Dominique DeVito - Beekeeping: A Primer on Starting & Keeping a Hive

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Front cover illustrations istockphoto/quantum orange;
Flower art Dover Publications
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Design by Yeon J. Kim

Portions of this book are from: Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes, and Other Papers by John Burroughs; Bramble-Bees and Others and The Mason-Bees by J. Henri Fabre; and A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive by W. Augustus Munn.

All equipment illustrations are courtesy of Brushy Mountain Bee Farm. Equipment shown, as well as additional supplies for beekeeping, can be purchased directly through their website: www.brushymountainbeefarm.com.

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Beekeeping

A Primer on Starting &
Keeping a Hive

By

DOMINIQUE DEVITO

Contents

About
Honey Bees
&
Beekeeping

T his book is being written at a time when honey bees around the world are getting attention not just for the miraculous and life-sustaining work they do so wonderfully well, but for the very real threat to their existence: colony collapse disorder (CCD). Researchers around the world are trying to determine why whole colonies of bees are abandoning their hives and disappearing without a trace. Besides the personal losses to beekeepers of established hives that are there one day and gone the next, there is the danger that fewer and fewer foods that require pollination will get itand in the U.S. alone, 80% of pollination is done by honey bees. (More information can be found about CCD in Chapter 4 and in the Beekeeping Resources section.) Essentially, there is no greater time to develop an interest in beekeeping.

Not only will you come to better understand the life of honey bees, but by studying whats happening with your hives, you can be part of the global conversation about the influences that jeopardize the honey bees very existence.

Every hive counts, and beekeeping can become for you what it is for others who pursue ita purposeful passion. Before getting started keeping bees, theres lots to know about honey bees themselves.

Scientific Classification of the Honey Bee

The honey bee that will be discussed in this book because it is most frequently kept by beekeepers in the United States is the European honey bee, Apis mellifera. Honey bees comprise the genus Apis in the family Apidae, order Hymenoptera. They are of the kingdom Animalia, phylum Anthropoda, and class Insecta.

A(BRIEF) HISTORY
of the HONEY BEE

T he history of honey bees is as old as that of humankind. They are an ancient insect, for sure. A fossilized piece of pine sap dating 3040 million years ago contains a bee preserved for the ages and looking remarkably similar to the honey bee we know today. A Spanish cave painting dating to around 6000 BC portrays a man harvesting wild honey as the bees buzz around him.

Honey bees are native to Europe, Asia, and Africa, and most ancient references to honey bees are found in these cultures. The Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Palestinians, Jews, and many others from these regions celebrated honey and its many blessings. There was the sweetness of honey, which was highly valued, but also the medicinal properties of honey, including its use as an antibacterial healer for the skin. Honey was also fermented to make a sweet wine, or mead, which was drunk at ceremonious occasions (and many others, for sure!).

In whatever ways ancient peoples worshipped and used honeyand developed their beekeeping skills to ensure that their lands were blessed with ithoney and bees were an integral part of their lives. They were so integral, in fact, that when they colonized lands that did not have them, hives were imported. This happened in the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. Honey bees came to the United States in the early 1600s, and spread across the country with settlers and others so that they were soon pollinating plants in all of North America. They extended into Central and South America, too. They didnt make it west of the Rocky Mountains by themselves, howeverthey were brought by ship to California in the 1950s. Honey bees were imported to Australia and New Zealand in the 1800s and were soon an integral part of those countries growing seasons.

A Prevalent State Insect

So important is the honey bee to so many farmers in the U.S. that over one quarter of our United States have the honey bee as their state insect. They are: Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Fun Facts
about Honey Bees

Bees maintain a temperature of 9293 degrees Fahrenheit in their central brood nest regardless of the outside temperature.

Honey bees produce beeswax from eight paired glands on the underside of their abdomen.

Honey bees must consume about seventeen to twenty pounds of honey to be able to biochemically produce each pound of beeswax.

Honey bees can fly up to 8.7 miles from their nest in search of food. Usually, however, they fly one or two miles away from their hive to forage on flowers.

Honey bees are entirely herbivorous when they forage for nectar and pollen but can cannibalize their own brood when stressed.

Worker honey bees live for about four weeks in the spring or summer but up to six weeks during the winter.

Honey bees are almost the only bees with hairy compound eyes.

The queen may lay 600800 or even 1,500 eggs each day during her three- or four-year lifetime. This daily egg production may equal her own weight. She is constantly fed and groomed by attendant worker bees.

A populous colony may contain forty thousand to sixty thousand bees during the late spring or early summer.

The brain of a worker honey bee is about a cubic millimeter but has the densest neuropile tissue of any animal.

Honey is 80 percent sugars and 20 percent water.

Honey has been used for millennia as a topical dressing for wounds, since microbes cannot live in it. It also produces hydrogen peroxide. Honey has even been used to embalm bodies such as that of Alexander the Great.

Fermented honey, known as mead, is the most ancient fermented beverage. The term honeymoon originated with the Norse practice of consuming large quantities of mead during the first month of a marriage.

Honey bees fly at 15 miles per hour.

The queen may mate with up to seventeen drones over a one-to-twoday period of mating flights.

The queen stores the sperm from these matings in her spermatheca, a storage sac; thus she has a lifetime supply and never mates again.