is on the inside, the bees build wax between it and the tops of the frames. This buildup is a mess to clean.

The top cover is a waterproof lid that rests on the edges of the top super. Bees do not glue down the top cover, so it can be lifted from the hive without prying or jarring.

• Frames are the inside parts that hold the comb. They consist of a top and bottom and two end bars. The wide part of an end bar is keeled on one edge. Place frames in the hive so that the keeled edge of one frame abuts the flat edge of the next one. Frames help keep comb-building regular and allow easy inspection and honey removal. All frames are the same length, but there are different depths and styles.

Carefully put together unassembled frames. Fit the frame together so that the keel on the left end bar is toward you and the keel on the right end bar is away from you. If you rotate the frame, the keel is still toward you on the left side and away from you on the right. Use plenty of nails when fastening the frame together. Otherwise, it can pull apart when the comb is full of honey.

To ensure that the comb is regular, frames are fitted with thin sheets of embossed wax called foundation. Foundation for brood frames and extracted honey frames has embedded wires for extra strength. This prevents the comb from sagging when the wax gets soft during hot weather or from tearing apart during extraction.

Foundation can be purchased with wires in it, or wire can be embedded after the foundation is fitted into the frame. It is more convenient for the beginner to buy wired foundation for brood frames. Use unwired foundation in the honey frames if you are going to produce chunk honey. The size of foundation sheets varies with frame size. Bee supply catalogs specify the frame styles different foundation sheets fit.

Other Beekeeping Equipment.

A hive tool is the most useful piece of beekeeping equipment. It can be used to pry up the inner cover, pry apart frames, scrape and clean hive parts, and do many other jobs.

• Examining a hive is much easier when you use a smoker. It is used to puff smoke into the entrance before opening the hive and blow smoke over the frames after the hive is opened. Smoke causes the bees to gorge themselves with honey; then they are much gentler. Smoke must be used carefully. Too much can drive bees from the hive. They will be slow to settle down after the hive is closed again. Burlap, rotted wood, shavings, excelsior, cardboard, or cotton rags are good smoker fuels.

Even the most experienced beekeepers wear veils to protect their face and eyes. Wire veils keep bees farther away from the face than those made of cloth.

Black veiling is generally easier to see through. Some beekeepers prefer to wear a bee suit. Whether or not a suit is used, a beekeeper’s clothing should be light in color. Bees generally do not like dark colors and will attack dark objects.

• Bee gloves protect the hands and arms from stings, but it is hard to do some jobs while wearing them. It is a good idea to wear gloves until you feel more comfortable working your bees.
• A brush gently removes bees from frames. A leafy twig or bunch of grass can do the same job and gives you fewer tools to carry around.
• A bee escape is used to clear bees out of supers. Place the escape in the center hole of the inner cover below the super to be cleared. Bees can pass through in only one direction. It usually takes about a day to get the bees out of a super.
• Wire embedders are handy for wiring your own foundation. Various jigs for assembling frames and supers save time and assure square fitting. These can be purchased or made. Most beekeepers are creative with tools and make various gadgets to do special jobs.

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