The Comprehensive Guide To Beekeeping

Apart from the scientists, environmentalists and the researchers, everyone involved in beekeeping will be doing it for the honey. I know you are thinking, duh! But many people don't really get it right when it comes to beekeeping - the commercial folk and the enthusiasts alike. Let's put it this way; they miss the money as well as the honey! So whichever category of beekeeping you fall into, you know you want to have the honey more than anything.

In truth, there are about 20, 000 known species of bees. But only a handful of them, probably about half a dozen or more are truly recognized as honey bees. This is not to say that the rest don't produce honey, they do. But the honey bees, members of the Apis genus of the bee species are the only true honey bees with their origin as a whole being traced into the South East regions of Asia.

These are the species you want in your beehives especially if you are primarily a commercial beekeeper. Reports have appeared all over decrying the sorry situation of the declining numbers of honey bees. You might have already heard of CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) and some researchers had actually put in a lot effort to measure or estimate these trends. It is indeed a fact that there's so much more about bees than just production of honey. I can't seem to locate where I read that article, but it said something to the effect that about a third of the food we consume day to day is the result of pollination by bees.

Honey bees are social insects and they live in communities called colonies. There may be over 20, 000 such bees in any naturally occurring colonies like, in the wild. However, domesticated bees may be about four times that number in any given hive or colony. The bulk of these 'citizens' will be worker bees. These are sterile female honey bees that do most of the housekeeping in the colony. 

They carry out the basic tasks such as clean-up of the hive, feeding the little ones, tending and feeding the queen and protecting the hive against intruders. They go out to gather the nectar, pollen and water. Worker honey bees make the honey through some complex process in which they gather the nectar and break the complex sugars into simpler ones. This is done in about half hour to produce honey which they store in the combs.

The queen bee however is a special one. There is only one queen in any colony charged with the sole responsibility to reproduce. In any honey bee colony, everything revolves around the queen. She can lay about 1500 - 2000 eggs in a single day! This is to ensure the continuity of the colony. She is much larger than all the other bees (about 20mm) and can use her sting several times. For the other kind of bees, using their sting is a suicide of sorts.

Then there are the drones. The only function is to mate with the queen. After that, they will be kicked out of the hive or even die during the process.