Beekeeping (apiculture)
Honey bee species and castes, the movable-frame hive, seasonal management, swarming, Varroa and other pests, bee products and an apiary sum.
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Beekeeping combines two benefits in one small enterprise: products to sell, such as honey and wax, and pollination of nearby crops. It needs little land, suits smallholders and landless households, and can be started with a few hives. Around the world, beekeepers manage roughly 100 million hives and produce about 1.8 million tonnes of honey a year, with China, Türkiye, Iran, India, Argentina and Ukraine among the largest producers.
Apiculture is a standard topic in agricultural entomology courses and exams, covering bee biology, hive management, pests and diseases, and products.
Honey bee species
- Apis mellifera, the western honey bee, native to Europe, Africa and western Asia, now kept worldwide. Many subspecies differ in temperament and productivity, such as the Italian bee (A. m. ligustica), Carniolan bee and African bee (A. m. scutellata).
- Apis cerana, the eastern or Asian honey bee, kept in hives across South and East Asia; gentler, smaller colonies, less honey, but more tolerant of Varroa mites.
- Apis dorsata, the giant or rock bee, which builds single huge combs in the open and is harvested from the wild, often by honey hunters.
- Apis florea, the dwarf bee, with small single combs on branches.
- Stingless bees (Meliponini), kept in the tropics of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australia (meliponiculture), producing small amounts of distinctive honey.
The colony
A colony is a single family:
- One queen, a fertile female that mates once early in life with several drones and then lays up to about 1,500 to 2,000 eggs a day in peak season. Fertilised eggs become females; unfertilised eggs become drones.
- Workers, sterile females, 10,000 to 60,000 in a strong colony. Their tasks change with age: cleaning cells, nursing larvae, building comb and guarding in the first weeks, then foraging for nectar, pollen, water and propolis. Summer workers live about five to six weeks.
- Drones, males, a few hundred, whose only role is mating with queens from other colonies.
Female larvae fed royal jelly throughout their development, in special queen cells, become queens; those switched to a diet of pollen and honey become workers. Foragers tell nestmates where to find food with the waggle dance, decoded by Karl von Frisch, who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize for this work.
Hives and equipment
Traditional beekeeping used logs, clay pots, baskets and wall cavities, from which comb had to be cut, often destroying the brood. In 1851, L. L. Langstroth in the United States recognised the bee space, a gap of about 6 to 9 mm that bees leave open rather than filling with comb or propolis. Hives built with this spacing have movable frames that can be inspected and harvested without harming the colony. Langstroth hives and regional designs (Dadant, Newton and others) are now standard. Top-bar hives, with simple bars instead of full frames, are popular in Africa because they are cheap to build.
Other equipment: smoker, hive tool, veil and protective clothing, queen excluder, honey extractor (a centrifuge), uncapping knife, and foundation sheets of beeswax.
Seasonal management
- Spring build-up: inspect for a laying queen and brood, clean the hive, add space, and feed sugar syrup or pollen substitutes if stores are low.
- Swarm control: crowded, strong colonies in spring raise new queens and swarm, with the old queen leaving with about half the workers. Beekeepers prevent this by giving room, removing queen cells, or dividing colonies deliberately.
- Honey flow: add supers above a queen excluder ahead of major nectar flows, and move hives to flowering crops for honey and pollination (migratory beekeeping).
- Harvest: remove capped frames, uncap, extract, strain and store honey at low moisture.
- Dearth and winter: leave enough stores, feed if necessary, protect from heat, rain and cold, and reduce the entrance against robbing.
Pests and diseases
- Varroa destructor: a parasitic mite that originally lived on A. cerana and spread to A. mellifera worldwide from the mid-twentieth century; it feeds on bees and spreads viruses such as deformed wing virus. It is the main cause of colony losses in many countries. Control combines monitoring, brood breaks, drone brood removal and approved treatments such as organic acids, thymol or specific miticides, rotated to avoid resistance.
- Tropilaelaps mites: serious in Asia.
- American foulbrood (Paenibacillus larvae), a highly infectious bacterial brood disease that is notifiable in many countries, often requiring burning of infected equipment; and European foulbrood.
- Nosema gut parasites, chalkbrood and sacbrood virus (Thai sacbrood devastated A. cerana in parts of Asia in the 1970s and 1980s).
- Wax moths, small hive beetle, hornets, ants, birds and pesticide poisoning.
Bee products
- Honey: mainly sugars (fructose and glucose) with about 17 to 18 per cent water. The Codex standard allows at most 20 per cent moisture in most honey; above this, honey can ferment.
- Beeswax: for foundation, candles, cosmetics and polishes.
- Propolis: plant resins collected by bees, used in health products.
- Royal jelly, pollen and bee venom.
- Pollination services: often worth more than the honey.
Is a small apiary profitable?
A beekeeper runs 20 Apis mellifera hives, each producing 25 kg of honey a year sold at 6 dollars per kg, plus 1 kg of wax at 8 dollars.
- Honey income = 20 × 25 × 6 = 3,000 dollars; wax = 20 × 1 × 8 = 160 dollars.
- Pollination rental: 10 hives to an orchard at 50 dollars each = 500 dollars.
- Gross income = 3,660 dollars.
- Costs per year: sugar for feeding, Varroa treatment, replacement frames, transport and depreciation of equipment, about 60 dollars per hive = 1,200 dollars.
- Net income ≈ 2,460 dollars, or 123 dollars per hive.
Feeding syrup. For autumn feeding, a 2 : 1 syrup is made with 2 kg of sugar dissolved in 1 L of water. To feed 10 colonies 5 kg of sugar each needs 50 kg of sugar and 25 L of water.
Key points
- Main species: Apis mellifera, A. cerana, A. dorsata, A. florea and stingless bees.
- A colony has one queen (about 16 days egg to adult), thousands of workers (about 21 days) and some drones (about 24 days); royal jelly decides queen development.
- Langstroth's bee space (about 6–9 mm) made movable-frame hives possible.
- Management follows the seasons: build-up, swarm control, supering, harvest and winter preparation.
- Varroa destructor is the main threat; American foulbrood is notifiable in many countries.
- Honey should contain no more than 20 per cent moisture.
What the exams ask
- School-leaving and entrance papers: species of honey bees, castes and their roles, and bee products.
- Degree and research-fellowship entrances: bee biology and development, the bee space and hive design, seasonal management, swarming, pests and diseases, and bee pasture.
- Professional examinations: apiary economics, migratory beekeeping and pollination services, honey quality standards, and pesticide safety for bees.
Described in general terms: the kind of examination, not a past paper. Laisha never reproduces exam questions.
Questions people ask
How far do bees fly to forage?
Usually within one to three kilometres of the hive, though they can travel further when forage is scarce. Hives should be within easy reach of flowers and water.
Why do colonies swarm?
Swarming is how colonies reproduce. Crowding, a strong nectar flow and an ageing queen all encourage it. Giving space and making divisions reduce swarming.
Can I keep bees near pesticide-sprayed crops?
Yes, with cooperation: farmers should warn beekeepers before spraying, avoid spraying crops in flower, and choose products less toxic to bees. Beekeepers can close or move hives during risky sprays.
Sources
- Graham, J. M. (ed.) The Hive and the Honey Bee, revised edition. Dadant and Sons, 2015.
- Winston, M. L. The Biology of the Honey Bee. Harvard University Press, 1987.
- FAO. Beekeeping and Sustainable Livelihoods, 2nd edition. FAO Diversification Booklet 1, 2011.
- Codex Alimentarius Commission. Standard for Honey (CXS 12-1981, revised).
- Traynor, K. S. et al. "Varroa destructor: a complex parasite, crippling honey bees worldwide." Trends in Parasitology 36, 592–606 (2020).
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