Welcome About the Society Membership Directors and Contacts Kootenay Mountain Grown Tool Library Events calendar Courses scheduled Beekeeping Growing in the Kootenays Seed Saving Guides Society document downloads Newsletters 2011 Library and information Links Kootenay Local Agricultural Society, 1911 Irving Road, Castlegar, V1N 4N6, Tel: (250) 608 0334 Email: klasociety@shaw.ca Basics of Beekeeping
History of Beekeeping
The Native Americans who lived in America prior to 1500 had never tasted honey. This was because only people in Europe, Asia, and Africa had honey bees. There were no honey bees in this country until they were brought here by boat in the sixteenth century, about 50 years after Columbus first sighted America
Throughout history, there has always been a close relationship between honey bees and people. Drawings on rocks found in Spain that date back 9,000 years show women taking honey from wild bee colonies. Early people took honey from hollow trees full of bees that they found in the forests. In the autumn, these early “bee-hunters” would kill or chase the bees away from their log homes so they could take all of the honey. Honey was very important, because at that time people had no other source of concentrated sugar
As humans learned more about bees, they built beehives of clay pots, straw baskets, and wooden boxes. They wanted to find ways of controlling their bees so that the colonies could survive from year to year and still produce enough honey for the needs of the beekeepers
In the sixteenth century, scientists began studying the habits of honey bees, hoping to find new ways to control them
However, it was not until 1851 that beekeeping became a modern science. In that year, an American minister, Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth, discovered the importance of “bee space.” Bee space is an open space of about 3/8 inch that the bees leave between their honeycombs so that they have room to move and work. Based on the “bee space” idea, Langstroth built the first modern beehive with frames of combs that could be easily removed from a wooden box. His invention led to many improvements in beekeeping equipment
Today, beekeeping is more successful than it was before Langstroth’s movable-frame hive, because the entire hive can be inspected and manipulated
The Value of Honey Bees
Honey bees are valuable. They contribute to the success of agriculture and industry. You probably already know one use of honey: as a delicious sweetener on biscuits, bread, and rolls. It is a main ingredient used in the baking and candy industries
Athletes may use honey for quick energy. In the medical profession, honey has been used for its antiseptic qualities in burn ointments and in the preparation of medicines
Throughout history, honey has been used in the production of wines. Honey wine—Meade—is still a very popular drink in many parts of the world
Beeswax, another product of the honey bee, also has many important uses. The cosmetic industry uses beeswax in the preparation of products such as cold creams, lotions, rouges, and lipsticks. Beeswax is a basic ingredient in many candles
Manufacturers of pharmaceuticals include beeswax in many preparations of salves and ointments. Dentists use it for impression wax. Foundries need it for molds in precision casting. Beeswax is an ingredient in many types of polishes for floors, furniture, and shoes. Other uses include adhesives, crayons, chewing gum, inks, basketball moldings, ski wax, thread wax, ironing wax, and archer’s bow wax
If there were no honey bees in this country, farmers could not produce nearly enough of some of your favourite foods, such as apples, peaches, almonds, and watermelons. This is because many plants must be pollinated to produce fruit. Pollen grains must be transferred from the male parts of the flowers to the female parts to make a seed
Honey bees do this by pollinating flowers. In fact, honey bees do 80 percent of all crop pollination
There are several reasons why honey bees are such excellent pollinators. First, they are very hard workers. An individual bee may visit as many as a thousand flowers in one day
During these flower visits, the large, hairy bodies of the bees easily pick up and hold many tiny pollen grains. Second, bees visit only one type of flower on a particular trip. Third, beehives can be moved easily into areas where flowers need to be pollinated. Because of these special bee qualities, American crop producers rent millions of colonies honey bees each year to pollinate their crops
Bee Stings
A basic part of beekeeping is understanding and accepting the fact that you are going to be stung from time to time. No matter how good a beekeeper you become, occasionally you will accidentally crush a bee. You may visit the hives when the bees are disturbed by a change in the weather, by hunger, or by something else beyond your control. As a result, you may be stung
A few people have serious reactions to bee stings. They may have difficulty breathing after being stung or have some other very dangerous reaction. If you are ever with a person who is severely allergic to a sting, take them to a doctor immediately. It is very unusual for a person to have such a bad reaction to stings. For most people, the sting of the bee is a momentary discomfort that says to slow down, be more careful, or in some way, show greater respect for those honey bees. Do not open a hive alone until you know your reactions to bee stings. If you are highly allergic to stings, you should be particularly careful when working with bees and you should go see an allergist before you consider continuing with this project
The experienced beekeeper knows what to expect when they get stung and what to do to reduce the bad effects of the sting. You don’t need to be afraid of the honey bee sting. A sting always hurts. Whether it is a first sting or the thousandth, it will hurt, but not too much. A bee sting is like getting a shot from the doctor; it will hurt for 20 seconds or so, then the pain fades away
The beekeeper knows that only the worker bee stings. Her stinger is barbed, like a fish hook. When she pushes her stinger into your skin, it catches and pulls out of her body as she flies quickly away, causing her to die soon after. What she leaves in your skin is the barbed stinger attached to a poison sac. Often part of the bee’s intestine is still attached to the stinger in your skin
You can scrape the stinger off the skin using a fingernail or hive tool , then puff smoke from a smoker or rub dirt on the area of the sting. This covers the smell of the sting so other bees won’t be disturbed
The experienced beekeeper also knows that swelling will probably develop around the spot where the sting was and may last a day or so. Although an ice treatment may reduce the swelling, there is really not much to do for it, except to get stung again! It seems that the more a beekeeper is stung, the less of a swelling reaction will result. So, there is some good in being stung; it will not be so bad when you are stung again
The Castes of Honey Bees
There are three types (castes) of honey bees in every colony: • Worker bees • Drone bees • A queen bee These bees each take a different length of time to develop from the egg to the adult stage Races of Honey Bees Like people, bees from different parts of the world look and act differently. Variations in color, size, and habits are the bees’ way of adapting to the climate and geography of an area. Today there are three different races of honey bees commonly found in America. All of them were originally brought here from other countries. These are not “pure” races because they have mingled with each other. There is great variability in bees, but each race has some particular characteristics
Italian Bees
These bees were imported from Italy. They are the most popular bees in the United States because of their excellent habits. Italian bees are usually gentle and are not inclined to swarm (leave the hive in a group to start a new colony). They maintain a high colony population from early spring until late fall and produce beautiful white wax cappings on their honey. Italian bees are generally yellow in color. They are a little more likely to rob honey from other hives than the two races listed below
Carniolan Bees
The Carniola bee is almost black in color. This race of bee originated in Austria, Bulgaria, central Europe, Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia. They are the second most popular honey bees in this country. Like the Caucasian bees, the Carniolans are very quiet and gentle. Carniolan bees tend to increase their colony population very rapidly in the spring but the increase in colony size can make them more likely to swarm
Honey and Honey Plants
People have always valued honey, the primary food of the bees. Men and women use it for many different purposes: as a preventative and cure of disease, as a healthier substitute for sugar, as an ingredient in baking, and as a favourite sweet
Honey begins as nectar, a sweet liquid secreted in flowers. Nectar is composed almost entirely of sugar and water. It is produced by plants to attract bees. While collecting the nectar, a bee picks up pollen with its body hairs. As the bee visits another flower for more nectar, some of this pollen rubs off. This transfer of pollen causes the fertilization of the second flower, and seeds are produced. Nectar is what the flower pays to the bee for the service of being pollinated
Nectar usually collects in a tiny pool inside the flower. The amount of nectar the flower produces depends on the type of flower, the weather, the time of day, and the amount of recent rainfall. The visiting bee, a field worker, sucks up as much of this nectar as she can, using her long tongue (proboscis)
The honey bee has two stomachs, a honey stomach and a real stomach. The honey stomach is used only for the temporary storage of honey. It is in front of the real stomach, where the process of digestion takes place. The nectar sucked up by the honey bee’s proboscis is held in the bee’s honey stomach while she flies back to her hive. At the hive, the field worker transfers the nectar she has collected to three or more “house” bees who suck the nectar from the mouth of the field bee
The house bee changes the nectar into unripe honey. She does this by moving the nectar about in her mouth and mixing it with chemicals called enzymes. After the mixing process, which takes about 20 minutes, the house bee deposits the unripe honey in a cell for ripening. The new honey ripens through the process of evaporation. Just as water left in a glass will eventually evaporate into the air, extra water will evaporate from unripe honey that is left to sit in the cells. Then ripe honey is all that remains. The time it takes for the evaporation process depends upon factors such as the type of nectar, the air temperature, and the humidity. The bees often fan their wings to speed the evaporation
The honey is ripe when it is less than one-fifth water. Once the honey is fully ripe, house bees cover it with a thin layer of wax
This protects the honey. The wax covering keeps the honey fresh and safe until it is needed by hungry bees or beekeepers
Remember that the starting point in the production of honey is in flowers that produce nectar. A beekeeper needs a good knowledge of plants and their flowers. An understanding of honey plants, the plants that produce nectar used by bees to make honey, helps a beekeeper know where to put the hives. The list below shows plants that are important for bees in Indiana. Many of the plants listed do not make much surplus honey because of the duration of the bloom or conditions in a particular year. The best way to determine which plants bees will use to make honey is to watch them
Observing the Hive Entrance
The hive entrance of a honey bee colony is very much like the front door of your house. Just as you go through it on your way to and from school, the field bees must exit and enter through the hive entrance on their trips to visit flowers. By watching a hive’s entrance, beekeepers can learn a great deal about the levels of activity of their bees. Observing the hive entrance not only tells about the honey plants in bloom that are attracting the field bees, but it also tells about the work going on inside the hive. The more nectar and other supplies the field bees bring in, the busier the house bees will be, storing away and using supplies to build new comb and to care for the young bees
What is happening at the hive’s entrance can also tell beekeepers about the health of their bees.
For example:
• If you are too hot in your house, you may sit outside your front door. Bees do the same thing
• When you are cold, you close the front door. Although the bees cannot close their hive entrance, they will remain inside, away from the entrance, when they are cold
• When you do not feel well, you stay inside to rest. Sick bees do not leave their hives, either. However, if they are very sick they will crawl out of the hive and die
Beeswax and Honeycomb
The honeycomb is the inner house of honey bees. It is where young bees are raised and where the hive’s food is stored. Comb is built out of beeswax, which is produced only by young worker bees. Glands on the undersides of the bodies of these young bees can produce tiny pieces of wax. Worker bees chew these small flakes of wax and work them to form the comb. Generally, the newly constructed comb is beautifully white in color. It may be light yellow when bees are getting nectar from goldenrod or other similar flowers. The comb becomes darker over time, because as each new bee is born, it sheds its skin and this becomes part of the cell. Also, bees collect propolis, which can make the comb darker
The comb consists of many small, six-sided tubes (cells) built side by side. The floor of the cells slopes slightly downward to the bottom and is shaped like a three-sided pyramid pointing away from the cell opening. This small slope is necessary so that the substances put into the cell do not slide out of it
There are three different cell sizes. The large drone bee is hatched from an egg and grows to adulthood in the larger of the two cells (drone cell). The smaller, worker bee grows in the slightly smaller worker cell. Worker cells that are full of eggs, developing larvae, and pupae are usually found in the central part of the comb (brood area). The third cell size is the queen cell
Bordering the brood area is a narrow strip of worker cells where pollen is stored. Pollen is an important food for the larva growing in the brood area cells, because it is the source of the bees’ protein and because it is rich in fat. The field bees collect pollen in the form of tiny pellets from flowers and carry it back to the hive by putting it in small, basketlike pouches on their back legs. This pollen varies in color, depending on the type of flower from which it came
A cell is never completely filled with pollen. Bees generally pack the pollen in a cell until it is about 3/4 full, Sometimes they add a little honey to the pollen to preserve it . This makes the pollen look wet. This storage method maintains the freshness of the pollen for a long time. The outer edges of comb beyond the narrow pollen storage area are used for ripening and storing honey .
Between each comb, the bees leave a space about 3/8-inch wide
If the space between combs is much wider or narrower, the bees will close it up with wax and bee glue
It was the discovery of this important space, the bee space, by Langstroth that led to the development of the modern beehive. In the modern beehive, all the frames of comb are specially built so that they are surrounded on all sides by bee space. Because of this, the bees do not clog up the area between the frames of comb. Then the frames can be taken out and put back into the hive easily
Besides the honeycomb, you are certain to find another important substance in the hive. This is bee glue (propolis). Propolis is a very sticky brown material that the bees use for many purposes: holding down the hive lid, covering the inside walls of the hive, fastening frames, strengthening comb, plugging holes, and, sometimes, narrowing the entrance. Field bees gather propolis from various plant buds, picking up such sticky substances as pitch from pine trees .

The Kootenay Local Agricultural Society  recommends that all farms maintain at least two hives of Bees .
See the library for books available on Beekeeping.
The above book has been donated to the library by Don and Elizabeth Scarlett.