<This is a reprint of the first in a series of articles demystifying the art of beekeeping, as seen through the eyes of a local beekeeper>
Greetings, and welcome to the first in a series of articles in which I will attempt to demystify the art of beekeeping or Apiculture, which is simply the maintenance of honeybees and hives to produce honey.
Yes, it can be as simple as that, or it can be highly technical and encompass Queen rearing and artificial insemination of Queens, for desired genetic traits, such as temperament, brood rearing, and honey production.
It’s all up to you, the beekeeper, as to how technical your beekeeping journey gets.
How much honey does a hive produce?
Commercial bee-keeping operations in Florida weigh in at fourth place in the United States with 9.6 million pounds of honey produced for the 2023 season, while the number one spot goes to North Dakota with 28.3 million pounds, followed by South Dakota at 12.3 and California at 9.6 million pounds.
My little hobbyist apiary with six or eight hives normally produces around 300 to 400 pounds a year.
I sell some, give a lot away to friends and family, and use it at home for baking and just about everything you would use refined sugar for.
And then there is the Mead, possibly the oldest alcoholic beverage on earth, predating both wine and beer.
Made with honey, water, and yeast, but that’s a hobby in itself.
I will try to keep this series of articles grounded in the backyard, and more to the interests of the hobbyist “Beek” [Beekeeper] and not mired down in the technical sciences.
But First…maybe just a little science.
Apiculture provides farmers and hobbyists with a variety of enterprises including the production of beeswax, honey, and other edible bee products such as propolis tinctures, and dried pollen.
A honeybee colony is an organized society of three adult castes: queens, workers, and drones.
A caste is a fixed social group into which an individual is born within a particular system of social stratification.
Each caste has certain responsibilities to the preservation of their hive.
Queens, who are responsible for producing and laying eggs, live for an average of two to three years but have been known to live five years.
Domesticated honeybee queens may die earlier, as beekeepers “re-queen” the hives frequently.
A single queen may lay 800,000 eggs throughout her life.
Queens produce a number of unfertilized eggs that hatch into drones, or male honeybees.
The main purpose of a drone is to mate with their queen, and queens from other hives, and their life span relates directly to this task.
If a mature drone successfully mates with a queen, he will die soon after the mating flight.
If he is unsuccessful in the mating flight, the drone will be ejected from his hive at the end of the active summer season and will eventually die of cold or starvation.
Worker bees are the smallest members of the colony but have the largest number of individuals: a hive can contain 20,000 to 80,000 or more workers.
The life span of worker honeybees ranges from five to seven weeks.
The first few weeks of a worker’s life are spent working within the hive, while the last weeks are spent foraging for food and gathering pollen or nectar.
The life span of the honeybee is also determined by pollen consumption and protein abundance, as well as the honeybee’s level of activity.
Queens, who spend their lives laying eggs inside the hive, could live for several years; workers who labor during busy seasons cannot survive as long.
It’s all about the Pheromones!
In honeybees, as in other animals, there are two types of pheromones: primer pheromones and releaser pheromones.
Primer pheromones act at a physiological level, triggering complex and long-term responses in the receiver and generating both developmental and behavioral changes.
Honeybees have one of the most complex pheromonal communication systems found in nature, possessing 15 known glands that produce an array of compounds.
These chemical messengers are secreted by a queen, a drone, worker bees, or laying worker bee, (I will cover laying worker bees at a later time) to elicit a response in other bees.
The chemical messages are received by the bee’s antenna and other body parts.
They are produced as a volatile or non-volatile liquid and transmitted by direct contact as a liquid or vapor.
Honeybee pheromones can be grouped into releaser pheromones which temporarily affect the recipient’s behavior and primer pheromones which have a long-term effect on the physiology of the recipient.
Releaser pheromones trigger an almost immediate behavioral response from the receiving bee.
The pheromones may either be single chemicals or a complex mixture of numerous chemicals in different percentages.
At the end of the day, backyard beekeeping can be as simple as a top bar hive, a free swarm of bees caught on a warm spring day, a few common tools, and a fascination with one of God’s most interesting creatures.
Please be kind to the bees, never spray them with insecticide, they mean you no harm, and the fate of food production on the planet may depend on their continued exitance.
If you think you have a bee problem, call a beekeeper, your local beekeeping club, or the University of Florida for a list of approved bee removal services in your area.
To learn more about honeybees and beekeeping management, visit www.ufhoneybee.com.
Submitted by Gene Wills, a local beekeeper in Washington County, Florida
