APICULTURE UNIT
Beekeeping (or apiculture,
from Latin; apis "bee") is the maintenance of honey bee
colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. A beekeeper (or apiarist) keeps bees in
order to collect their honey and other products that the hive produces
(including beeswax, propolis, pollen, royal jelly and bee venom). For developed
countries including Nigeria, apiculture (bee keeping) frequently represented
untapped natural resources.
In Nigeria, there was no
record of any scientific approach by farmers to rear bees, although they
harvest the honey stored by wild bees in the hallows by with fire as they do
so. Honey and other products are bonus crops for those who produce them as
honey bees collect the raw materials for resources that would otherwise remain
un-harvested by man, the nectar and saps of wild and cultivated plants.
Apiculture is a highly
technical science the basic skills of bee keeping are easily learned, the first
of the skills being interest.
Products of bee hives
a. Propolis
b. Pollen
c. Royal Jelly and
d. Bee venom
·
Propolis: Propolis is
a resinous mixture that honey bees collect from tree buds, sap flows, or other
botanical sources. It is used as a sealant for unwanted open spaces in the
hive. Propolis is used for small gaps (approximately 6 millimeters (0.24 in) or
less)/ while larger spaces are usually filled with beeswax. Its color varies
depending on its botanical source/ the most common being dark brown. Propolis
is sticky at and above room temperature, 20 °C (68 °F). At lower temperatures, it becomes
hard and very brittle.
·
Pollen: Pollen is a
fine to coarse powder containing the microgametophytes of seed plants, which
produce the male gametes (sperm cells). Pollen grains have a hard coat that
protects the sperm cells during the process of their movement from the stamens
to the pistil of flowering plants or from the male cone to the female cone of
coniferous plants. When pollen lands on a compatible pistil or female cone
(i.e., when pollination has occurred), it germinates and produces a pollen tube
that transfers the sperm to the ovule (containing the female gametophyte).
Individual pollen grains are small enough to require magnification.
·
Royal Jelly: Royal
jelly is a honey bee secretion that is used in the nutrition of larvae, as well
as adult queens. It is secreted from the glands in the hypopharynx of worker
bees, and fed to all larvae in the colony, regardless of sex or caste. When
worker bees decide to make a new queen, because the old one is either weakening
or dead, they choose several small larvae and feed them with copious amounts of
royal jelly in specially
constructed queen cells. This type of feeding triggers the development of queen
morphology, including the fully-developed ovaries needed to lay eggs.
·
Bee venom: Apitoxin,
or honey bee venom, is a bitter colourless liquid; its active portion a mixture
of proteins, which causes local inflammation and acts as an anticoagulant. A
honeybee can inject Q.l. ing of venom via its stinger. It may have similarities
to sea nettle toxin.
·
Bee venom therapy, is
used by some as a treatment for rheumatism and joint diseases due to its
anticoagulant and anti-inflammatory properties. It is also used to desensitize
people allergic to insect stings. Bee venom therapy can also be delivered in
the form of a balm although this may be less potent than using live bee stings.
Bee venom can be found in numerous beauty products. Tt is believed to increase
blood flow therefore plumping the applied area, producing collagen. This effect
aids in smoothing out lines and wrinkles.
TYPES OF BEE
HIVES
a. Kenyian top bar hives
b. Fixed comb hives
c. Movable frame
hives
d. Natural bee hives
Kenyian top bar hives:
Top bar hives were originally used as traditional beekeeping a method in both
Greece and Vietnam. These have no frames and the honey-filled comb is not
returned to the hive after extraction, as it is in the Langstroth hive. Because
of this, the production of honey is likely to be somewhat less than that of a
Langstroth hive. Top bar hives are mostly kept by people who are more
interested in having bees in their garden than in honey production per se.
Fixed comp hives: A
fixed comb hive is a hive in which the combs cannot be removed or manipulated
for management or harvesting without permanently damaging the comb. Almost any
hollow structure can be used for this purpose, such as a log gum, skep or a
clay pot. Fixed comb hives are no longer in common use in industrialised
countries, and are illegal in some places that require inspection for problems
such as varroa and American foulbrood and yet to be introduced to Nigeria.
Movable frame hives (e.g Langstroth hive): In Nigeria, the Langstroth hive is commonly used. The
Langstroth was the first successful top-opened hive with movable frames, and
other designs of hive have been based on it. The Langstroth hive was, however,
a descendant of Jan Dzierzon's Polish hive designs. In the United
Kingdom, the most common type of hive is the British
National Hive: And it has the Brooder, Scavenger or Forager and the Supra.
Natural hives: The natural beekeeping movement believes that modern beekeeping
and agricultural practices, such as crop spraying, hive movement, frequent hive
inspections, artificial insemination of queens, routine medication, and sugar
water feeding, weaken bee hives. Natural beekeeping' tend to use variations of
the top-bar hive, which is a simple design that retains the concept of movable
comb without the use of frames or foundation.
Mating of queens:
The queen emerges from her cell after 15 days of development and she remains in
the hive for 3—7 days before venturing out on a mating flight. Mating flight is
otherwise known as 'nuptial flight'. Her first orientation flight may only last
a few seconds, just enough to mark the position of the hive. Subsequent mating
flights may last from 5 minutes to 30 minutes, and she may mate with a number
of male drones on each flight. Over several matings, possibly a dozen or more,
the queen receives and stores enough sperm from a succession of drones to
fertilize hundreds of thousands of eggs.
Female worker bees:
Almost all the bees in a hive are female worker bees. At the height of summer
when activity in the hive is frantic and work goes on non-stop, the life of a
worker bee may be as short as 6 weeks; in late autumn, when no brood is being
raised and no nectar is being harvested, a young bee may live for 16 weeks,
right through the winter. During its life a worker bee performs different work
functions in the hive, largely dictated by the age of the bee.
·
Male bees (drones):
Drones are the largest bees in the hive (except for the queen),, at almost
twice the size of a worker bee. They do not verk, do not forage for
pollen or nectar and have no other known function than to mate with new queens
and fertilize them on their mating flights. A bee colony generally starts to
raise drones a few weeks before building queen cells so they can supersede a
failing cuoen or prepare for swarming. When queen-raising for the season is
over, bees in colder climates drive drones out of the hive to die/biting and
tearing their legs and wings.
·
Colony reproduction, (swarming and supersedure): All colonies are totally dependent on their queen, who is the
only egg-layer. However, even the best queens live only a few years and one or
two roars longevity is the norm. She can choose whether or not to fertilize an
egg as she lays it; if she does so, it develops into a female worker bee; if
she lays an unfertilized egg it becomes a male drone. She decides which type of
egg to lay depending on the size of the open brood cell she encounters on the
comb. In a small worker cell, she lays a fertilized egg; if she finds a larger
drone cell, she lays an unfertilized drone egg.
·
All the time that the
queen is fertile and laying eggs she produces a variety of pheromones, which
control the behavior of the bees in the hive. These are commonly called queen
substance, but there are various pheromones with different functions. As the
queen-ages, she begins to run out of stored sperm, and her pheromones begin to
fail. Inevitably, the queen begins to falter, and the bees decide to replace
her by creating a new queen from one of her worker eggs. They may do this
because she has been damaged (lost a leg or an antenna), because she has run
out of sperm and cannot lay fertilized eggs (has become a 'drone laying
queen'), or because her pheromones have dwindled to where they cannot control all
the bees in the hive.
·
At this juncture,
the bees produce one or more queen cells: by modifying existing
worker cells that contain a normal female egg. However, the bees pursue two
distinct behaviors:
·
Supersedure: queen replacement
within one hive without swarming Swarm cell production: the division of the
hive into two colonies by swarming.
·
Factors that trigger swarming: It is generally accepted that a colony of bees does not swarm until
they have completed all of their brood combs, i.e., filled all available space
with eggs, larvae, and brood. This generally occurs in late spring at a time
when the other areas of the hive are rapidly filling with honey stores. One key
trigger of the swarming
instinct is when the queen has no more room to lay eggs and the hive population
is becoming very congested. Under these conditions, a prime swarm may issue
with the queen, resulting in a halving of the population within the hive,
leaving the old colony with a large number of hatching bees. The queen who
leaves finds herself in a new hive with no eggs and no larvae but lots of
energetic young bees who create a new set of brood combs from scratch in a:very
short time.
·
Artificial swarming:
When a colony accidentally loses its queen, it is said to be
"queenless". The workers realize that the queen is absent after as
little as an hour, as her pheromones fade in the hive. The colony cannot
survive without a fertile queen laying eggs to renew the population, so the
workers select cells containing eggs aged less than three days and enlarge
these cells dramatically to form "emergency queen cells". These
appear similar to large peanut-like structures about an inch long that hang
from the center or side of the brood combs. The developing larva in a queen
cell is fed differently from an ordinary worker-bee; in addition to the normal
honey and pollen, she receives a great deal of royal jelly, a special food
secreted by young 'nurse bees' from the hypopharyngeal gland. This special food
dramatically alters the growth and development of the larva so that, after
metamorphosis and pupation, it emerges from the cell as a queen bee. The queen
is the only bee in a colony which has fully developed ovaries, and she secretes
a pheromone which suppresses the normal development of ovaries in all her
workers.
·
Diseases: The common agents of
disease that affect adult honey bees include fungi, bacteria, protozoa,
viruses, parasites, and poisons. The gross symptoms displayed by affected adult
bees are very similar, whatever the cause, making it difficult for the apiarist
to ascertain the causes of problems without
microscopic identification of
microorganisms or chemical analysis of poisons.