NATIONAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF ANIMAL PRODUCTION

Practical aspects of beekeeping

Training materials of project

IMPROFARM - Improvement of Production and Management Processes in Agriculture Through Transfer of Innovations, Leonardo da Vinci Transfer of Innovations programme, number 2011-1-PL1-LEO05-19878

www.improfarm.pl

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. Content

1. The importance of the Western honey bee...... 6

1.1 Taxonomy...... 6

1.2 The origin of the Western honey bee...... 8

1.3 The importance of bees...... 9

2. Bee races...... 10

2.1 The Western European Honey Bee /Apis mellifera mellifera/. It is a local race inhabiting Europe north of the Alps and the Carpathians since primeval times...... 10

2.2 The Carnicolan’s bee /Apis mellifera carnica/...... 10

2.3 The Caucasian honey bee /Apis mellifera caucasica/...... 11

2.4 Hybrid lines...... 12

3. The biology of a bee colony...... 14

3.1 Specimens in a bee colony...... 14

3.2 Anatomy and physiology of a bee...... 19

3.3 Life of a bee colony...... 25

4. Beekeeping practice...... 34

4.1 Autumn beekeeping works. Preparation for overwintering...... 34

4.2 Overwintering. /November-February/...... 38 4.3 Early spring. /March, April/ ...... 40

4.4 The period of intensive spring expansion...... 46

4.5 Using early honeyflows...... 48

4.6 Averting swarm...... 49

4.7 The beginning of the season. /June/...... 50

4.8 Enlarging the bee yard...... 52

4.9 Harvesting period. /July and August /...... 54

4.10 Honey harvest...... 55

4.11 Obtaining pollen...... 56

4.12 Replacing queens...... 57

4.13 Ventilation in the hives...... 60

4.14 Beekeeping practice in multi-body hives...... 63

4.15 Wandering beekeeping practice...... 66

4.16 Rotary practice...... 67

5. Raising bees...... 69

5.1 The basics of bee genetics...... 69

5.2 How to improve bees in the bee yard?...... 71

5.3 Types of queens in a bee yard...... 72 5.4 Raising the bee queens...... 73

6. Beekeeping technique...... 76

6.1 Hives...... 76

6.2 Beekeeping equipment...... 79

6.3 Bee yard workshop...... 81

6.4 Arranging the bee yard area...... 82

7. Honeyflows...... 83

7.1 Evaluation of a bee pasture...... 83

7.2 Honeydew forage...... 87

8. Bees’ diseases...... 88

8.1 Introduction...... 88

8.2 Hygiene in the bee yard...... 89

8.3 Bees immunity...... 94

8.4 Bee diseases...... 97

8.5 Disinfecting in prophylaxis and fight against bee diseases...... 112

9. Bee products...... 114

9.1 Honey...... 114

9.2 Bee glue...... 119 9.3 Flower pollen...... 121

9.4 Royal jelly...... 125

9.5 Venom...... 128

9.6 Bee wax...... 131

9.7 Summary...... 132

10. Economics of a bee yard production...... 133

11. Dictionary of beekeeping terminology...... 138

12. Case study ...... 145

1. The importance of the Western honey bee.

1.1 Taxonomy. The western honey bee /Apis mellifera/ belongs to the big group /superfamily/ of insects closely connected with the world of flowering plants. Taxonomy refers to it as Apoidea /bees/. There are 7 families within this superfamily:

- the colletidae, - the andrenidae, - the helictinae, - the melittidae, - the megachilidae, - the anthophoridae, - the apidae. The majority of them are solitary bees, which do not create colonies; they feed on nectar and pollen and at the same time they are pollinators of entomophilous plant species, i.e. plants that require cross-pollination by insects.

According to the estimates there are 20 000 – 30 000 species of bees in the world. They populate all geographical zones. It is estimated that in Poland there are app. 450 species of bees.

The last family, i.e. the apidae, is the most interesting for us out of all mentioned. Within this family, we may distinguish three genera: bumblebee, cuckoo bumblebee and bee /Apis/. Bumblebees and bees are characterised by the highest level of social life organisation, since they possess the ability to form bee colonies. However, only bees, out of these three genera, may form year-round colonies, capable of surviving changeable conditions and seasons, including winters, and living for many years. Social /familial/ character of bees is demonstrated by the occurrence of castes, taking care of offspring and co-occurrence of subsequent generations that help colonies.

Genus bee /Apis/ .

There are 7 species within this genus:

- The Western honey bee /Apis mellifera/,

- The Eastern honey bee /Apis cerana/,

- Koschevnikov’s bee /Apis koschevnikovi/,

- The giant honey bee /Apis dorsata/,

- The Himalayan honey bee /Apis laboriosa/,

- The dwarf honey bee /Apis florea/,

- The black dwarf honey bee /Apis andreniformis/.

The primary territorial range of the Western honey bee comprised Europe, Africa and the Near East. Six remaining species dwelled in various Asian regions. It is worth pointing out that these species were not found primarily in so-called the New World, i.e. in both Americas and in Australia.

All species mentioned above are bees that carry nectar and store honey reserves for the time of unfavourable weather conditions.

In the majority, they are wild species and humans use them by “stealing” honey that they produce. It pertains not to beekeepers, but to “honey hunters” or “honey collectors”.

Only the Western honey bee, the Eastern honey bee, Koschevnikov’s bee and, to some extent, the dwarf honey bee have been domesticated and are used to produce honey and pollinate, however, only the first bee forms strong colonies capable of high production. Therefore, the Western honey bee ousts local species in Asia and has been introduced and acclimatised to both Americas and Australia. 1.2 The origin of the Western honey bee. The Western honey bee is a species existing on Earth for many million years, considerably older than human. The oldest physical evidence is ca. 80 mln years old. Even then, the Western honey bee was shaped as it is now and led the same lifestyle i.e. it fed on plant pollen and nectar. Much earlier, before the flowering plants evolved, bee was a predatory insect similar to today’s wasp and it fed on smaller insects. In an incredibly long period of 20 – 30 mln years, bee underwent metamorphosis, as well as the surrounding world of plants. At that time, bee adjusted to feeding on nectar and pollen, so it “became vegetarian”. At the same time, the species that produced flowers appeared in the world of plants. In order to enable cross-pollination, they formed organs that attracted pollinating insects – colourful petals, which produced intense smells, and nectaries, which were glands that produced sweet nectar. Attracted insects collected nectar and pollen, which was a carrier of genetic information and at the same time, due to its abundant empirical formula, complete nourishment for insects. The common transformation of pollinators and the botanical world is called coevolution by scientists.

In the course of these transformations, bees modified their body in order to use flowers optimally. A honey sac – a small container for transporting liquids and pollen baskets for carrying pollen placed on the last pair of legs appeared. Bee’s body covered with hair, which makes collecting and carrying pollen easier and enhances pollination in a perfect way. At the same time, the nervous system was also modified, as well as senses /smell, taste, sight/ that enabled finding and optimal exploitation of food. Simultaneously, bees mastered the strategy of living in a colony, the division of tasks, communication with each other and reaction to changeable conditions.

All these abilities, especially adaptation capacities, helped bees survive as a species in an infinitely long period of time, up to this day. 1.3 The importance of bees. Nowadays, bees still perform a very important role in nature. Almost 80 % of plant species in Poland need to be pollinated. By pollinating wild species, bees ensure maintenance of so-called biodiversity - very desirable, but endangered abundance of plant, and connected with them, animal species, so of the whole ecosystems. Moreover, the role of bees is increasing at present due to the decreased number of wild pollinators /solitary bees, bumblebees etc./, which are destroyed by chemicalisation of agriculture, development of industry, devastation of natural plant communities, urbanisation, soil, water and air pollution. Almost half of wild pollinators in Poland are on a list of endangered species.

It is considered that minimum 6 bee colonies per km2 are necessary for the proper pollination of plants. In Poland, we have ca. 900 000 bee colonies so the demand is fulfilled only in 50 %.

A separate issue is pollination of crops, including mainly fruit, rape, buckwheat, cucurbitacae plants, leguminous plants or vegetable seedling cultivation. Necessary norms of proper pollination of these crops are met by 2 – 5 hives placed on the plantation during blossoming. Pollination of blooming plantations in Poland is relatively unpopular and underappreciated by farmers. Beekeepers care more about it, therefore, farmers in the USA or Western Europe do not buy charged services of pollinations from beekeepers. Unfortunately, it is also connected with frequent cases of extermination of bees brought to plantations due to improper use of pesticides.

Pollination of plants occurs during fulfilment of the primary goal of bees, i.e. collecting nectar and pollen.

Honey, flower pollen and propolis are three products collected by bees. But for these industrious insects, none of these products would be accessible to humans. Royal jelly, wax and venom are, in turn, secretions of specific glands in worker bees’ bodies. There is no need to substantiate the importance of bee products for humans. It is considered that the general, measured in money worth of all bee products is only 1:10 of the worth of bees’ work as pollinators and related to that growth of wild plants and crop yields. 2. Bee races. There are substantially three races of the Western honey bee used in our country.

2.1 The Western European Honey Bee /Apis mellifera mellifera/. It is a local race inhabiting Europe north of the Alps and the Carpathians since primeval times. It is characterised by dark brown colouring. It is relatively big, chunky. The expansion of colonies during spring is slower, but brood is maintained quite long on a balanced level, notwithstanding honeyflow conditions. Honey seals drily, i.e. between honey and the wax capping, which closes the cell with honey, there is an air layer. This bee hibernates very well and is immune to diseases. The population of this bee distinguished itself by considerable swarming and aggressiveness; therefore, it was ousted by other races.

Within the framework of genetic resources conservation, local lines, such as Augustowska /A/, Kampinoska /K/, Północna /Pn/, Asta, Norweska /NOR/ are sustained.

2.2 The Carnicolan’s bee /Apis mellifera carnica/. Commonly known as Carnica bee, it is now the most common bee in Polish bee yards. It comes from mountainous regions of Austria and former Yugoslavia. It has grey colouring and fast speed of spring expansion, good hibernation, it is mild, industrious, rather immune to diseases with well-developed sense of direction and moderate swarming. Queens lay plenty of eggs and create strong colonies. Honey seals drily.

Thanks to these features, it has been imported to our regions for decades and ousted local bee. It is raised in many bee yards in the framework of genetic improvement programmes. It is available for beekeepers in lines such as: CT46, Beskidka, CJ10, Dobra, Kortówka, Alpejka, Jugo, Nieska, Kamianka, CNT, Alsin, Ca, Cp, Cr, Marynka, GR1, Bałtycka , Karpatka and others.

2.3 The Caucasian honey bee /Apis mellifera caucasica/. It comes from higher areas of the Caucasus. It is small, with grey hair. Queens lay little eggs, so it forms smaller colonies. They tend to seal their nests heavily and bridge honeycombs. They are very calm and the do not swarm. They seal honey wetly. They are inclined to robbing. They use weaker nectar flows very well. They are industrious and very good pollinators. They have the longest tongue out of these three races. They hibernate averagely. They are prone to diseases, especially to nosemosis. They cannot exist on the terrains where honeydew occurs, because its addition in winter supplies is very harmful to them.

Within the framework of genetic improvement programmes, there are the following breeding lines: Woźnica, KPW, PwK, KP, Puławska and others.

The Caucasian honey bee 2.4 Hybrid lines. A lot of bee yards realizing breeding programmes perform cross breeding and create new lines that join desirable functional traits adjusted to particular weather conditions or bee yard management systems. We may list here e.g. the following lines: lines Viking, Viktoria, AM, Dąbrówka, Karolinka, Apipol 2 etc.

On the market, there is also available an English synthetic line Buckfast - created by a monk Brother Adam in an abbey in Buckfast, which has equally devoted followers and opponents. It is not included in the national breeding programmes.

A beekeeper has at his disposal a considerable /some people think too big/ choice of breeding lines within three races used in Poland and also a large amount of crossbreeding material /hybrid races and hybrid lines/.

It is worth adding that in Poland there are almost 50 bee yards realizing breeding programmes.

A detailed characteristic of breeding lines is included in compilations published by “Krajowe Centrum Hodowli Zwierząt” (National Centre of Animal Breeding) and on the websites of KCHZ, which coordinates bee breeding in Poland.

It is good to consult this difficult decision about introducing a particular race and breeding line with local beekeepers who have experience in managing the particular terrain and in particular functional conditions.

Above all, it is necessary to have a good knowledge of the distribution of nectar flows in the surrounding. In the majority of regions in our country, there are mainly early nectar flows. Therefore, it is necessary to choose lines that are characterised by early spring expansion, capable of using early nectar flows of, among others, orchards, dandelions or canola. Improvement of bee population is one of the most difficult of each beekeeper. It demands constant observation and experimentation in a bee yard. It is worth considering that queens raised in some regions of a country should not be used in distant regions with different climatic and honeyflow conditions.

In one bee yard, there should be only one bee race, but many breeding lines may be used.

In pursuit of an “ideal bee”, some beekeepers illegally import queens from abroad, even from different continents. It is a futile practice, even harmful and dangerous, since it causes “littering” of the population and the effects of introducing strange genes to the environment may last for years. At this point, health issues need to be taken into consideration, i.e. the possibility of importing exotic parasites and diseases.

A beginning beekeeper has to decide if (s)he wants to buy brooding queen, i.e. naturally mated bee on a protected mating area /there are definitely fewer bees of this type/ or inseminated one. These queens usually do not have verified brooding and, after placing in the hive, they not always build brood quickly. Beekeepers have many problems with adapting inseminated queens and claim that these queens are quickly replaced by bees. On the other side, they are queens that ensure double-sided origin, i.e. both maternal and paternal lines are sure. However, these queens are more expensive.

So-called “one-day queens”, i.e. already born queens, are considerably cheaper. Although they are relatively well accepted in the colonies, they have to perform mating flight in order to get inseminated, so the origin of the paternal side of the colony will be unknown, but certainly it will be diverse. Predominantly, they build brood quickly, longer and abundantly.

A beginning beekeeper certainly should not buy expensive reproduction queens. 3. The biology of a bee colony.

3.1 Specimens in a bee colony. a/ Queen.

Queen is a female specimen. She has fully formed ovaries and is capable of laying large amounts of eggs. Externally, she has a characteristic elongated and pointed abdomen. The length of a queen is ca. 16-20 mm , weight 150-250 mg. There is usually one queen in a colony, except for some periods when bees, during so-called supersedure, replace an old queen with a young one, or during swarms. The basic role of a queen is laying eggs. Good, brooding queens may lay even 3000 eggs during one day. Their weight may even exceed the weight of a queen. The presence of a queen, especially by the secretion of aromatic substances /pheromones/, cements a colony and definitely affects its functioning.

Queen, out of all specimens in a colony, has the longest lifespan. She may even reach the age of 5, but she is used not longer than 2-3 years in the modern, rational beekeeping practice. The capability of such a long life and egg production is gained by queen thanks to the special food that she gets as early as in the larva stage and then during all her life. This food is royal jelly, a secretion of hypopharyngeal glands of young worker bees.

Queen develops in a special, big wax cell, called a queen cup. The queen’s development, from the moment of the emergence from a queen cup, lasts 16 days.

A young, newly born queen, in order to lay eggs, performs so-called mating flights. During these flights, queens meet with drones that frequently come from distant bee yards to mate. Mating occurs subsequently with many drones /even up to 20/ in midair. Sometimes, queen flies several times on mating flights in order to get the sufficient supply of sperm. The collected mixture of drones’ sperm is stored in a special spermatheca of a queen bee. It may store up to 6 mln spermatozoa. Living spermatozoa exist there to the end of queen’s life, they are nourished with secretions of spermatheca walls and are used in the following seasons to fertilise eggs. Therefore, fertilisation may occur even after several years from mating. It is one of the phenomena of bee life.

Queen may lay even over 1 mln of eggs during her life, however, the capacity of laying eggs weakens with age and it may also happen that the supply of spermatozoa depletes. Then, queen lays unfertilised eggs that can hatch only into drones.

Another curiosity is queen’s ability to determine her offspring sex. When queen lays an egg, she decides if it is going to be fertilised or not. When she wants an egg to be fertilised, she pours it with a tiny drop of sperm from the spermatheca. Female specimens hatch from fertilised eggs, whereas drones, i.e. male specimens, hatch from unfertilised eggs. The phenomenon of the emergence of specimens from unfertilised eggs is called parthenogenesis. It is worth knowing that this phenomenon of bees was discovered by a Polish priest Jan Dzierżon in the 19th century.

Eggs-laying by a queen in our climatic conditions is a seasonal activity. Queen lays first eggs at the end of February or at the beginning of March. At first, there are not many of them, but in the course of time, brood is more and more plentiful. The peak of eggs-laying occurs in June. Then, the amount of laid eggs slowly decreases and the whole process ends at the end of September, when colonies prepare for winter.

Signed queen bee b/ Worker bees.

Worker bees constitute the substantial part of a colony. The number of worker bees varies and depends on the season, from 15 000 – 20 000 in winter to 60 000 – 80 000 in summer. Genetically, they are female, but their nutrition causes underdevelopment of ovaries and, virtually, inability to lay eggs /except for the extraordinary situation of long-lasting lack of queen and the emergence of laying worker bees that lay small amounts of unfertilised eggs/.

Worker bee’s size is ca. 12 mm and weight 100 mg., so 1 kg of bees includes ca. 10 000 of these specimens. Worker bee’s development occurs in a comb and lasts 21 days. Bees born during the season live short – 6-7 weeks. Bees born in late summer or in autumn, less burdened with work, may live even 6-8 months and survive winter.

Bee workers

Works undertaken by worker bees according to their age.

The type of activity Worker bees’ age (in days)

Cleaning comb cells 1-2

Feeding older larvae with the mixture of honey and pollen 3-6

Feeding younger larvae with the royal jelly /nurse bees/ 7-14

Processing and storing nectar and pollen /storing worker 8-14 bees/

Building combs 15-18

Defending the nest /guard bees/ 19-21

Working in a field – collecting nectar, honeydew, pollen, 22-49 propolis and water /pollen collecting bees/

The above-presented table is only indicatory. Worker bees perform works that are necessary at the particular moment. Older worker bees may return to works “designated” for younger bees and younger ones may become pollen collecting bees, build combs or store products.

Apart from activities presented in the table, bees perform also other tasks, such as: retaining proper temperature in a nest, i.e. warming or ventilating it, cleaning the interior of the hive, disinfecting cells, puttying cracks, taking care of a queen /entourage/, scouting, sometimes stealing honey from other hives, creating a group of guides and guards of a young queen heading for the mating flight etc. c/ Drones.

They are male specimens. Since they emerge from unfertilised eggs, they have only a half of chromosomes. Their genotype is the same as queen’s genotype. They are bigger and heavier than worker bees. They weigh ca. 200 mg and are 15-17 mm long. Their characteristic features are: blunt abdomen and huge, compound eyes. They do not possess organs that would enable collecting pollen or nectar. They do not have a sting.

Drones occur in colonies only during the season. First drones are born in April or May and at the end of summer they are removed from the hive and die. They emerge in comb cells with bigger diameter than those for worker bees. These cells are located at the edges of a nest, i.e. at the frames on the sides or in the lower part of a hive where the temperature is a little lower. Adult specimens also prefer to gather far from the centre of the nest. Drones do not perform any functions in the hive. On sunny days, they fly from the hive for even 19 km and gather in specific places where young queens come in order to mate. Queens and drones find each other thanks to pheromones secreted by queens. Drones reach sexual maturity after ca. 14 days from birth and then the reproduction is possible.

During the season, there are from several hundreds up to 2 000 drones in a colony. Although they do not work, their presence affects worker bees’ mood in a positive way. Therefore, it is not advisory to considerably decrease the number of drones in colonies by excessive removal of drone brood.

Drones 3.2 Anatomy and physiology of a bee. a/ Body built of a bee.

Bee’s body consists of a head, thorax and abdomen.

Head - in the lower part, there is mouth organ of a sucking-biting type and in the upper part, at the sides, there is a pair of compound eyes. At the frontal part of a head, there are antennae - movable organ built out of over a dozen of elements, which is an important organ of touch and smell. Above antennae, there are three singular simple eyes. Head is very movable thanks to elastic connection with the thorax.

Thorax has a shape of a round can. Inside, there are muscles responsible for moving bee’s wings and legs. Bee has two pairs of transparent wings strengthened by veins. Front wings are bigger than back wings. When not moving, wings are placed along the insect’s body; when flying, they make 350-400 beats per second, which causes the characteristic buzzing. Bees can fly forwards, backwards and to the sides, it may also hang still in midair. The speed they fly at may come to even 18 m/sec.

In the lower and lateral part of the thorax, there are three pairs of legs connected with the thorax by joints. Each leg consists of a hip, trochanter, thigh, crus and multipart foot. At the end of the foot, there are claws and a sticky pad, which allows bee to move on smooth and rough surfaces. On the first pair of legs, there are small combs that are antennae cleaners, on the second pair of legs there are spurs to dislodge pollen load into the comb cell, on the third pair of legs /worker bees’ legs/ there are pollen baskets on the shins used for collecting and transporting pollen.

Abdomen of a bee has a ring structure. Queen’s abdomen is strongly elongated and pointed, worker bee’s abdomen is also pointed and drone’s abdomen is massive and round. Queen and worker bee has sting apparatus at the end of the abdomen. Queen uses it during fights against other queens and worker bee in order to defend the nest against intruders. Worker bees have 4 pairs of wax glands in abdomen. On the dorsal part of the worker bee’s abdomen, there is a scent gland /Nasonov gland/ and on the dorsal part of queen’s abdomen there are tergal glands. Inside the abdomen, there are the most important organs, such as heart, intestines etc.

Bee’s body is covered with a chitin skin. Chitin is a relatively hard and resistant to physical and chemical factors substance, well-protecting bee’s body. Chitin shell of all insects performs a function of an exoskeleton to which muscles are attached. b/ Interior systems and organs of a bee.

The gastrointestinal system.

The beginning of the gastrointestinal system is mouth composed of many elements which have an ability to form into a pipe that sucks liquid food, i.e. nectar and water. The length of this organ, commonly known as the tongue, of Polish bees is 6 - 6,5 mm. The significant role is also played by mandibles - hard, strong, claw-shaped organs placed in the lower part of head in front of mouth. They are used by bees during performing various tasks in the hive, mainly during building combs, puttying, cleaning etc.

Mouth opening leads to the throat in bee’s head. It is an elastic pipe, capable of widening and working as a suction pump. Throat finishes with a thin, long pipe – gullet, which goes through thorax to the abdomen. In the abdomen, gullet widens into so-called honey sac with 57 mm3 capacity. It serves to store and transport liquid food. After honey sac, the digestive process begins; it consists in the sucrose decomposition to monosaccharide – glucose and fructose mediated by the invertase enzyme. The valve, which is located over the honey sac, opens the way to the subsequent part of a gastrointestinal tract – mid intestine. It is a highly wrinkled pipe with relatively big cross-section. The main digestive process undergoes inside the mid intestine. Trisaccharides, proteins and fats are decomposed there to the simplest, digestible ingredients. Digestive enzymes: trypsin, pepsin, which decomposes proteins, and fat-digesting lipase are secreted in the mid intestine. Undigested food elements get into the small intestine and then into rectum, where the process of water retrieval occurs. Rectum is a big pear-shaped sack with highly elastic walls. It may store faecal mass for several months. Except for the state of medical conditions, bees never excrete in the nest, only outside the hive while flying. In winter, when there is no possibility of flying for a longer period of time /even for several months/, faeces is stored in the rectum, which in the course of time may occupy almost all abdomen. Glands are also connected with the gastrointestinal system. The first gland is the salivary gland /lower lip gland/ composed of 5 parts, out of which 2 are placed inside head and 3 in thorax. In worker bees’ head, there are also hypopharyngeal glands. They produce royal jelly – queen’s and young larvae’ food.

In the head, there is also a mandibular gland. It is the most developed queen’s gland and it produces so-called queen substance – the mixture of pheromones that are incredibly important in a bee colony since it informs about the presence of a queen. It plays a vital role during queen’s mating flights. The excretory system.

The excretory system of a bee, similarly to other insects, is connected to the gastrointestinal system. It consists of two so-called Malpighian tubules, which are constituted by ca. 150 pipes with 0,1 mm diameter and up to 20 mm length. These pipes are washed by hemolymph, i.e. bee’s blood, they detect redundant and toxic waste products and secrete them into the hind-intestine as primary urine. There, retrieval of water as well as sodium and potassium ions, which are absorbed by the walls of hind, takes place.

The circulatory system.

The circulatory system of insects is open, i.e. blood, called here hemolymph, freely bathes internal organs and does not circulate in closed vessels. Hemolymph movement inside the body is forced by the five-chambered heart, which looks like a tubule placed on the dorsal part of abdomen. Particular heart chambers pump hemolymph taken from the abdominal part towards head. Valves in every chamber allow flow of hemolymph only in one direction. The number of heart contractions is 90-120 per minute and depends on the insect’s activity at the particular moment and on the environmental temperature. From the heart, hemolymph is pumped to aorta, a thin pipe going from the abdomen, through thorax, to the head, where it flows to body cavities.

Hemolymph – bee’s blood, performs functions of blood and lymph at the same time, so:

it distributes hormones and nutrients, mediates in disposal of toxic waste products, balances the temperature inside insect’s body, takes part in tissues regeneration, is a water reservoir in the organism.

Hemolymph does not contain haemoglobin /red blood cells/ and therefore it does not mediate in transportation of oxygen in the bee’s organism. It is colourless. It is built of blood plasma in which proteins, free amino acids, fatty substances, carbohydrates and mineral compounds are dissolved.

In blood plasma, there are blood cells, so-called hemocytes, which perform various functions in a body. The respiratory system.

Oxygen with air gets into bee’s organism through 10 pairs of so-called spiracles, i.e. openings in the chitin shell, placed on the sides of the body, on the thorax and abdomen. Inside the spiracles, there is hair that filters entering air. Further, air is distributed by tracheae, thin pipes that infiltrate insect’s body. In the head, thorax and abdomen, tracheae widens into so-called air sacs, which fill free spaces between organs. By shortening and stretching the abdomen using muscles, bee may change its capacity. Air sacs also stretch and contract then and cause something like an inhale and exhale, which is the gas exchange inside the whole system. This breathing is quite intensive. When not moving, bee makes 120 breaths per minute and when flying – 175 breaths per minute.

The nervous system.

It consists of 3 systems: central, sympathetic and peripheral.

Central system consists of a brain, which is placed in the head and is formed of ganglia above and below the gullet connected together and formed like a ring around the gullet. Thorax and abdominal nervous ganglia are connected with the brain and joined by two nerve cords. These cords go in the abdominal part of bee’s body and are the centre that controls insect’s behaviour.

Sympathetic system is formed autonomously by ganglia that innervate mouth organs, digestive system, respiratory system, some muscles and reproductive system.

Peripheral system is created by organs of touch in the skin, such as whiskers that cover all bee’s body. They are also receptors that receive sound stimuli, e.g. shin organ placed on the bee’s front leg, olfactory and gustatory cells placed on the antennae as well as gustatory receptors located at the base of the tongue, in the throat and on the sticky pads at the end of the foot.

Bee’s visual organ fulfils extremely important function since it enables outstanding sense of directions, locating honeyflow, returning to the hive etc. Bees have compound eyes consisting of many so-called ommatidia – conical, elongated, and tightly placed next to each other receptors of visual sensations. Worker bee’s eye consists of 4 500 ommatidia, drone’s eye consists of 7 000 ommatidia. Every ommatidium is equipped with a lens, receives a fragment of an image and using nerve fibres transmits it to the bee’s brain, where the entire image is created. Such built enhances bee’s precise sense of direction, including moving into the proper direction towards the sun /navigation/. Bee’s capability of seeing shapes is not too explicit and reaches only few metres. Nevertheless, they distinguish even a shape of small objects /flowers/ if they are close. Bees see and remember some colours, e.g. white, blue, yellow and ultraviolet. They see other colours, e.g. red, in grey shades.

Three single bee’s eyes are located on the top of bee’s head and are probably used to see in the weak light, e.g. inside the hive.

The reproductive system.

Queen’s reproductive system is fully developed. It consists of a pair of ovaries, oviducts, vagina, spermatheca and porus copulatrix. A single ovary consists of 110-220 ovum pipes where ova grow. Spermatheca with 1,5 mm diameter stores drones’ sperm necessary for fertilising laid eggs.

Worker bee’s ovaries are not developed and they consist of only few ovum pipes. Worker bee is not capable of mating, but in some specific conditions, it may lay a few unfertilised eggs.

Drone’s reproductive system consists of even testicles, vasa deferentia, seminal vesicle and intromittent organ. Drones’ and queen mating occurs in midair. After mating, a fragment of drone’s intromittent organ tears off and remains in the queen’s body. Drone dies.

3.3 Life of a bee colony. When a bee colony hibernates, the majority of vital functions slows down or is entirely suspended. Bees gather in a round winter cluster. Bees occupy empty comb cells and paths between frames. In the centre of a cluster, where temperature reaches 26 o C, there is a queen. In order to maintain a proper temperature bees consume honey and sugar reserves and, while burning them, in the thorax muscles the heat is generated. Only a cluster is heated, not the entire interior of the hive. Bees that were, during some period, on the edges of a cluster and “got frozen” go inside a cluster and are replaced by warmer sisters. Hibernating cluster consumes little carbohydrates reserves – app. 1 kg/month. At the end of winter, even during frosts, but when a day is visibly longer, queen begins laying eggs. At first, it lays a few eggs. In the brood rearing place, the temperature rises to 34,5o C. Food consumption grows. When spring comes, the amount of brood grows, but there is limited amount of reserves, including protein food reserves and environmental temperature.

The beginning of a new season in a bee colony is the first spring cleansing flight. At the temperature of 12-15o C worker bees fly out of the hive in a mass, excrete stored in abdomen faeces and perform first functions connected with cleaning the hive.

When first flowers bloom and first portions of nectar and pollen are brought to the hive, the number of eggs laid by queen grows. The number of worker bees in a colony in early spring is the smallest. Old bees die and are replaced by newly born bees. During this period, the size of a colony does not change. Before a queen lays eggs, she has to be excellently nourished with royal jelly. It stimulates ovaries to produce ova. Queen that is laying eggs is always surrounded by worker bees, so-called entourage. These worker bees are turned with their heads towards the queen, lick her, clean her and feed her. A queen begins laying eggs usually in the middle of a comb and then, with spiral motion, proceeds to its edges. Before laying an egg, queen put her head and thorax in a cell and checks if it is prepared, then she turns, puts her abdomen deeply in a cell and lay an egg by sticking it to the bottom of a cell in a vertical position. While checking a cell and assessing its width, queen decides if an egg should be fertilised or not. In narrower cells, the fertilised eggs will be laid and worker bees will hatch from them.

Eggs Nearly deposited eggs on the bottom of the cell When full spring comes, a colony begins to increase. Queen begins to lay also unfertilised eggs, from which first drones, male specimens that were absent in a colony during winter, hatch. Increasing supply of nectar and pollen, the growth of temperature and the presence of more and more young worker bees cause intensification of works in the hive. Queen lays more and more eggs out of which after three days larvae hatch. These larvae during first three days receive royal jelly, produced by young worker bees called nurse bees, as their nourishment. Later, they get the mixture of honey and pollen. Contrary to appearances, secreting royal jelly, which is nurse bee’s task, is very crippling to worker bee’s organism, which is a reason why bees live so short, only 6-7 weeks. Commonly, we refer to eggs and larvae as open brood /from laying an egg till the ninth day/. At the age of 6 days, larva is sufficiently nourished and is closed in a cell with a wax capping and with porous structure enabling gas exchange. Under the capping, larva transforms into pupa and then into an adult insect. Brood in these developmental stages is called capped brood.

The complete development of a worker bee lasts 21 days, 24 of drone and 16 of queen.

Bees, while looking after brood, not only feed larvae, but also take care of proper temperature. Even a small deviation upward or downwards from the temperature of 34,5oC may cause the death of brood. Worker bees devote the majority of time to monitoring combs and controlling brood.

At the same time, other worker bees begin building combs. Young, well-nourished worker bees start to secrete wax and build new combs out of it. Fresh wax is white. Young wax bees, joined in chains, form comb cells using mandibles. Comb cells are hexagonal. Openings of the cells are directed to both sides of a comb and have common bottom. Cells are a little bit slant, their openings are directed upwards. The bee cell diameter is ca. 5,4 mm and drone cell diameter is ca. 6,9 mm. Wax comb, which is a vey light construction, may hold a considerable weight of e.g. stored honey.

Another group of hive worker bees is so-called storing worker bees. Their task is processing raw materials brought by collecting bees. They get nectar brought to the hive and start processing immediately. They mix it in the honey sac with their saliva that contains invertase enzyme and serves saccharine decomposition to monosaccharide. After that, tiny drops of nectar are decomposed in empty comb cells, usually above and under brood, where water evaporates out them. For this purpose, bees use air current flowing around the combs. If ventilation in the hive does not work efficiently enough, worker bees, so-called ventilating worker bees, placed at the hive entrance, move their wings so quickly that they cause the airflow. After 7 days, honey is hermetically sealed in cells by a wax capping. Other storing worker bees take care of pollen loads brought by collecting bees to comb cells. They add drops of honey to them and beat them with their heads in a cell in order to remove air. The pollen is pickled and becomes protein food reserve, it is called bee bread.

Swarm. It is a division of a family into 2 parts, i.e. bees’ way of reproduction. In the period of the highest expansion of a bee colony /May, June/, it may lead to so-called swarming mood. It is caused by genetic factors or by the deficiency of queen substance secreted by queen as well as by lack of space, stuffy air in the hive, lack of space for building new combs and sometimes shortage of honeyflow. Bees in w swarming mood stop building combs and flying to get honeyflow. They begin to build queen cell cups where a queen lays fertilised eggs. The cups transform into queen cells, special large cell directed towards the bottom of a comb, where young queens grow. There may be over a dozen of young queens. Several days before the emergence of young queens, the swarm leaves the hive. In the swarm, there is an old queen and bees at various age. Ca. 60% of worker bees come with the swarm out of a strong colony. Swarm settles temporarily on the nearby tree. From there, it sends scouts in order to find new place for the settlement of a colony. When it happens, swarm flies away. Worker bees of a swarm take from the hive food reserves for several days.

After several days, in the hive that was left by a swarm, young queens are born. First emerged queen usually kills other which are still in queen cells. If a colony is still strong, subsequent swarms may fly away. However, swarm in a modern bee yard is undesirable since it lowers honey harvest. Beekeepers try not to allow it to occur.

Lairs Lair bowls Work of collecting bees.

Young bees leave the hive as early as during first days of their lives. During these flights, they clean and at the same time remember the appearance and location of their hive. Contact with the outside world becomes more frequent, especially when bees perform a function of guards at the hive entrance. Then, they become collecting bees.

Older worker bees’ tasks involve collecting nectar, pollen, water and propolis. These bees are so-called collecting bees. System of collecting bees’ work is also subordinated to some rules. Water, especially in early spring, is brought to the hive by the oldest worker bees, since it is very risky work during this season. A small group of worker bees /over a dozen/ is in charge of collecting propolis. During their work, specialisation reigns on the flowers. First of all, singular worker bees collect substances from only one plant species. It is comfortable for them, since by visiting flowers with similar built they may work faster and more effectively. It is even more significant for cross-fertilisation. Moreover, singular bees collect either nectar or pollen of a particular species.

In the second half of summer, the process of laying eggs weakens. Bees raise less and less brood. Worker bees that are born in this period, less burdened with work in the hive and in the field, will be able to survive winter. At the end of August, drones are thrown away from the hive since they are no longer necessary. A colony prepares to hibernate.

A bee collecting pollen from a dandelion flower

a/ Bees communication.

When observing and admiring the excellent organisation of a bee colony life, we ask ourselves a question, how is it possible that thousands of worker bees with harmonious effort take up various tasks necessary to perform at the particular moment, react to changes occurring in a colony and outside the hive, such as changes of weather conditions, appearance of new honeyflows and the seasonal sequence.

Nowadays it is known that it is done as a result of bee’s ability to communicate with each other, i.e. mutual transmission of some stimuli and their reception by other specimens in a colony and also thanks to their ability to receive external stimuli.

What language do bees speak? Well, there are several languages.

One of the most common mean of communication is language of smells. Insects, including bees, secrete many odoriferous substances, called pheromones. The most popular pheromone is queen mandibular pheromone (queen substance) secreted by queen’s mandibular gland. It consists of many organic compounds, including acids and esters. Queen’s carers, so-called “entourage”, while cleaning queen, lick this pheromone from her body and pass it to all colony members via direct contact. The main role in passing this pheromone is played by antennae, which are bee’s “nose”. This smell connects, cements a colony. Shortage of inflow of this pheromone is visible as early as after 15-30 minutes. The effect is building emergency queen cells by bees. Also in case of shortage of queen substance, resulting from increasing population of a colony, in spring, swarm cells are built. And vice versa, secretion of the proper amount of this pheromone by a young queen hinders establishing swarm cells.

A queen secretes also another type of pheromones produced by so-called tergal glands, located on the dorsal side of abdomen. This substance, specific for every queen, lets bees identify their queen and attracts drones during mating fights.

It is also known that drones, when gathering in special places where they meet young queens, secrete pheromones affecting other drones and attracting queens.

Worker bees, in turn, produce a pheromone with smell similar to the smell of lemon balm herb. It is produced in the Nasonov gland located on the dorsal side of worker bee’s abdomen. A beekeeper has opportunity to observe how a bee lifts her abdomen, exposes this gland and waves her wings to speed up spreading of the smell. This pheromone marks the entrance to the hive and helps to gather bees during swarm. This phenomenon is easy to observe when swarm settles in a new hive and when bees return to the hive as a result of too intense smoking of a colony by an unskilful beekeeper during inspection. The smell of apitoxin, secreted by stinging worker bees, functions also as a danger alarm for other worker bees. Consequently, more and more numerous units of worker bees attack the intruder. The smell of bananas is perceptible in the air since that is the smell of this pheromone. It is an important signal for a beekeeper to close the hive since he has chosen inappropriate time for work and behaved improperly near the hive.

A phenomenon that is relatively easy to observe is so-called trophallaxis, which consists in transferring small drops of food to other worker bees. As it has been examined, it is not feeding, but transferring gustatory and olfactory stimuli among members of a bee community.

Another, quite famous mean of informing collecting bees about found honeyflow is described by K. Frisch bees’ waggle dance. Scouting worker bee, after finding a new source of honeflow, returns to the hive where, first of all, she gives collected nectar to other worker bees and then performs a waggle dance on a comb, which informs about the distance and the direction in relation to the Sun of the new source of honeyflow. It is worth noticing that these stimuli are received rather by senses of hearing, taste and touch than by the sense of visual perception.

This complete information, comprising more and more collecting bees in the geometrical progress, allow to take maximum advantage of appearing honeflow.

New researches indicate that during waggle dances bees receive also information about the content of sugar in found nectar or honeydew and, based on this information, they calculate “economic profitability” of a flight to honeyflows proposed by a collecting bee.

Hearing also plays a role in bees’ information exchange. As we already know, bees may make different sounds that are read by other specimens in a swarm. Therefore, a peculiar buzz during stinging or waggle dance has informative function for other worker bees. Additionally, by stamping or hitting a comb with an abdomen, bees make the basis tremble, which is perceived by other specimens sitting on this comb. Maybe that is why bee’s “ear” is located on the legs.

Beekeepers know also sounds made by queens. “Quacking” is queen’s sound coming from the queen cell before the emergence, whereas “tooting” is sound of an irritated queen that is running in the comb willing to kill her sisters that are still in the swarm cells.

Finally, a mean of communication that among people is called a body language is worth mentioning. It is common also among bees. It consists, among others, in licking, touching, cleaning and peculiar moves or body posture that expresses e.g. a desire to deter /bee guards at the hive entrance/ or “pleading” posture that a stray bee in a strange hive has.

In conclusion, we may state that a bee colony has the whole range of means enabling communication of particular specimens, exerting mutual influence and enabling precise and quick conveyance of important information.

b/ A bee colony as a superorganism.

The Western honey bee, as one of the most interesting and at the same time the most mysterious natural phenomena, has been the subject of observations and researches since Ancient times. For ages, science has made some exquisite discoveries in this field, nevertheless, it is considered that only 3-5 % of bees’ mysteries have been discovered.

One of the most interesting theories, propagated by a German researcher Jurgen Tautz is a theory that treats a bee colony not as an assemblage of singular specimens, but as a “superorganism” that may be compared to mammals’ organism. According to Tautz, it is indicated by the following analogies:

- Similarly to mammals, there is a low reproduction factor. A colony reproduces /swarms/ only once a year or more rarely. Bees may do it since they possess an ability to control the environment and even regulate its parameters. The whole colonies may be divided into the queen’s colony /a starting colony/ and the colony – daughter /swarm/. Theoretically, a colony may last eternally and it does not undergo the process of ageing due to the constant exchange of specimens. Therefore, we may speak of a strategy of potential immortality.

- Female mammals produce milk. Worker bees produce royal jelly, which is also balanced food that fulfils a similar role. - Mammals offspring grow in the uterus. Similarly stable parameters of development are provided by a bee comb. It is considered the integral part, even an organ of a “superorganism”. It is not only a living space, but also a storage, delivery room, skeleton, organ of senses, memory carrier, nervous system and element of immunity of a colony.

- Mammals’ body temperature is ca. 36o C – temperature inside the bee nest in the brood rearing period is ca. 34o C. Bees are not only able to evaluate the temperature and other parameters inside the nest precisely, but also fully regulate these parameters /air-conditioning of the nest/.

- Mammals have a developed brain enabling acquisition and processing of information. A bee colony can also acquire and process information as well as convey it and even learn.

How does the “superorganism” work?

Researchers claim that a bee colony is able to regulate interior balance. It does not indicate a state of freezing, on the contrary, this balance has a dynamic character, adjustable to changeable environmental conditions. A bee colony consists of thousands of specimens, however, singular specimens, e.g. a queen, do not decide about the behaviour of the whole colony. On the contrary, the whole colony decides abut the behaviour of individuals that act somehow automatically. It is called social intelligence of a “superorganism”. Worker bees, according to their age and physiological condition, perform various tasks in the hive. However, when there is a necessity, they may take up different tasks that are currently the most beneficial for the family.

In case of collecting nectar, a colony can mobilise itself to increased harvest through waggle dances. It may also inform about the shortage of honeyflow or overfilling of honey cells. In the latter case, the function of building combs is activated /sweating of wax/. Increasing reserves of food bring about the process of rearing new generations and vice versa, the lack of food or its decreasing amount causes the limitation or even cease in rearing larvae, it is also conditioned by the variability of seasons.

During regulation of the nest temperature through warming or cooling the nest, subsequent groups of worker bees proceed to operate. It results from their varied sensitivity to thermal stimuli, which, in turn, results from genetic variability of specimens. This mechanism decides about optimisation of regulating processes.

Protection against diseases consists not only in individual resistance of specimens, but also in collective behaviours of bees, such as: mutual cleaning performed by worker bees and queen, cleaning cells before laying eggs inside them, removing dead or faulty specimens or using propolis to defend against pathogens. 4. Beekeeping practice.

Year-long beekeeping practice is understood as a complex of various procedures that a beekeeper performs in order to achieve certain goals. These goals are usually high honey or other bee products production, queens production or splits production. It is achieved by controlling the development of colonies, health prophylaxis, supplying high quality bee population, creating optimal living conditions and supplying honeyflows.

Although beekeeping season begins in spring, autumn beekeeping works play an extremely important role in preparations of colonies for the following season. Therefore, we begin with the description of autumn works in the beekeeping year.

4.1 Autumn beekeeping works. Preparation for overwintering. After last collection of honey, which in various bee yards falls on different date, we proceed to prepare colonies for overwintering.

We have to begin with the information that even in summer season, we have to check constantly if there is enough food for colonies. It relates especially to long-lasting periods of drought or rain. There are well-known cases of colonies dying of starvation in June or July. Therefore, we have to check if the reserve in the hive is not smaller than 4-5 kg.

After collecting honey in July, if we do not expect further honeyflows, it is necessary to systematically feed bees “by force” with small amounts of thin syrup every couple of days. It is done to induce a queen to lay eggs. This feeding is performed till the beginning of August.

In the second half of August, we proceed to arrange nests for winter and then to autumn feeding. Arranging nests.

During the last collection of honey, we remove frames that are unnecessary for a colony, e.g. supers. Later, in the second half of August, we finally arrange the nests.

In the hives of Dadant or Warszawski poszerzony type, we usually arrange a colony on 6-7 frames and warm the sides with mats. It is a sufficient quantity of frames for overwintering. We should not worry that bees will not have enough space on these frames. Many bees will die before winter, especially during preparation of winter food reserves.

In multi-body hives, e.g. Wielkopolski hive, colonies may hibernate in two ways: either in one body on 8-10 frames /then, it is worth putting below an empty body, which will serve in overwintering as an airbag/ or in two bodies, every body with 5-6 frames. It seems that the second way is better for bees since the nest is arranged in a way reminding a wild beehive /narrow and high/. In this arrangement, hibernating bees may form a winter cluster directly under the winter reserves in the empty cells of the bottom body. During overwintering, when the reserves decrease, the cluster moves crosswise when arranged in 1 body. At this point, it is worth remembering that the frames of the top body need to be built from the bottom to the bar, since too big space between combs may unable cluster’s movement towards the higher levels and, as a result, cause colony’s death of starvation. In the hives of Ostrowska type, bees hibernate in 2 bodies on 5-6 frames each.

In Styrofoam hives, the nest is moved to one side and another side is covered with mats, beyond the mats there is empty space. Above this empty “funnel”, we open the vent of a cover a little bit, which should work till spring. If there is no cover in our hives, but there are boards between the frames, we need to provide the possibility of removal of steam through the top during overwintering, e.g. by leaving interspace in the side of the hive or a pillow made of wet absorbing, but permeable material /wool, dried fern etc./. For overwintering we leave light brown frames, i.e. not too old, but also not very light.

When proceeding to arrangement of the nest, we narrow the hive entrances to prevent possible robbing during autumn works and feeding.

When arranging a colony for overwintering, we assess how much honey is left in the hive /we decrease respectively the amount of given syrup afterwards/. In case of honeydew honey, it is not advisable to leave more than 2-3 kg on the side frames since a colony that hibernates on honeydew may suffer from diarrhoea in early spring. Very common recently goldenrod may constitute a considerable part of winter reserve.

When arranging the nest, we need to provide at least 2 frames with bee bread, which will enable bees to expand in early spring. Warming the nest through placing cover pads is unnecessary in this period. It would induce a queen to lay eggs. Feeding.

Immediately after arranging the nest, we proceed to feeding. Traditionally, the candy syrup, with the ratio of sugar and water is 3:2, is used. We pour the syrup to feeders. The most convenient feeders are box feeders placed in the cover. We feed with big doses of syrup – 3-4 litres at once every second day. Water does not have to be boiled, but it is better when it is hot, since sugar dissolves faster.

In Styrofoam hives, you may also use sugar with cold water in twist jars with lids in which there are openings with 2 mm diameter. The procedure is as follows: put 0,5 kg of sugar into the jar and pour it with clean, cold water. Twist the jar and put it upside down on the “spider” bars in the hive cover. We may put at once 2-3 jars. Water that is above sugar slowly soaks through and dissolves sugar, which is enhanced by the heat generated by bees and coming from the bottom. A colony needs 2-3 jars for 2 days, so it is a useless method in case of late feeding. It may be successfully used in summer for stimulating feeding.

It is very important for bees to collect proper amount of food for overwintering. Winter reserve has to suffice till the appearance of spring nectar flow, i.e. till the end of April. Beekeepers are warned not to economise on sugar in autumn. It often leads to collapse of a colony in winter or in early spring.

The rule is that in autumn we give not fewer than 10-12 kg of reserve per colony. 10 kg will be enough only in case of so-called normal winter. In long winter or interrupted by longer period of warm spells, this amount may turn out to be insufficient. Bigger winter food reserves will be used in spring when feeding is for many reasons less advantageous. There are beekeepers who use even bigger amount of sugar for winter reserves, but it seems to be unnecessary or even harmful, since in spring the remaining food reserve may be mixed with first spring honey and make it forged honey. Feeding should be finished till 5-15 September, however, it is not always possible. In case of presence of late honeyflow /e.g. honeydew/, the whole process of preparing a colony for overwintering gets longer. It is not beneficiary and is reflected by the quality of overwintering and spring expansion since few, tired bees enter winter. One may help here only by earlier preparation of reserves in combs, which we store in the warehouse.

In recent years, beekeepers have started to use other fodder for their bees. These are ready preparations for feeding colonies, they include up to 20% of water and, in majority, monosaccharide, which do not require processing by bees. They are inverts made of saccharine and syrups made of starch. They are verified, cheaper than sugar and more comfortable in using, therefore, more and more beekeepers decide to use them. During overwintering, we also give colonies ca. 12 kg of these syrups. Fighting against varroosis.

During arranging colonies for overwintering, we conduct fight against varroosis by putting 4 stripes of Baywarol or 2 stripes of Biowar 500 into the hives, according to the accompanying instruction inside the package. Stripes have to be removed before winter. Beekeepers who have flammable tablets Apiwarol should postpone the treatment until October. In August and September, there is too much brood in colonies and the majority of female Varroa is hidden below cell cappings, where the preparation does not get.

In October, bees’ activity is limited. On warmer days, they still perform their flights and collect pollen from last flowering plants. A beekeeper has to observe colonies due to the possibility of robbing. Hive entrances should be already narrowed for overwintering. Some beekeepers perform also last inspections and check the proper arrangement of winter reserves, but it is an unnecessary operation. If varroosis was not fought earlier, it may be done at this moment using e.g. Apiwarol for smoking.

In the workshop, we select the combs that were removed out of the hive. All combs that were cracked during extracting, dark combs and combs damaged by pests need to be cut out of the frames and melted down. We segregate the remaining combs, put light combs and combs without brood, which will go to the nests in spring, on one side and on the other side combs with bee bread, which not earlier than in spring will go to the hive, and, finally, we put separately dark combs, which will be used in honey magazines – combs without brood.

We clean and disinfect all equipment. We scorch frames and wooden hives. After scraping, we clean Styrofoam hives with warm water with detergents. We take empty hives from the bee yard and hide under the roof.

We devote wax gained after melting down old combs to transform into foundation. The remaining wax may be devoted to produce candles and other decorations, which are very popular.

4.2 Overwintering. /November-February/. In November or December, the bees overwintering season begins. Colonies make a cluster, which is situated below food reserves, on empty combs. Researches have shown that warming nests, particularly during the first period of overwintering, has little influence on overwintering. The age of bees and queen, the amount of food reserves and ventilation of the hive are more important. Effectively working ventilation prevents the interior of the hive from damp that may be a reason for death of a colony. In Styrofoam hives, there is constructional venting system. In traditional hives, the conditions for removing steam through the top also have to be created, e.g. through removing side cover bars or putting mats and pads that absorb damp etc.

You should not make a hive entrance too narrow, fresh air has to go through it without any obstacles.

When flights finish, before expected snowfalls, we cover a hive entrance with panes placed slantwise. They protect against strong wind, closing the air inflow by icy snow and they also disturb birds that peck dead bees from the hive entrance and scare overwintering colonies.

When flights finish, but before strong frosts, it is the last chance to re-arrange colonies inside the bee yard or transport them further.

Apiary in the winter If during overwintering, there are very plentiful snowfalls and hive entrances are covered with snow, you do not have to worry, since air gets into the hive through layers of fresh snow. Digging the hive out and making noise meanwhile would be more harmful. Generally, providing bees with peace in an overwintering bee yard is a key factor of successful overwintering.

At this time, we have to protect hives and workshop against mice that feel very comfortable in these places. The most convenient solution it putting poison both around the workshop and under the hives in small, lying jars and fill them systematically. Obviously, you do not have to put poison under every hive, it is enough to put them in some points in the bee yard.

During overwintering, beekeeper’s tasks are limited only to controlling bee yards, especially in case of strong winds that may overturn roofs or hives; besides, on the bee yard, it has to be calm. Farm and wild animals cannot have access to the bee yard. A beekeeper also has to abstain from interference in the hives, even from “auscultating”.

February is the last month of overwintering. Usually, at the end of this month, queens begin to lay eggs. It would be disadvantageous if they laid eggs earlier, since they would have to make more effort, heat the nest and use more food. Therefore, some beekeepers try not to overheat hives in this period, they merely put top insulation at the end of February. 4.3 Early spring. /March, April/ In March, spring begins in the bee yard. The signal of its arrival is a cleansing flight. Beekeepers wait for this moment impatiently in order to assess the course of overwintering and begin the new season in the bee yard.

Early spring is a critical period for bees. At low and changeable environmental temperature, the higher temperature, necessary to raise brood, inside the hive has to maintained. The use of food reserves grows and, consequently, the level of dampness in the hive. Colony consists of older bees, there are more specimens infected by the Nosema parasite. A beekeeper should make survival of this period easier. Therefore, (s)he has to observe the first cleansing flight.

At the sunny weather and temperature of 12-15 degrees, bees leave the hive in masses and carry out the cleansing fight. In order to make it easier, we have to remove the panes that cover the bridge and inserts that narrow the hive entrance. A mass and short flight, lasting 30-40 minutes, indicates good condition of a colony. A weak flight may indicate hunger or nosemosis. In well looked after bee yards, there is no need to perform inspection of all hives. We control only uncertain colonies. Inspection has to be as short as possible in order not to cool the nests. Quick evaluation concerns only the amount of reserve, the presence of brood and possible presence of nosemosis. It is necessary to exchange damp mats and pads. You may also quickly sweep or exchange the bottom board. After overwintering, the amount of reserves has to be minimum 4-5 kg. If the reserves are smaller, it is necessary to administer the sugar cake or, even better, pollen-sugar cake in portions coming to 0.5 kg/hive. Using syrup in this period is impossible and harmful since it cools the nest and attenuates bees.

Administering pollen cake is one of the methods of hastening the spring expansion of colonies and is a routine procedure in intensive bee yards geared towards early honeyflows. Cake may be made of your own pollen or purchased from producers who advertise their products in beekeeping magazines.

During the cleansing flight, it is necessary to collect samples of bees for the test for Nosema sp. fungi. The sample marked with the number of the hive should contain minimum 50 bees. Samples are tested by Wojewódzkie Zakłady Higieny Weterynaryjnej and Państwowy Instytut Weterynarii in Puławy.

If we discover during inspection that one of the colonies or its part died, this hive should be removed from the bee yard or it should be, at least temporarily, tightly closed so as other bees cannot get inside. If in this hive, there is nourishment left on the frames and the frames are soiled with faeces, it indicates severe infection of nosemosis and these frames cannot be used in other hives. They have to be melted down and the hive has to be disinfected. Weaker colonies have to have narrowed hive entrances and their nests need to be well insulated. Frames that are not covered with dead bees need to be removed behind the division board.

It has to be stressed that the number of bees dying in winter should not be too big. If on the bottom of the hive, there is a big layer of dead bees and there are only few of them on the frames, it doesn’t do beekeeper’s credit. The reason for the numerous deaths of bees is his/her mistakes. We may mention here improper management of colony expansion in the second half of summer and in autumn, which caused that old bees were overwintering as well as feeding with too little quantity of sugar during winter, overwintering of weak or ill colonies and colonies with an old queen.

In the last period before the season, a beekeeper should prepare the equipment and hives, clean frames that are destined to become foundation need to be wired. All equipment has to be disinfected. This is also the time to buy foundation, since in April or May there are sometimes problems with the purchase.

After observing the first flight, our colonies need to be provided with peace and cannot be disturbed by unnecessary inspections. Nevertheless, the bee yard has to be equipped with a drinking trough with clean water. If the construction of the hive /e.g. in Styrofoam hives/ makes it possible, we give water in jar feeders, through the openings in the covers, to every colony.

Drinker

In March and April, a very dangerous disease called nosemosis by keepers appears in some bee yards. The symptoms are: diarrhoea, weakness and mass dying of bees. In this period, the disease progresses very rapidly. In a very short time almost the whole colony dies, only few bees and a queen survive. In this case, no treatment will be effective. The colony has to be eliminated and the hive has to be closed in order not to spread the infection among other colonies. It is worth remembering that after Fumagilin was withdrawn from the market, the only measures that can be taken to fight against this disease are prophylactic procedures.

In April, although the weather is often changeable, especially in the first half of the month, and snowfalls and night frosts occur, the intensive movement begins in the bee yard. Bees still require particular care from the beekeeper. Queens begin to lay eggs but colonies do not grow bigger since bees that were born in autumn die. Nests should still be narrow and well insulated, since premature widening may bring about adverse effect.

First plants that provide bees with considerable amounts of nectar and pollen, such as goat willow, willows, Norway maple and vaccinium, start to bloom. Only exceptionally strong colonies may collect some honey, but these honeyflows are usually treated as developmental.

In April, at favourable weather conditions /minimum 15 degrees in shadow/, we conduct the main spring inspection.

In a well looked after bee yard, it is the first inspection that gives a beekeeper full information about the condition of colonies. During this inspection, we check the state of reserves, which should be never below 4-5 kg, the amount and quality of brood, queen’s condition, the occurrence of diseases and the general condition of colonies. The queen’s quality may be evaluated without searching for her, on the basis of the appearance of brood. At this time, strong colonies should densely cover 6-8 Dadant frames or 8-11 frames of Wielkopolski type. There should be also 4-5 frames of dense brood in the Dadant hives and 6-7 frames of brood in the hives of Wielkopolski type.

The lack of brood indicates usually queenlessness and spread brood indicates an old age of queen. The presence of drone brood indicates the activity of laying worker bees or queen’s laying drone brood.

At this time, nests should not be widened, unless there is brood on the penultimate frame. If there are not enough reserves, we feed a colony with small amount of syrup /not earlier than during the period of gooseberry blooming/. This procedure stimulates colonies to expand, just like unsealing the winter reserves. We do it especially when we prepare colonies to collect early honeyflows /canola, dandelion, orchards/. During inspection, we divide colonies into strong, medium-strength and weak. The last ones have to be joined together /never join them with strong colonies/. During joining, we spray colonies with flavoured syrup, e.g. peppermint drops, in order to prevent bees from fighting with each other. In multi-body hives, we join colonies by setting together bodies and separating them with newspaper.

In the second half of April, there is usually a necessity to enlarge the nest. First, we add young frames with brood, next to the last frame with brood.

In multi-body hives of Ostrowska type, it is recommended to rearrange bodies /if colonies hibernated in 2 bodies/ without adding new frames. This procedure causes that queen goes to the upper body with empty frames, where the temperature is lower, and gains more space to lay eggs and bees move food upwards, which creates an impression of honeyflow and stimulates expansion.

At this time, we carefully begin to widen the hive entrances in strong families. We provide the hives with constant ventilation, which should be moderate in order not to cool the nest.

It is also a good moment to disinfect empty hives after collapsed or joined colonies and prepare them to possible swarms or splits. We begin with removing frames, mats and other portable elements out of the hive. We scrape the frames and remove frames without honey or brood. We clean the hive out of the dead bees, the wax and propolis residue. We seal the cracks and cavities in wood.

The best way to disinfect the interior of the hive is scorching it with flames from gas burner of the gas cylinder. We do the same with frames and portable elements of the hive.

Obviously, we cannot use this method in Styrofoam hives. After scraping the bodies, we clean them with warm water and detergents and we dry on them in the sun. In case of infectious disease, it is necessary to clean the hive with 2% solution of caustic soda and then rinse it well. Doing this, we have to use rubber gloves and safety glasses.

We paint the outside of the hives with oil paint. If necessary, we exchange the roofing. Tarpaper may be maintained with preparations that give silver coating.

In the workshop, we prepare foundation in the amount sufficient to exchange at least 30-50 % of all frames in the bee yard.

Honeycomb, great engineering design 4.4 The period of intensive spring expansion. More or less at the end of April or in the beginning of May, the rapid expansion of a bee colony occurs. The last hibernating bees die and a colony renew. At this time, beekeeper’s visits in the bee yard have to be more frequent and more systematic. Virtually once a week we have to take a look at every colony. During these visits, we assess the quantity and the quality of brood and we enlarge the nest.

If we began adding frames, at first young but entirely renown frames, already in April, now we can proceed to place the foundation. It has to be done when we have observed that the cells edges have covered with wax. At first, we put at once not more than 1 frame of foundation next to the last frame of brood. When it is warm and foundation is quickly reconstructed, we may place 2 or more frames at once putting them between the capped brood in the centre of the nest.

It has to be stressed that adding as much foundation as possible is advantageous for the colony for several reasons:

- first, quick exchange of frames for new ones is a prophylactic procedure that averts the expansion of many diseases, especially nosemosis and other mycoses.

- second, bees hatching from young combs are bigger and have 30% bigger capacity of a honey sac.

-third, reconstructing of foundation in May is one of the basic procedures against swarming.

Therefore, we should create for our bees conditions to reconstruct as large as possible amount of new frames, in spite of the fact that the production of 1 kg of wax “costs” 3,5 kg of honey. We assume that 30- 50 % of frames should be exchanged annually.

During inspections in May, it is advisable to have an uncapping fork. Using it, we may uncap several pupas at once from the capped drone brood and we evaluate to what extent they are infected by Varroa destructor pest. In this period, if procedures of fighting against pest in spring were successful, we should not encounter female Varroa at all. Repetition of treatment with chemical preparations in spring is unnecessary and even harmful, since there is a possibility of contaminating new honey. Therefore, prophylactic administering of any medications, especially antibiotics and polisulfamids, is impermissible.

At this time, it is necessary to place in the hive an empty frame without wires, which informs us about the condition of a colony and about appearing swarming mood. The role of this frame has modified due to the emergence of varroosis. Therefore, we do not break down the wax tongues, but wait until queen lays eggs and we remove capped drone brood from the hive. We know that varroosis develops quicker and more effectively on the drone brood, therefore, when drone brood is present in the hive, the majority of female Varroa settles on it. The above- mentioned procedure will help us eliminate the majority of female Varroa in the beginning of the season. The trap-frame may be just a frame divided into halves with a bar. We put this wireless and foundationless frame at the side of the nest and we let bees build “wild”, i.e. drone, comb and after that, when the eggs are laid, we remove its capped parts. It may also be a frame with foundation only in its upper half, so its lower part will be the drone part that will be removed during subsequent inspections of colonies. In smaller frames, e.g. of Ostrowska or Wielkopolski type, and in strong colonies, it is enough to use just entirely empty, foundationless frames. For our comfort, we mark the trap-frame with colourful drawing pins or paint its top bar.

In multi-body hives, in the beginning of May, we may carry out second rearrangement of bodies and, after that, we enlarge the nest with young frames and foundation, but, first, we enlarge the upper body and after rearrangement, we enlarge the second one. One has to remember that delaying the last operation may contribute to building wild combs hanging from the frames of the upper body above an empty space in the lower body. While adding new frames, we remove mats and division boards, and we still widen hive entrances and ventilation of hives. 4.5 Using early honeyflows. Early honeyflows, such as orchards, dandelion, maples or canola may be used to produce certain amount of “spring” honey, which is sought after by consumers. In order to obtain this honey, several conditions have to be met. The first condition is possessing numerous colonies with large number of collecting bees. Preparing these bees lasts from the previous autumn and sometimes requires also using spring procedures that hasten the expansion, such as administering the pollen cake or, even better, reserve combs with bee bread /even at the end of February if aura is favourable/. Early spring expansion is also a genetic feature. In order to have early expanding colonies, one of the following races and lines may be used, e.g.:

Carnica - CJ10 , Beskidka , CNT

Caucasian - KPW .

The second condition is proper arrangement of nest that has to be separated from brood. In traditional hives, e.g. Dadant, we do not widen the nest entirely, but we put as many frames as may be brooded by a queen and we place super frames above these frames. In this situation, all fresh nectar can be found in the super. In multi-body hives, we do similarly. All brood is gathered in the lower body and above the bars we place so- called half-super or the second body in which the number of frames is the same as in the lower one (they do not have to be full). The third condition is foraging (honeyflow) area. If we do not decide to wander with the bee yard e.g. to canola, we need to realise that obtaining honey from early honeyflows is possible only where the terrain is not overfilled with bees. In our forage conditions we may maintain up to 40 colonies in one place, but there should not be any other bee yards in the distance of 1,5 – 2 km.

If the terrain around our bee yard is overfilled with bees and our main honeyflow is e.g. honeydew, we may treat it only as developmental honeyflow. Then, hastening of expansion in spring is unnecessary.

4.6 Averting swarm. Swarm is in the modern beekeeping practice definitely undesirable phenomenon. It was discovered a long time ago that a newly created colony (swarm) together with the starting colony does not give as much honey as colony that has not swarmed. Therefore, swarming has to be prevented. The following procedures serve this purpose:

- influencing genetic factors (exchange of races and lines into less swarming, selection, not using swarm queens),

- providing bees with proper space in the nest and good ventilation through adding frames, widening hive entrances and upper ventilation,

- using foundation,

- exchanging queens into young ones,

- providing honeyflow,

- tearing away queen cells.

As it has been already mentioned, swarming mood may be signalised by an empty frame without wires. Quick pulling out the wax tongues indicates the working mood, weak indicates the beginning of swarming mood.

Swarm on the tree

4.7 The beginning of the season. /June/. June in the bee yard is the month of the highest expansion of a colony and often the biggest collection of honey. At this time, queen reaches her maximum capacity for laying eggs. This is the time when a colony consumes the biggest amount of food. It has been stated that in June its needs come to ca. 30 kg of honey and 4-5 kg of pollen.

Beekeeper’s duty in this period is providing the proper amount of frames for laying eggs and also for storing nectar brought to the hive. If we know the forage conditions well, we may try to control the process of laying eggs in such a way that the peak of laying eggs begins 51 days before expected honeyflow and finishes 29 days before its end.

Taranow’s rule is possible only in case of stable honeyflow occurring on the particular terrain. It is practically not used in case of wandering bee yards that uses many different honeyflows and also when honeydew is used, since its appearance in the bee yard is impossible to predict. In this situation, it is necessary to maintain stable, as high as possible, strength of a colony.

In June, we have to provide queens with plenty of cells to lay eggs in. In Dadant and Warszawski poszerzony hives there should be at least 9-10 frames. In multi-body hives (Wielkopolski, Ostrowska), a queen is left on two full bodies with 10 frames. With the beginning of honeyflow, we put division bars and honey magazines. Meanwhile, we widen the ventilation maximally by widening ventilation louvres and increasing upper ventilation to enable automatic airflow. Researches have shown that in average conditions of dampness and temperature, in order to remove 100 g of water (evaporated from the brought nectar) from the hive, 2,5 cubic metres of air is necessary. And how much air is necessary when the daily increase comes to 2-3 or even more kilograms? W.Ostrowska has written that in summer, during the honeyflow period, air in the hive should be exchanged 100 - 300 times/hour. Let’s try to make it simpler for our bees so that they will not devote time to ventilation of the hive. Like in May, we still carry out anti-swarming procedures. However, it is always advisable to have reserve empty hives, in which we could place swarms if necessary. Control of colonies’ establishing of new swarm cells should be performed systematically. In multi-body hives, we may make this activity a little easier. In order to do it, we open the upper nest body a little and check the presence of swarm cells by looking from the lower side of the body.

It has been stated that the majority of swarm cells is found in the upper body; therefore, there is no need to check the lower body.

In case of colony’s swarming, we spray the swarm, which sits on the branch, with water from the sprinkler and then we proceed to place the swarm in the new hive. If the swarm sits on a thin branch, it is advisable to cut it gently, move the swarm with the branch over the open hive, and shake the bees off on the frames. You can also shake the swarm off to the travelling box with 2-3 frames. If a swarm sits very high, it is better to use a bag wrapped around the hoop and embedded on the high pole than go up high on the ladder. If a swarm sits in the extremely inconvenient place, e.g. on the tree trunk or on the fence, you need to try to rake it with a broom. Gathered swarm may be kept in the basement or placed in the hive in the evening. In order to avert the escape of the gathered swarm, you may put a comb with brood to the hive. Swarm, which we place in the hive, has to be smoked with Apiwarol against varroosis and after two days from placing, we need to feed the swarm with syrup and add foundation, since bees will eagerly reconstruct it. 4.8 Enlarging the bee yard. June is the best time for enlarging our bee yard or filing possible winter losses. There is a lot of brood and young bees in the colonies. Bees feel natural urge to reproduce. We have already stated that the swarm is undesirable phenomenon in our bee yards, therefore, in order to enlarge the state of our colonies, we make so-called splits. Creating splits may additionally avert swarming of strong colonies and does not make them weaker. This way, we gain new “artificial swarms” without negative effects of natural swarm. There are a lot of methods of creating splits. I will give two popular ways as an example.

1) We take 2-3 frames with capped brood and young bees from two strong colonies. We transport the frames to earlier prepared hive. Next to the frames with brood, on the sides, we put empty frames from the warehouse. Into these frames, you may pour ½ of glass of clean water (to each one), as a colony’s reserve for first few days. We place the division board on the side. If there is too little brood on the frames, you may additionally shake off young bees from 1-2 frames onto the split. You have to be very careful during these operations, since you cannot take a queen to the split. After 3-4 hours, you place a queen in a cage on the split. Due to the fact that during first few days in a new colony, there are only young flightless bees, you need to take care of water and food that has to be served as thin syrup. Split, during first days, is exposed to robbing, which may lead even to its complete destruction. Therefore, the hive needs to be completely closed (keep the access of air) for ca. 7 days. After 3 days, we check queen’s adaptation and then her brood, still feed her and protect against robbing (narrowed hive entrances) and, in the course of expansion, widen the hive with new frames. You may make strong splits out of e.g. 6 frames with brood or weak out of even only 1 frame with brood. Strong splits may give honey from late honeyflow, weak splits merely gain power to survive winter.

2) Dividing colonies during their flights. It is a method that enables quick enlargement of the bee yard. By resigning of the honey collection, you may enlarge your bee yard even 4 times in one season. Division is carried out at midday when bees are flying intensely. The original hive has to be moved to the side for 0.5-1 m. Symmetrically, from the second side, we put the second, empty hive of the same colour. Now we move the half of the frames with brood and reserves from the original hive into the empty hive and we equally distribute the reserves and brood at various age. Meanwhile, collecting bees coming from the honeyflow area split into two hives. By moving hives to the sides, we may regulate the evenness of collecting bees’ division. This way, two new, complete colonies with brood, young bees and collecting bees are created. After 2 days, we check in which hive the queen cells have been established, we tear them off and place a new queen. Then, we observe the colonies and add frames if necessary and we feed colonies in case of the lack of honeyflow. When colonies have expanded, the split may be repeated. This way, during one season, you may enlarge the number of you colonies from e.g. 5 to even 20. June is the month of first honey collection. After successful May collection, we extract first honey and create space for honeyflow from acacia, forest raspberry and later from linden. When honeydew appears early, the first honey collection is possible at the end of the month.

A beehive scales is an extremely useful device. It gives everyday, reliable information about the size of honeyflow or its shortage, it enables creating a proper plan of bee yard works, honey collection and feeding. Medium-strength colony should be placed on the beehive scales. 4.9 Harvesting period. /July and August /. These two summer months are usually the period of harvest in the bee yards. However, in some bee yards that do not use the late honeyflow, in the second half of July and in August, it is necessary to start to prepare families to overwintering, since bees that are born at that time will overwinter and decide upon the spring expansion during next season.

Earlier purchased or created splits need to be placed in disinfected hives and fed with thin syrup. In the course of expansion, we widen the nest by adding new frames. Until the half of July, you may add frames with foundation. Protection of splits against the possible robbing is very important.

It is particularly important during the period without honeyflow and in new splits that have not created defence mechanisms. Robbing may destroy the split within a few hours. Therefore, it is necessary to narrow the hive entrances, you may also place panes slantwise, which will also prevent robbers from entering. Above all, you need to observe splits constantly until they get stronger and become complete colonies.

Honeydew appears in the mountain-foot areas. It is advisable to control honeflow increase using beehive scales. Since honeydew is a very abundant source of honeyflow, it is necessary to provide proper amount of frames for storing and ripening of honey. It is very important to create conditions for automatic ventilation of the hive. Fresh air should enter through the hive entrance and louvres in the bottom, whereas hot and damp air should enter through cover louvres, in compliance with physical laws. 4.10 Honey harvest. We proceed to harvest honey a couple of days after the end of honeyflow so that bees have time to process nectar or honeydew into honey. This process, which is called honey ripening, consists mainly in evaporating of the excess water and also in enzymatic decomposition of saccharine into monosaccharide. It lasts ca. 7 days. Ripe honey is sealed by bees in cells with wax capping. If combs are sealed in at least 50 %, we consider honey ripe and proceed to collect honey. Sometimes, honeyflow ends before combs are sealed. In this situation, it is necessary to wait 5- 7 days from the moment when the honeyflow finished /it will be precisely marked by the beehive scales/ and proceed to collect honey, otherwise, honey will be eaten by bees. If we have doubts about the ripeness of honey, we may use a refractometer, a simple device that measures the content of water in honey. Thanks to this device, you may very precisely determine the level of ripeness of honey even directly in the open hive.

You have to remember that regulations allow the maximum content of 20 % of water in honey. Collecting unripe /watery/ honey creates a risk of fermentation and justified complaints from consumers.

Honey harvest should be carried out on a sunny day. We open the hive and take frames with honey from the upper level /super/. Collected frames have to be immediately replaced with empty ones, unless we plan to remove the super or body-honey magazine. These operations need to be done quickly in order not to evoke robbing. Bees that we rake from the frames need to be put in the transportation box or empty body covered with damp linen. Frames with honey transported to the workshop should be extracted during the same day, since warm honey is easier to extract. In order to extract the frame, you need to unseal it using uncapper and then put in the honey extractor and extract first one side, then another. Honey flowing from the extractor has to be filtered with thick sieve and then poured into tightly sealed vessels /buckets, cans/ or into the clarifier from which it will be poured into retail containers /jars/ next day. All these activities need to be performed at maximum cleanness and hygiene. Hygiene concerns a beekeeper himself, cleanness of hands, clothes and tools, as well as all equipment with which honey gets into contact and rooms in which honey is extracted and poured. Honey cannot get into contact with galvanised, iron, rusty, chipped or plastic vessels that are forbidden to get in contact with food.

If you do not have honey extractor with acid resistant steel, it is necessary to paint its interior with lacquer suitable for food contact. All vessels and tools need to be carefully washed.

We proceed to pouring after 24 hours, after removing soiling from the surface of honey.

We need to remember that honey is hygroscopic, i.e. it absorbs water from the air, so it cannot be left in an open vessel even for one moment. 4.11 Obtaining pollen. Pollen, as well as honey, is an important bee yard product and the demand for it is constantly increasing. Pollen may be obtained in two forms: bee bread and pollen load.

Obtaining bee bread is problematic and time consuming, however, some beekeepers make this effort in order to offer their buyers this valuable, nutritious and healing product in a pure form or mixed with honey.

You may also sell bee bread in combs. Some wholesalers buy these combs. Nevertheless, on the market, pollen is usually sold in pollen loads, obtained by special bottom or entrance pollen collectors, adjusted to the construction of the hive. Pollen collectors may be used from May to August, however, you need to remember that pollenflow is not everywhere abundant and obtaining pollen at all costs may lead to pollen hunger in a colony and colony’s weakness.

It is very important to take and preserve the obtained pollen as soon as possible. It is advisable to do it every day in the evening, since keeping damp pollen in pollen collector for too long cause its rottening. The development of fungi that secrete so-called alfatoxins is the most dangerous for pollen. Alfatoxins are very toxic and carcinogenic substances. The content of alfatoxins in pollen disqualifies the considerable part of pollen delivered to the purchasing centre.

In order to avert pollen rottening, immediately after taking it from the hive, it is necessary to preserve it. Pollen may be preserved by drying in special pollen driers with controllable temperature of drying in the temperature of 40-50 degrees for 24 hours. You should not dry pollen in the sun, since this drying is insufficient and, moreover, sun destroys its valuable ingredients.

Well-dried pollen may be stored in hermetic vessels or foil bags, preferably in pure carbon dioxide, which averts the development of bacteria and pests.

The second way of preserving pollen is its freezing in the temperature of 18 degrees, the third method is mixing pollen with honey for our and our buyers’ needs.

It is worth keeping certain part of dried pollen until the next year in order to make sugar-pollen cake that stimulates spring expansion. 4.12 Replacing queens. In July we may create splits, we may also replace older queens, since we use them 2, maximum 3, seasons in the bee yard. At our disposal, we have various types of queens, including so-called “one-day” queens, i.e. newly born queens, queens impregnated naturally on the bee yard and inseminated.

a/ The conditions of placing bee queens.

Bee queen has to be replaced in June, July or in September. In these months, they adapt well.

Placing bee queens creates difficulties for beekeepers. It is reflected by the low percentage of adopted queens and, as a result, financial losses. Therefore, it is worth knowing various method of placing queens and the conditions that have to be met that foster successful adaptation.

It is well-known that queen will not be accepted if in a colony there is another queen, laying worker bees or something that has a status of queen, e.g. a queen cell or even a queen cell cup. Good weather, intensive honeyflow and the presence of high quantity of young bees is favourable for accepting a new queen. Then, almost every method is good. Stress in a colony, in turn, caused by e.g. robbing, disease, hunger, the presence of pests, bad weather that disturbs flights, the lack of honeyflow and connected with these aggression are not conducive for queen’s adaptation. Additionally, old bees, e.g. like in case of creating artificial swarms out of several nests, are not willing to accept a new queen. Aggression may be eliminated by smoking, feeding or terrorising bees e.g. by spraying with cold water /artificial combs/ or shaking off in front of the hive.

A new queen has to better than an old one, i.e. it should have greater capacity for laying bigger number of eggs and it should also be well- nourished.

Unimpregnated queens, queens impregnated but no laying eggs and queen cells adapt better when there is no open brood. Queens that lay eggs adapt better when brood is open.

Genetic /race/ conformity of bees and a new queen, and related to it conformity of pheromones, fosters good adaptation. If there is no conformity of a colony, you need to observe and remove possible queen cells until a new queen has her own offspring.

Cages with queens and queen cells should be placed near brood. They cannot be placed at the edges of the nest, on empty combs and in honey magazines A queen cannot be placed in the cage without accompanying bees. Before placing a queen in the cage, bees may be replaced with those that come from the colony where we want to put a new queen.

The most important !!! Don’t disturb a new queen! Don’t look into the hive for minimum 5 days! b/ Methods of placing queens:

Placing queen cells. We put a queen cell in the bored spot after reproductive queen or any other good queen into the colony or the split. If a queen cell is on the wooden cork, we wedge it between upper bars of frames in the middle of the nest. A queen cell cut out of the comb has to be mounted directly to the comb with a stick /match/. It is a method that guarantees high degree of queens’ adaptation. After biting into the cell, queen has to be marked. You should not use swarm cells too often, since it may in the course of time lead to increased swarming in the bee yard.

Placing artificial queen cells. We place queens in queen cells made of paper soaked in wax or made of foundation. We close queen cells with queens from the top and mount to the frame, near the brood. At the bottom, a queen cell should have a crack through which a queen will be able to communicate with bees. We do not look into the hive for 4-5 days after placing the queen cell!

Direct methods. These methods are used only at a very good weather and honeyflow and for not so valuable queens, since they are not so effective. - We take an old queen from the comb and immediately put a young queen on the same place. - We let in a queen through the hive entrance in the evening into the orphaned colony and smoke it a little. Queen should not be fed for 40 minutes. Don’t look inside for 4-5 days!

Placing queens in isolators. We put the frame with brood and reserves, but without bees into a single-framed isolator. We let in a queen /inseminated or naturally impregnated/. We remove isolator when a young queen lays eggs on the frame. Meanwhile, we check if queen cells do not appear on the frames outside the isolator. It is a very effective method and is suitable for particularly valuable queens.

Placing queens in the cages.

Placing inseminated queens – We remove an old queen. After 7 days, we destroy rescue queen cells and place a queen in a closed cage. After subsequent 2 days, we check if there are not any new queen cells and we remove the plug of the cage. We do not look into the hive for 5 days! Placing into the split – we place a queen in the closed cage 2-3 hours after doing the split. After 2 days, we check if there are not any queen cells and open the plug of the cage.

We do not look into the hive for 5 days! 4.13 Ventilation in the hives. The problem of air exchange in the hives is usually treated marginally. However, proper ventilation in the hive has a considerable influence on the comfort of life and even on productivity of bee colonies.

Ventilation in the hives is as necessary for bees as ventilation of rooms for humans. Hives should be ventilated both in winter and in summer. If ventilation is faulty, the nest is dampened, which lowers colony’s chances to survive winter. In summer, faulty ventilation leads to overheating of the nest or sometimes even to breaking the construction of combs and the collapse of the whole colony.

Removing harmful gases from the hive, mainly water-vapour, may be conducted in three ways:

a/ Gravitational ventilation – used gases lift up and leave the hive through cover ventilation louvres. Fresh air gets into the hive through lower entrance ventilation louvre. Regulation of the width of the hive entrance in the bottom enables quite precise regulation of ventilation. Modern Styrofoam hives have ventilation system in their construction.

b/ Diffusion – free, automatic mixing of gas particles may be also a way to ventilate the hive. This method is used particularly in the hives with net bottoms and in the hives with deep bottoms.

c/ Absorbable insulation - water-vapour inside the hive is absorbed by the insulating and at the same time permeable mats and pillows. The more absorbable the material is the better system works. The best material for this type of ventilation is sheep wool, straw, dried fern, moss, since they absorb damp and dry very quickly.

1. Ventilation during overwintering. In winter, a bee colony in a cluster burns sugar reserves, which gives it necessary energy for the functioning of the organism and warmth necessary to survive overwintering. Daily use of reserves in this period is only 20 g, however, as a result of burning carbohydrates, which needs oxygen content of 70 litres of air, 90 litres of gases are created, including 15 litres of water-vapour and carbon dioxide. The general content of air in the hive comes to 17 litres, so it should be exchanged at least / 90 l : 17 l / = 5,3 times a day. If a beekeeper does not provide the possibility of proper airflow, water-vapour will begin to condensate of the walls of the bottom and other elements, which will considerably deteriorate the conditions of overwintering.

2. Ventilation in summer. Obviously, at this time the need for ventilation grows several times. E.g. in June, which is the month of the highest expansion, a colony uses 1000 g of honey a day. In order to burn it, a colony needs 750 l of oxygen contained in 3500 l of air. As a result of this reaction, 4500 l of gases are created, including 750 l of water vapour. It is easy to count that in this period air should be exchanged /4500 l : 35 l/ = 128 times a day. Additionally, in this period, collecting bees bring nectar, which is necessary to produce honey, to the hive. Nectar contains the excess of water, which should be removed from the hive. In order to make 100 g of water contained in nectar evaporate, 2500 l of air has to flow through the hive on average. In summer, bees frequently bring to the hive 2-3 or more kilograms of nectar. Additionally, during the highest heat, bees bring water, which cools the interior of the hive, to the hive. It does not have to be proven that it increases the necessity of ventilation. Wanda Ostrowska, in her book “Gospodarka Pasieczna”, writes that in summer the air in the hive should be exchanged 111-276 times a day, i.e. 3300-8300 l of air per hour should flow through the hive.

The “beard” proves insufficient ventilation. Bees are quite good at ventilating the hive in summer. 10 ventilating working bees standing at the hive entrance can “pump” through the hive ca. 3000 l of air per hour. It means that bees control the situation. However, if the hive entrance is too small to leave the hive then the nest hangs under its bottom like a beard. Other bees frantically try to bring water to the hive in order to cool it. It means that a beekeeper neglected his duties and caused production losses, since bees stopped working in the field.

In order to help his bees ventilate the hive properly, a beekeeper should observe and react appropriately to the changeable weather conditions. Before winter, we should narrow the hive entrances and leave a small opening in the cover, through which used air will get under the roof and further to the outside. This ventilation has to work all winter. In spring, when the temperature rises and becomes fixed, we gradually increase ventilation by widening hive entrances and opening ventilation louvres in the cover. It has to be synchronised with the expansion of the colony and the nest. In June and July, ventilation should be maximally widened, i.e. the hive entrance, bottom and cover louvres should be entirely open. In Styrofoam hives, additional ventilation louvers at the entrance may be opened in each body by removing the plugs that are in them.

In traditional wooden hives, there is no ventilation system. Ventilation louvers are frequently too small and do not provide proper airflow. Moreover, there are no louvers in the covers. Nevertheless, a beekeeper may help his bees by widening the hive entrances or even altering them so as they could let more air. If there is a cover in the construction of the hive, you should cut out the ventilation louvre with ca. 10 cm diameter that will be uncovered during heat. If the is no cover in the hive, ventilation in winter and especially in summer may be provided by removing some of inter-frames bars /at the side of the nest/, which will enable automatic flowing of used air under the hive and from there, through openings with net, to the outside. On particularly warm days, you may half-open roofs to improve the airflow. Ventilation works sufficiently if there are no ventilating working bees or there are no more than 10 of them at the hive entrance.

At the end of summer, when the temperatures decrease /cold nights/, we gradually limit the ventilation in order not to cool the nest excessively. When bees prepare their nests to overwintering and the size of the nest is limited, we decrease air-supply and air-exhaust ventilation. We have to, at least partially, narrow the hive entrance when we begin to carry out autumn feeding particularly in smaller colonies in order to avert robbing. We perform the final regulation of ventilation in late autumn before the expected upcoming of frosts. 4.14 Beekeeping practice in multi-body hives. a/Properties of multi-body hives.

W. Ostrowska’s researches /1968-82/ demonstrated that multi-body hives are suitable for modern beekeeping practice.

The difference between traditional and multi-body hives is that multi-body hives are more suitable in the terrains with weaker and earlier honeflows. Multi-body hives are better for wandering bee yards. Their servicing is less laborious.

The possibility of manipulating the bodies enables using various methods of beekeeping practice. Separating a honey magazine from the nest, creating splits and joining families is also easier.

Multi-body hives enable using weak and very strong honeyflows.

They create good conditions for overwintering and spring expansion.

On the other hand, manipulating with the bodies requires a lot of physical strength. b/General properties of beekeeping practice in multi-body hives.

Beekeeping practice in multi-body hives is intensive economics and consists in:

- maintaining only strong and balanced colonies,

- early and careful preparation of colonies for overwintering,

- providing minimum 12-13 kg of winter reserves,

- regular replacement of queens every second year,

- building combs intensively,

- localising and temporary limiting the process of laying eggs. c/ organisation of the inspection of multi-body hive:

- we lift the body with chisel from both sides from the back side in order to tear the putties,

- we lift the body from the back side and smoke it slightly,

- we remove the body from the hive and put it aside.

This sequence averts squeezing bees and their aggression.

In case of the necessity of the total inspection of the whole hive, we begin from disassembling it and the inspection of the first body and we inspect the subsequent bodies after putting them on those formerly inspected. On that occasion, you may e.g. rearrange the order of bodies or change the position of division bars.

The bodies that we put aside need to be placed on the roof or roofs of neighbouring hives and covered with wet linen in order to avert robbing.

It is the best to find a queen when it is in the lower body under the bars. If there are two bodies below the bars, a queen is usually in the upper one.

In case of intensive expansion and strong honeyflows, two bodies should be at queen’s disposal.

In case of the lack of late honeyflows, a queen lays eggs only in one body 30 days before expected cease of the last honeyflow.

Reconstruction of foundations should be always localised in the second /upper/ nest body, where the best thermal conditions are. d/ the rules of operating with bodies during the year.

Manipulating with bodies is limited to the following cases:

- rearrangement of bodies during spring expansion /1-2 times/, - adding the third corpus before the main honeyflow. Usually, it is added below the division bars, as the second one with foundation and young frames so as a queen could lay eggs on them quickly. The body with brood and fresh honeyflow that was previously the second one should be now placed above the bars,

- exchanging the body with honey into the body with empty frames during honey harvest,

- removing the third body at the end the season.

Apiary beehives made of polystyrene Ostrowska’s multi-body type. 4.15 Wandering beekeeping practice. Modern beekeeping practice, especially professional or semi-professional one, has to be based on using many honeyflows during the season. Usually, in order to get the collection of many types of honey, the bee yard should be moved to different honeyflow areas several times. It may be (in the order of blooming): orchards and dandelion, canola, acacia, raspberry, linden, buckwheat, goldenrod, heather and honeydew, whose occurrence is unpredictable.

Preparing the hive to transportation.

- The most important thing is providing bees with ventilation. In order to do this, we have to remove ventilation rings in the covers and we put empty half-bodies without frames under the covers. We open the openings with nets in the bottoms. We clog the hive entrances with dry sponge or we put bars. If the distance is not so long and is carried out on the side roads, the hive entrances may stay open.

- We fasten multi-body hives with belts. We fasten additional hives to the trailer.

- We transport bees in the late evening or in the morning when it is the coldest.

- After arriving, we put the hives on the supports and we open the hive entrances.

- When bees are calm /after 2-3 hours/, we add frames to the empty bodies and below them we put division bars. 4.16 Rotary practice. This is one of many methods used by beekeepers working in various conditions. This practice joins the intensification of production with fighting against varroosis and replacing queens. The following scheme represents the course of this practice:

- From spring, empty frames without wires should be added to the sides of bodies. After sealing with drone brood, it should be removed.

- After transportation, on canola, the third body should be added on the top, drone brood should be cut out from the nest and swarming mood should be controlled.

- After harvesting canola, a bee yard returns to its stable location. Here, the bee packets are created. For this purpose, you need to smoke the hive from the bottom in order to force bees to go the honey magazine. Now, the body should be removed and put aside. Close the hive. Bees have to be swept from all frames with honey. They fall through the funnel into the crate made of net. Every colony gives at least 1 packet that weighs min. 1250 g.

- Varroosis in the packets is fought on cold days by spraying them with Perizin. Next, we hang queens in cages. We terrorise bees by shaking and spraying with cold water. Packets have to be kept in a cold place and fed with cake for 24 hours.

- Colonies get the third body again, on that occasion the drone brood has to be cut out and transported to another honeyflow /linden, honeydew/.

- After 24 hours and the death of Varroa, packets need to be placed on 2 frames of honey and young combs. When bees are wet, they need to be poured to the bottom and a queen has to be hung in the body between the frames. Next, splits should be transported to the bee yards with good honeyflow. There, a cage should be opened and the opening sealed with cake. After 7 days, you need to check adaptation of queens. If there is no honeyflow, you need to feed colonies.

- During honeyflow, you may create collective splits with brood and nourishment from the colonies. This split has to be left without a queen for 9 days. Then, rescue queen cells need to be replaced with queens or queen cells.

After 4 weeks, splits have to be widened with new bodies and drone brood has to be still cut out of empty frames without wires.

- Heather is also used by bee colonies. After collecting honey, colonies are liquidated and the remains of brood need to be transported to one hive. All bees will fly to this hive. When brood eats into the cells, varroosis should be liquidated through smoking. - Bees that are left after liquidating colonies are used to create packets. Honey is taken to extracting. Packets should be placed in the basement for 24 hours in order to fight against varroosis.

- Packets are put together with splits /they are poured into empty body II on the newspaper/. The stronger colony is destined to overwinter. 5. Raising bees.

5.1 The basics of bee genetics. Bee genetics is extremely complicated. It results, among others, from the presence of specimens with various number of chromosomes. Bee queens have “normal”, double number of chromosomes /32/ inherited from both parents, so they are diploid specimens. A drone emerging from the unfertilised egg has only one set of chromosomes /16/ from a queen, so he is a haploid specimen. Consequently, all spermatozoa produced by a drone are genetically identical.

The composition of a bee colony is genetically conditioned by crossover of a single queen’s qualities with many /even 20/ drones. Important biological and functional qualities, such as the method of storing reserves, the speed of laying eggs by a queen, swarming, tendency to sealing the nest, aggressiveness, flying activity, honey production, immunity to diseases, sustaining a comb, longevity etc., are inherited via this complex procedure. Some qualities, e.g. body and eyes colouring are inherited with the high percentage. Heritability of functional qualities /e.g. honey production/ is considerably lower.

Queens, willing to lay eggs, leave the nest and fly to the place where drones from neighbouring bee yards gather. This is the best way of impregnating that averts crossovers in near genetic kinship.

Raising bees consists in:

- raising breeding material,

- selecting breeding material,

- proper mating of parents,

- checking offspring’ value.

Selection in raising bees consists in choosing valuable colonies from those that are present in the bee yard. Queens from most valuable colonies are raised to replace queens in weaker colonies.

Mating consists in selecting parents in order to get valuable offspring. Mating may be realised by impregnating a queen on the protected mating area by drones or by insemination. In beekeeping practice, beekeepers often use queens from interracial or interlinear crossovers. It has been claimed that a generation /F1/ created from these crossovers has better functional qualities from the starting material /the phenomenon of heterosis/. Obviously, this material cannot be further reproduced and used in the following generations due to the adverse fission of qualities. 5.2 How to improve bees in the bee yard? The problem of improving bees in a bee yard is one of the most difficult beekeeper’s tasks. Everyone would like to have healthy, hard-working, not swarming, mild and productive bees. How to do it? At present, at our disposal there is wide range of lines and races as well as functional interracial and interlinear crossbreeds. Some beekeepers think that the offer is too wide and makes it more difficult to make the right choice. Beekeepers frequently experiment and import queens from other breeders. It seems that it is a very good strategy since we can make the right choice only on the basis of our own experiences with the particular line or race in the particular environmental conditions. The condition of success is finishing experiments after some time and making the decision about the choice of the particular line. Today, in Polish bee yards Carnica bee race / Apis mellifera carnica / is dominating. Undoubtedly, it has many advantages, such as mildness, the lack of tendency to swarm or high honey production. However, it is more vulnerable to diseases and worse overwintering in comparison to the local bee Apis mellifera mellifera. This bee populated our regions in the past, but it has survived only in maintenance breeding /Augustowska bee, Kampinoska bee, Norweska ,Północna, Asta/. Maybe it is worth introducing this race into Polish bee yards in order to gain some “fresh blood” with desirable qualities of better immunity, which would decrease winter losses in the future.

Some beekeepers replace queens regularly, every second year, by purchasing them from breeders or raising them as reproductive queens in their own bee yards. A considerable number of beekeepers or maybe even the majority of them do not plan replacing queens and their queens are replaced by accident or bees replace a queen on their own, which not always brings desirable effects. It seems to me that the absolute minimum is annual replacement of at least 20-30 % of queens in weaker colonies and introducing queens to annually created splits.

Beekeepers should also pay attention to the purposefulness of raising queens from valuable colonies that have existed in the bee yard for more than a dozen of years, so they are immune to diseases, overwinter well, produce a lot of honey and quietly replace queens into new ones, which inherit desirable qualities. Frequently after many years, a beekeeper does not remember where the particular line comes from, but draws a conclusion that “it is an automatically formed line that is adjusted to conditions in his bee yard and can handle them very well”.

In order to have a balanced number of bees with desirable qualities, it is necessary to plan in advance and act very carefully. It is necessary to avoid importing many different lines and concentrate on 2-3 lines checked in the particular conditions. Synthetic lines, e.g. Buckfast, should also be avoided, since it may cause “littering” the neighbourhood with genes of different races and have influence on neighbouring bee yards.

Managing new queens should be documented with all the details, like all observations concerning health, honey productions, mildness etc. in the course of time, we will get plentiful material for comparison, which will allow to take care of bees in a better and more effective way. 5.3 Types of queens in a bee yard. Queens in bee yards come from two sources: a/ Queens raised by bees on their own:

- queens from the quiet replacement. Bees establish 1-2 queen cells from which a new queen or queens hatch. To the moment of impregnation of a new queen and sometimes even longer, there may be two queens in the bee hive – a new and an old one. Queens from the quiet replacement have good values, since bees choose optimal timing for raising queens.

- rescue queens are raised in the situation of the sudden loss of a queen, e.g. when she is harmed by a beekeeper. Bees make several rescue queen cells on existing larvae. The quality of these queens may be worse, since breeding these bees is forced.

- swarm queens are raised as a result of a swarming mood in a colony. They are big and well-fed, however, they may increase the swarming quality in the bee yard. Therefore, they cannot be used too often. b/ queens coming from the breeder:

- one-day queens are newly born queens. They adapt well and are cheap. They have to perform the mating flight so we cannot influence the selection of drones and they may die during this flight.

- inseminated queens – their origin from both sides is guaranteed. However, they are more expensive, adapt worse and are earlier replaced by bees.

- queens impregnated on the protected mating area. They have high value, are considerably more expensive and only few breeders offer these mothers. Additionally checked process of laying eggs of a queen raises her price.

- reproductive queens are purchased by beekeepers in order to raise functional queens. They have guaranteed origin from both sides and sometimes also checked process of laying eggs. They are definitely the most expensive. They may be used very long /3-5 years/. 5.4 Raising the bee queens. Queens in a modern bee yard should be replaced every second year, therefore, they have to be purchased or raised. Raising the queens is done by many amateur bee yards, especially in the bigger ones. Specialised breeding bee yards are engaged in improving bees, i.e. breeding works. The control of queens breeding in Poland is done by the Ministry of Agriculture via Krajowe Centrum Hodowli Zwierząt.

Breeding colonies with the best queens are used to breed queens. They produce larvae and eggs to breed.

The process of breeding is performed in so-called raising colonies that are strong, have big amount of reserves, brood and younger bees. Raising is performed after removing a queen from such a colony and sometimes also at her presence.

Paternal colonies are strong colonies with many drones. These drones will be used to impregnate queens on the protected mating area /i.e. naturally/ or via insemination.

Methods of raising queen.

There are many methods. We will give some of them. a/ The Alley method

It is the simplest method used by amateur breeders. Into the centre of the breeding colony, a light comb should be placed so that eggs could be laid on it. After three days, the comb has to be removed and cut with a curve with bulges directed downwards. 2/3 of larvae have to removed (leave every third cell) from the cells that are on the edges. The prepared comb has to be placed into the raising colony. b/ Using queen cell cups.

It is used to produce queens on larger scale. Cups with 8-9 mm diameters and 4-8 mm deep are made of pure wax using wooden stick dipped interchangeably in the cold water and melted wax.

Cups have to be glued to wooden plugs that need to be placed into the openings in the moveable bars of frames, cups’ openings need to be directed downwards. This frame has to be put into raising colony for the night, so that bees could polish them. On the next day, this frame has to be transported to the warm workshop, where, in the temperature of 25-27 o C, on the bottom of each cup, a drop of royal jelly or fresh nectar/honeydew should be put. Next, a comb from a breeding colony with one-day larvae should be brought to the workshop. These larvae, using a metal or elastic Chinese spoon, have to be gently brought to the cups. After transporting larvae to all cups, a frame covered with a towel has to be transported to the raising colony and placed between brood.

c/ The Jenter’s method.

It consists in using a special plastic frame designed by the author of this method. This frame is put into the comb. A queen is let into the frame and lays eggs directly to the plastic cups which are the bottoms of the openings that imitate the comb cells. This method eliminates the necessity of transporting larvae and, moreover, thanks to this method it is easy to determine the age of larvae, which is a significant feature for the quality of queens. Plastic cups with eggs and larvae are transported to the rearing frame, which is placed into the raising colony.

In all above-mentioned methods after sealing queen cells, it is necessary to isolate them within 14 days, since the earliest born queen may kill her sisters that are still in the queen cells. For the purpose of isolation, special plastic or wooden isolators are used. At this moment weak and badly formed queen cells should be removed. Sealed and isolated queen cells do not have to stay in the raising colony. In bigger breeding houses, during the period of the emergence of queens, queen cells are transported to incubators with controllable temperature and dampness and subsequent series of cups Year in the decade Colour with larvae are put into raising colonies. 1 and 6 white After the emergence, queens are examined in order to determine if they do not have 2 and 7 yellow any damages and after that they are marked. Queens are marked with colourful paints, pens or opaliths /colourful rings glued on bee thorax/. Marking simplifies finding a 3 and 8 red queen in a colony and indicates queen’s age. The following rule of marking is used worldwide: 4 and 9 green

5 and 0 blue

Wedding hives breeding apiary. 6. Beekeeping technique.

6.1 Hives. The basic element of every bee yard is a hive. The hive is the space for bees, which should provide them with protection against unfavourable external influences, the best conditions to develop a colony and the possibility to store pollen and other bee products. Traditional hives were built of wood and straw, later they were also built of fibreboards and recently they have been built mainly of Styrofoam and polyurethane – light and relatively cheap materials with very good insulating qualities.

In the history of beekeeping, man prepared various types of spaces for bees. Initially, they were wild beehives carved in trees, later in wooden logs placed near the houses, woven skeps made of straw etc. Later, people started to build hives out of wooden boards, but the real revolution was inventing a frame in the 19th century. The frame is the portable bee comb, which could be used repeatedly and moved in the nest or between various hives.

Thus, various types of hives emerged. It has to be stressed that the type of the hive is defined by the size of the frame /frames that are inside, not by the appearance or material that they are built of. In Poland, we have several basic types of hives, which we may divide into compound hives and multi-body hives.

Compound hives – they are boxes with the bottom that is permanently connected with the body, where frames are hung. They are covered with a roof. The additional element is a super, which, during the summer season, increases the capacity of the hive and is usually a honey magazine. Expanding the hive in the season is, in the first place, horizontal and consists in adding new frames and then, it is vertical and consists in adding the super. These hives, due to their size and weight, are not suitable for wandering practice. In our country, there are the following types of compound hives:

Dadant – size of the nesting frame: width 435 mm, height 300 mm and size of the frame of the super: 435 x 145 mm. In the nest, there are 10-15 frames, in the super there are ca. 10-11 frames thickened to 40 mm.

Warszawski poszerzony - size of the nesting frame 300 x 435, size of the frame of the super 360 x 130 mm.

Multi-body hives – they contain a separate bottom, 2-5 bodies, cover and roof. All elements are separate and may be freely matched. The body may usually hold 10 frames.

Wielkopolski – commonly used and popular all over Poland. It consists of 2 bodies with 10 frames each and size coming to 360 x 260 mm and a half-body with a 360 x 130 mm frame. Expanding the hive is vertical /so-called rack/. It is suitable for the wandering practice and for using weaker honeyflows.

Ostrowska – this hive consists of 3 bodies with 360 x 230 mm frame. It is a universal hive. It may be used in the areas with weak and strong honeyfloww. It is suitable for wandering. The management system in this hive was created by Ph.D. Wanda Ostrowska on the basis of long-term experiences in 1968-82.

Langstroth- commonly used in the USA and Canada in large, professional bee yards. In Poland, it is used more rarely and rather only in professional bee yards. There are 2-3 bodies with the size of 448 x 232 mm in this hive. It has a large capacity, suitable for strong honeyflow conditions.

Appipol hive – it consists of 5 bodies with a very low frame 445 x 115 mm. It was invented in the 1970s by a company Apipol in Lesser Poland. The whole technology of Apipol system was created by Eng. Ryszard Tomaszewski. Initially, it was used mainly in the production of herbal honey, but, at present, it is also used in an intensive, professional beekeeping practice.

Apipol and Dadanta hives In Polish bee yards, considerably bigger amount of types and kinds of hives may be found, however, it is not advisable, since additional equipment of a bee yard, e.g. honey extractors, frames, transportation boxes, foundation are produced in few standard sizes adjusted to the above- mentioned systems of hives.

In every bee yard there should be only one type of hive, which will make the combs management and the whole beekeeping practice easier. The perfect hive here is Ostrowska’a hive, in which there is only one size of frame adjusted to all hives and all bodies.

6.2 Beekeeping equipment. Apart from the hives, a bee yard needs additional beekeeping equipment.

The list of the basic equipment necessary in a medium-sized amateur bee yard /up to 40 hives/

No. The name of the equipment Qty. Use

1. Coat or jacket 2 Beekeeper’s working clothing and protective clothing

2. Bee hat 2 Head and eyes protection

3. Hive tool 2 Manipulation with frames and bodies

4. Bee brush 2 Sweeping bees off the frame

5. Smoker 2 Creating smoke during working in the hives

6. Transporting and swarm 2 Transportation of frames and collection of collection box swarms.

7. Swarm catcher bag 1 Linen bag on the stick to collect swarms from high trees.

8. Feeder 1/hive Feeding with liquid fodder.

9. Electric foundation transformer 1 Embedding foundation

10. Wire 1 spool Fixing foundation into the frames 11. 3-4 frames honey extractor 1 Extracting honey from the frames

12. Metal or plastic sieves 3-5 Filtering honey

13. Manual uncappers 2-3 Uncapping combs before extracting

14. Buckets, pans 3-4 Distributing syrup, for honey

15. Solar wax melter 1 Melting wax

16. Electric and steam wax melter 1 Melting wax

17. Division bards 1/hive Separating the nest from the honey magazine

18. Insulating mats 1- Narrowing and insulating the hives 2/hive

19. Pillows 1/hive Insulating the hives from the top

20 Queenbreeding kit 1kit Raising queens

21. Gas burner with gas bottle 1 Disinfecting wooden elements

22. Honey settler 1 Pouring honey

23. Table or bath for uncapping 1 Uncapping frames

6.3 Bee yard workshop. It is a room or a separate building used to harvest honey and other bee products, perform other tasks as well as store frames, equipment, protective clothing and, sometimes, honey.

Due to the fact that food production /harvesting and processing honey/ is performed in the workshop, it has to fulfil basic sanitary requirements:

- Room for harvesting honey has to be separated from the workshop and storage section,

- Floors and walls need to be covered with washable materials,

- Workshop has to have the access to running water and electric energy,

- Object has to be tight, resistant to penetration of bees and rodents etc.,

- Protective and working clothing has to be kept in the closed cupboard,

- Disinfecting material and cleaning products have to be closed in a separate cupboard.

- All equipment, vessels and tools that get in contact with honey have to be made of acidproof steel or plastic allowed to get into contact with food. 6.4 Arranging the bee yard area. Bee yard area is a place where a bee yard is located. It should be fenced or there should be a minimum 3 m high hedge around it, which protects both the bee yard and neighbours against stinging. Access road to the bee yard has to be provided. The place for the bee yard should be dry, sunny and sheltered from the wind. Hives, depending on the bee yard area, may be singular, stand in groups on holders or common supporters isolated from the ground. Hives should be painted with colours that are distinguished by bees. Bee yard should be regularly mown.

Apart from the hives and the workshop, on the bee yard there should be a beehive scales, solar wax melter and drinking trough. We place one of the hives on the scales, which should be covered with a roof since rain may falsify the result.

Perfectly decorated apiary. Sheltered street on weight, next drinker. 7. Honeyflows.

7.1 Evaluation of a bee pasture. Before we concern the location of a stationary bee yard, it is very important to evaluate the abundance of honeyflow in a bee pasture. It is worth remembering that a colony makes the most advantage of the nearest honeflow. Every bee flies to the further honeflows less than to the honeflow located several hundred metres away. Collecting bees may fly even a couple of kilometres to search for honeyflow. Nevertheless, it is obvious that flights for such distances are uneconomical since they last long and a bee burns a part of transported nectar. It is thought that the radius of so-called effective or economic flight comes to 1,5-2 km from the bee yard. This radius comprises from 706 ha, i.e. ca. 7 km2 to 1256 ha, i.e. ca. 12,5 km2.

On this terrain, we evaluate the area of natural plant honeyflows, such as forests, grasslands, riverside vegetation, wastelands, heathlands as well as artificial plant communities and crops, such as orchards and gardens, parks, oilseeds, buckwheat, the fabaceae, leguminous plants etc.

It may be helpful to use a geodesic map of a locality where our bee yard is situated with projection scale e.g. 1: 20 000.

We find the location of the bee yard on the map and then, using a pair of compasses, we ring a circle with 2 km radius. In this circle, we mark natural and artificial plant communities with different colours. Then, we determine its approximate area. In order to make the calculations easier, we may use a grid drown on the transparent sheet of paper with squares complying with the area of e.g. 1 ha /according to the map’s scale/.

The next step is multiplying the quantities of particular plant communities or crops by the honey capacity of one ha. Honey capacity is determined by researches and comes, for example, to /according to various authors/ : coniferous and mixed forest /nectar/ 70 kg honey/ha coniferous forest /honeydew/ up to 700 „ grasslands 40 „ arable lands /weeds or catch plots/ 10 „ orchards 20 „ riverside vegetation 150 „ heath 50 -100 „ winter rape 80 -150 „ white mustard 40 - 90 „ raspberry 50- 250 „ blueberry up to 100 „ buckwheat 100 -250 „ clovers 100-120 „ Bokhara clover 200-600 „ phacelia 200 and more „ fern 300- 750 „ linden, maple 2 kg of honey from one tree Robinia pseudoacacia 1 „

After summarising the honey capacity of all the components of the terrain, we will get the value that is referred to as bee honeyflow expressed in kilograms.

Here, we have to consider the bee’s possibility to use the natural resources. It is assumed that the percentage of honeyflow use is 50 % for nectar and only 10 % for honeydew.

The second side of this balance is the amount of bee colonies living on the particular terrain. These are both our bees and our neighbours’ (who are beekeepers) bees.

By dividing the bees’ possibility to use honeyflow by the amount of bee honeyflow, we will get the amount of honey offered by the environment per 1 hour.

By remembering that one colony uses 80-100 kg of honey for its own needs, we may forecast the amount of honey harvest for trading purposes.

After stating the poor honey capacity of the environment or too many bees on the particular terrain, we should resign of locating the bee yard in this place.

We cannot forget about the colonies’ need for pollen, which comes to 25-30 kg annually/colony. In our conditions, the absolute champion in pollen production is the common dandelion, which gives 300 kg of pollen from one ha. A lot of pollen is supplied by phacelia – 150-200 kg/ha, Melilot - 40-150 kg/ha, cornflower – 60 kg/ha, clovers -30 kg/ha, mustard – do 100 kg/ha, winter rape – 60-150 kg/ha.

It is assumed that in our honeyflow conditions, there may be maximum 6-7 colonies per 1 km 2. Therefore, there should be less than 50 colonies in one place. In places with too many bees, the honey harvest is low. On the other hand, it is good for farmers since the plant are very well pollinated.

Benefit first spring pollen. 7.2 Honeydew forage. On some terrains, there is honeydew, sweet secretion of greenflies, scale insects and the psylloidea, which are small insects that feed on tree juice. Bees produce honeydew honey out of honeydew, which is very desirable product on the market due to its high quality and price. Unfortunately, the occurrence of honeydew is impossible to predict. It occurs irregularly, not every year and in various periods of the season from spring until late autumn. Therefore, the period of its occurrence may last from several days until 2-3 months.

Honeydew may occur on broad-leaved trees /maple, linden, oak/ or on coniferous trees /spruce, fir, larch/. Honeydew forage, due to the high amount of compounds that are hardly digestible by bees, cannot be left in the hives for winter. When honeydew forage occurs, it is always abundant. The most problematic is larch honeydew or willow honeydew, out of which so-called “”cement” honey is produced, since it is useless both for bees and for people. 8. Bees’ diseases.

8.1 Introduction. Nowadays, we live in the conditions of progressing devastation of the environment. Its effects have reached not only humans who are creators of this phenomenon, but also the whole nature. The victims are subsequent plant and animal species and even whole ecosystems that die irretrievably as a consequence of air, water and soil contamination, which results from the expansion of agriculture and industry as well as of climatic changes, deforestation, drying and barrening of whole areas, poaching etc.

These threats concern also bees that survived several million years in harmony with wild nature, but today, without human help, they would be doomed to death.

Apart from above-mentioned factors, the threats for our bees are expanding diseases. It has to be added that in order to get high quality bee products, we try to avoid using antibiotics and chemical medications against varroosis and that is why we pay attention to prophylaxis, i.e. averting the occurrence of bee diseases, and use biological or ecological methods that do not have any side effects. 8.2 Hygiene in the bee yard. Environment in which a bee colony exists comprises the hive, the bee yard and the terrain of bees’ flights. When building and managing a bee yard, we may try to provide our bee colonies with optimal conditions to exist. a/ Hive.

It is a substantial element of a bee yard. In Poland, there are a few hives that are recommended to use, but in practice, there is much bigger variety of them. Bees are very tolerant as far as the type of the hive and the shape of the frame are concerned. However, a hive should provide good conditions for overwintering, create a possibility to widen the nest when a bee colony expands and contain a honey magazine in case of high honeyflows. On the other hand, it should be comfortable to service and enable performing necessary procedures. It should be easy to disinfect. It also has to be adjusted to the type of a beekeeping practice /stationary or wandering/.

Dadant or wielkopolskie hives are recommended to use in small, amateur bee yards that are usually stationary bee yards. For wandering bee yards, it is recommended to use lighter hives or multi-body hives.

Traditionally used material to produce hives is wood. It creates perfect thermal conditions and proper dampness inside the hive. The flaw of wood is its rotting, especially inside, and therefore in the course of time it is more difficult to disinfect. Another flaw is relatively big weight and big size of traditional wooden hives, which makes them impossible to use in wandering hives. Fibreboard, which is quite often used in individual production of hives, is a cheaper material, but also worse than wood. It does not absorb dampness inside the hive and warps when used in exterior wall. Besides, it contains harmful ingredients.

Styrofoam and polyurethane hives, which are used worldwide for many years, create good conditions for bees. In summer, they avert overheating and in winter, they keep warmth, however, they may be dampened when serviced by an unskilful beekeeper. Their unquestionable advantage is their lightness and modern constructional solutions as well as their easiness of disinfection. No negative effects of influence of materials that they are made of have been discovered.

In every hive, the crucial feature is constructional possibility to launch and regulate ventilation, collect bee products e.g. pollen or propolis and feed colonies easily. Multi-body hives have removable bottom. It is a very useful solution that enables controlling the number of dead bees after winter and due to infection with varroa destructor, spring sweeping, replacing dampened bottom and other procedures. Old, dark combs have to be eliminated, since their cell, filled with cocoon of many generations of larvae, are smaller and tinier bees hatch from these cells. They are also a magazine of pathogenic microorganisms. Moreover, the residues of medications are deposited in wax and they may penetrate into honey. Therefore, it is recommended to replace ½ or at least 1/3 of frames in the hive annually. Removed frames should be replaced with foundation. Foundation should come from producers who disinfect wax destined for its production.

Hive in which bees, for some reason, have died, has to be protected against raid of bees from other hives and then removed from the bee yard and disinfected. b/ Bee yard.

The location of a bee yard should be sunny and dry. Bee is a child of sun and deep shadow as well as dampness foster the occurrence of diseases and delay spring expansion. Hive entrances should be directed at the sun. Hives should be placed on supporters that should stand on concrete boards. In case of the lack of space, several hives may be located on common supporters. Single trees or bushes that grow on the bee yard give slight half-shadow in hot summer days and they are reference points for returning collecting bees. The area of a bee yard should be fenced and shielded from the wind. Grass in the bee yard should be frequently mown and the terrain under the hive entrances cleaned and covered with concrete tiles in order to observe contaminations that are removed from the hive. It frequently helps recognise the diseases. You have to remember to disinfect these places from time to time by e.g. pouring with limewater.

From the first spring flight, there should be a drinking-trough with clean water in the bee yard. The best drinking troughs are those with running water, the drinking trough has to be disinfected periodically. It should be roofed so that faeces of flying bees did not contaminate water. Large jars, turned upside down and closed with lids with openings, may also be used as drinking troughs. This kind of drinking trough does not demand frequent servicing and is permanently clean. The best form of watering bees in spring is putting water directly into the hive in jar feeders. There should be also a beekeeping workshop and the magazine for equipment in the bee yard. Storing frames, beekeeping tools, equipment and, above all, bee products in random magazines with objects and materials that are not connected with a bee yard is inadmissible. c/ Terrain within the reach of bees’ flights.

This terrain, which is also called a bee pasture, forms 2 km long radius and its centre is our bee yard. Bees and drones may fly even further and it determines the possibility of fetching diseases from distant neighbourhood. Diseases and parasites may be also brought by a swarm with unknown origin, which come to our terrain. If we decide to place such a swarm in our bee yard, we have to observe it carefully.

Thus, health of bees from neighbouring bee yards also has influence on health of our bees. If, for example, there are focuses of foulbrood in the neighbourhood, we have to be aware of the possibility of the occurrence of this disease also in our bee yard. Danger is also created by left, extinct and unprotected hives that may be a source of infections. The separate problem is wild swarms that settle on old trees, attics etc. They are real danger, especially in terms of expansion of varroosis and related diseases.

Vegetation occurring in the particular area may also be dangerous for bees. There are well-known cases of infecting with pollen, so-called Morbus majalis. It is a kind of indigestion occurring during feeding on pollen and simultaneous water deficiency. Infection may be caused by tobacco and buttercrup pollen. Nectar of the following plants may be also toxic for bees: Labrador Tea, Veratrum, Daphne, tulips, Aesculus, spurges and even large-leaved Linden. Fortunately, these infections are rare. Infections with honeydew, so-called Alopecia nigricans apis, are much more common, especially in some regions. In the conditions of strong and long-term honeydew flow, it may kill multitude of collecting bees.

The most essential threat is infections with crop protection chemicals, especially insecticides. They occur in case of gross negligence of regulations and rules of using these chemicals, i.e. spraying flowering plants that are pollinated by bees during the day or blooming in them weeds. A beekeeper cannot do much in order to avert these infections. However, it is worth remembering that in case of infections, you have to immediately appoint official committee to confirm the infection, since only properly written and documented committee protocol may be a basis for laying claims to compensate the losses made in a bee yard. d/ Servicing.

Beekeeping practice, which is a sum of year-round beekeeping procedures, definitely determines the production results. It is necessary to remember that bees, in spite of the fact that they are domesticated, are not tamed and bee colony life is the same as million years ago. We have to respect their habits and every procedure should be planned in a way that their habits were not violated.

Above all, inspections, which always disorganise bee colony life, should be limited to minimum and conducted only in necessary cases. A beekeeper should wear special clothing /jacket or coat and hat/ made of light, not shaggy material. You have to remember that bees hate the smell of alcohol, perfumes, sweat, chemicals; these smells may provoke them to aggressive behaviours. Inspection should be conducted quickly and in a skilful way, without using so much smoke. You should not make rapid and sudden moves, since it alarms guard bees. Inspections should be preceded with the observations of the flights and dead bees under the hive entrances. Colonies that are suspected to be infected should be inspected at the end.

Symptoms that should be alarming for a beekeeper:

- weak, sluggish flights, - dead bees under the hive entrance, - weak, incapable of flying bees that crawl under the hive and on the bridge, - dragging out the dead brood, - stains of faeces on the hive entrance and inside the hive, - altered, defunct brood, - abnormal, unpleasant smell coming from the interior of the hive, - slow, weak uptake of sugar syrup.

During inspection, we avoid removing frames with bees and putting them outside the hive, since it may result in losing a queen. Frames that need to be removed from the hive have to be slightly swept from bees or shaken above the nest. Removed frames with honey need to be immediately put in a tightly closed transporting box or covered with wet linen in order to avert raids. If we notice increased nervousness of bees and the beginning of raid, we move to the other part of a bee yard or interrupt working. Frames, wax scraps and tools cannot be left in a bee yard, since it may stimulate robbings. In the period when bees are fed, we need to pay attention that strange bees did not have access to the feeders. Feeding should always be conducted in the evening and, if it possible, in all hive at the same time. Syrup should be made of clean, even boiled water. Tools and beekeeping clothing have to be permanently kept clean.

When there is an infectious disease in the bee yard, all equipment used for servicing ill colonies need to be disinfected. Clothing has to be boiled, hive tools scorched, wooden equipment cleaned with caustic soda solution. After working in the bee yard, hands, hive tool and brush need to be cleaned with denaturated alcohol, which removes bee glue and disinfects at the same time.

You should not lend and borrow beekeeping equipment, especially honey extractors, transportation boxes, frames etc., since it may be one of the sources of spreading diseases.

Caution: when bees collect honeyflow, it is forbidden to use any medications that could penetrate into the honey that will be used by people. It concerns mainly chemicals against varroosis, antibiotics and sulfonamides.

It is absolutely inadmissible to use any medications prophylactically, i.e. administering medications to healthy bees

8.3 Bees immunity. The problem of bees immunity is very significant nowadays due to the fact of using medications against the majority of bee diseases and our concerns connected with infecting honey and other bee products.

Every living organism has mechanisms that avert penetration of microorganisms and ways to neutralise those pathogenic factors which have already penetrated into the human organism. They are invariably complex mechanisms that in overwhelming majority of cases protect living organisms against diseases.

Bees, as insects living on colonies, have double immunity system: a/ collective immunity (of a colony), b/ individual immunity of every specimen. a/ Collective immunity.

It consists in particular behaviours of bees and antibiotic quality of bee products. We know well bees’ care for cleanness and order in the hive. Removing dead specimens, ill and genetically faulty larvae, litter from the bottom of the hive is referred to as hygienic instinct. Its level is different for various bee races and lines and is a great challenge for a breeder. In a similar way, bees clean themselves of Varroa destructor parasites. We try to determine /still in a tiny percentage/ the bees’ capability of active catching and mechanical destroying of acari by legs amputation or crushing their armour. Another signal of collective immunity is the division of tasks in the bee hive. Young bees that have not had contact with the external world, which are “clean”, take up works that demand the highest level of hygiene, i.e. raising brood and preparing winter reserves. Flying bees, collecting bees, which have had contact with contamination of the external world, are not allowed to approach trouble spots and to perform tasks in the hive. It needs to be added that bees systematically clean their external bodily layers by combing the soiling stuck to hair using their legs. Another signal of collective immunity is antibiotic quality of all bee products that are in the hive. It results among others from the high concentration carbohydrates in honey, which excludes the expansion of microorganisms, high content of organic acids in honey, bee bread and royal jelly and from the ubiquitous presence of propolis, which is a very effective antibiotic substance against bacteria, fungi and even viruses. b/ Natural immunity of a specimen.

It results from inborn anatomical features and physiological mechanisms of an organism.

Anatomical features that enhance the protection of an organism include hard chitin armour resistant to biological, physical and chemical factors, which is additionally soaked with fatty acids. Pathogenic microorganisms may penetrate into bee’s organism through damaged fragments of an armour, e.g. through wounds made by varroosis or spots after torn hair. However, the majority of pathogens penetrate into bee’s organism in gastrointestinal tract. Nevertheless, they encounter gastric acids that destroy the majority of pathogens. This way, for example, American foulbrood bacteria are destroyed. However, some pathogens penetrate through intestinal epithelium and gets into hemolymph. There is a specific enzyme – lysozyme and specialised blood cells – phagocytes – which localise and destroy the intruder.

The effectiveness of above-mentioned bees’ defence mechanisms depends on many external factors. Some of them depend also on a beekeeper. c/ Factors that lower the immunity of a bee colony.

They are above all:

- colony’s weakness, - hunger, - coolness of the nest, - dampness, - disturbing colonies during overwintering, - old or ill queen, - mass invasion of pathogenic factors as a result of robbing ill colonies, the presence of varroosis, infected drinking troughs and general hygienic negligence in the bee yard. d/ Methods and prophylactic procedures in beekeeping practice.

They are discussed minutely in the second part, we will list them here as a reminder:

- proper locations and arrangement of a bee yard,, - rigorist observance of hygiene in the hive, workshop and bee yard, - systematic disinfection of hives, frames and equipment, - replacing old combs with foundation- minimum 30-50 % annually, - ban on lending/borrowing beekeeping equipment, - eliminating the sources of infections, which may be whole bee colonies in our bee yard, neighbouring colonies, neglected bee yards and dirty drinking troughs, - maintaining good condition of a colony, balancing colonies’ powers in the bee yard, - joining weaker colonies in spring and autumn, - feeding if necessary, spring insulating, - systematic replacement of bee queens/using breeding progress, - quick diagnosing and treating diseases, - observing and quarantining new swarms in the bee yard, - avoiding chemical poisonings, - researching samples of dead bees, brood and, possibly, honey, for the presence of diseases and parasites, - averting robbings.

8.4 Bee diseases. Bees may suffer from various conditions caused by: bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa and acari. There are also conditions caused by physical factors, e.g. temperature /brood cold/ or chemical factor /poisonings/.

We try to limit the occurrence of bee medical conditions and pay attention to proper diagnosis and treatment of these diseases as well as more and more important prophylaxis. a/ American foulbrood.

It is an infectious brood disease caused by Paenibacillus larvae bacteria. Endospores of these bacteria have high immunity to external factors and stay alive even for several dozen years. They may be transported in infected wax /foundation/, honey, frames, equipment, and beekeeping tools or by bees who rob weak and ill colony or empty, dead hives. The main source of infections is dead larvae that are in comb cells. Bacteria infect 6-8 days old larvae, the expansion of the disease takes place under the capping. Infected larvae die and transform into stinky, brown mass.

The symptoms of foulbrood:

- dead, putrid brood under the capping, which is often holed and collapsed,

- the body of a dead larva changes into brown mass, which may be, using a match, pulled in the form of long, thin strings /characteristic symptom/,

- putrid brood secrete a smell of carpenter’s glue, which may be often detected after the hive is opened. Fighting infection:

Radical method of fighting foulbrood in case of intense infection of brood is sulphation of a colony. In a properly functioning colony, a beekeeper notices the infection on time and proceeds to treatment immediately. In case of American foulbrood, it comprises the whole range of procedures. A beekeeper has to begin with resettling a colony into a new hive. In order to do that, a hive with an ill colony is put behind and a new, clean hive filled with frames with foundation is put on the place of the old hive. /There cannot be even one reconstructed frame/. We shake off bees from all frames into a new hive. It is good to put a queen into the cage for the time of resettling. Frames with ill brood and infected honey have to be put into paper bags and immediately burnt in a fire. It is not worth risking the expansion of disease for several dozen wax. The empty hive has to be immediately tightly sealed and disinfected. Bees placed into the new hive on the foundation have to be starved for 24 hours and insulated. Honey that is in honey sacs of worker bees and contains foulbrood bacteria have to be digested. Then, we administer remedial syrup of water and sugar with 1:1 ratio and the additions of medication. Polisulfamid is usually used to fight foulbrood. Into 1 litre of syrup, we put 4 cm3 of Polisulfamidu. This syrup should be administered for 5 days, 1 litre a day, only to ill colonies. Recently, it is thought that treating foulbrood is also effective without using any medications, only by resettling.

The above-described method is used when the diseases expands in spring or early summer. If we detect it in autumn /August, September/, there is a different procedure. We do not use resettling, but remove frames with ill brood and frames with honey and replace them with empty ones. We isolate a queen in a cage temporarily so that she could not lay eggs. We feed a colony with remedial syrup.

All equipment and clothing used during working with ill colonies have to be disinfected carefully. The terrain under the ill hives has to be poured with limewater.

You have to remember that foulbrood is a disease that is fought officially by local government and therefore, you have to inform Local Veterinary Doctor about its occurrence.

Contrary to the popular opinion, treating foulbrood is easy, especially in comparison to such diseases as nosemosis, varroosis or viral diseases. Well carried out procedures eliminate it successfully, frequently for long years.

American foulbrood b/ European foulbrood.

European foulbrood is an infectious bee brood disease caused primarily by Melissococcus pluton bacteria and secondarily by other types of bacteria. They appear mainly in spring. Too big, cold nests in spring and interruptions in honeflows enhance occurrence of this disease. He source of infections are frames with ill brood and other equipment as well as dirty drinking troughs. The tendency to European foulbrood is a genetic feature. Larvae begin to fall ill after eating infected food. Similarly to American foulbrood, robbings contribute to the transmission of this disease.

Symptoms:

The symptoms of European foulbrood, contrary to American foulbrood, may be noticed on the open brood /its milder version of a disease/. The first symptom is the transparency of larva skin with visible invertebrate trachea and mid-intestine. Then, larva gets darker and after death, it gets yellow and brown. Bees remove dead larvae, which may be observed at the hive entrance. In the following stadium of the disease /so-called malign/ also older brood dies /capped brood/. Wax cappings collapse and are holed by bees. Dead larva turns into rotting mass and then it dries and transforms into a scab. In the first stadium of the disease, rotting brood secretes acid smell and in the next stadium, the smell of carrion. Rotting brood may be pulled by short and thick strings /contrary to American foulbrood/.

Fighting infection: In the mild version of the disease, we narrow the nest, insulate it and feed bees with warm syrup. We close a queen in a cage for 8-10 days. During this time, bees will remove ill larva. It is also recommended to replace a queen. In the malign version, we take the same steps as in case of American foulbrood, i.e. we resettle a colony to the new hive on the foundation, starve it and feed with 1 kg of remedial syrup 3 times in 4-day intervals. We use Penilicyna for the treatment, 900 000 units per 1 litre or 0.5 g Oxytetracyklina or Streptomycyna per litre.

European foulbrood c/ Nosemosis /sporidian disease/.

Nosemosis is a commonly occurring bee disease caused by bee sporide Nosema apis, a single-celled organism included in the past to the group of Protazoa and nowadays to fungi. Notwithstanding the taxonomy, it is still one of the most dangerous bee diseases, commonly occurring in bee yards and frequently causing high losses in bees. It is gastrointestinal tract disease of adult bees. It is usually chronic. The occurrence of acute form leads usually to the collapse of the whole bee colony within a couple of weeks.

It is a foodborne disease. Bees, for example, eagerly lick faeces of their ill sisters since they contain a lot of undigested sugar. Therefore, infected queens may spread the disease. Parasite penetrates into the cells of mid-intestinal epithelium and destroys them. There, it reproduces and attacks subsequent cells and then, it produces multitude of endospores that have high immunity to external factors and are capable of surviving even a few years outside bee’s organism. These spores are the infectious factors. The source of infection is ill bees, whose faeces contain millions of spores. Queens and drones are also infected. It usually occurs due to the contamination of drinking trough, frames and beekeeping equipment with faeces of ill bees. The disease is usually symptomless and cannot be observed. In this case, the only way to recognise it is examining dead bees after winter. Even in its symptomless version, the disease shortens bee’s life and lowers productions of honey and wax.

The intensification of the presence of spores in a colony changes during a year. Summer generations of bees, due to their short life, are less exposed to the expansion of infection and therefore, they are healthier. Parasite reproduces more intensely in overwintering bees. The symptoms are usually more intense in early spring. In March and April, colonies usually die. The expansion of the disease is usually enhanced by dampened and shadowed bee yard, strong winds /draughts/ and overwintering on honeydew.

Symptoms:

The typical symptoms of nosemosis are stains of faeces on the hive entrances and inside the hive. Bees have expanded abdomens and they lose the ability to fly, they crawl in front of the hive. We may observe shaking of wings and all body. These symptoms precede death. When they are observed, it means that the disease is extremely advanced. We may often observe the symptoms of nosemosis during the first spring flight. It may happen that the majority of bees are already dead and lie on the bottom and on the combs stained with faeces, there are few cold bees with a queen. Such a family has to be eliminated.

Fighting infection:

Since there is no medication against nosemosis at our disposal, there are only prophylactic procedures. They include: avoiding leaving too much honeydew for winter, removing the sources of infection, i.e. combs soiled with faeces, disinfecting frames and hives after ill and collapsed colonies, providing clean drinking troughs. You must not place combs with reserves if they still contain faeces to healthy colonies. The basic prophylactic measure is replacing as many combs as possible into foundation, so as there were no combs older than 3 years in the hive. Although there is a method of disinfecting combs using steam of acetic acid, it is much better to melt down old combs.

If we observe in spring that there is nosemosis in our colonies, we have to help them immediately. If there are only few bees with a queen left, there are no chances to save them. It is necessary to close the hive and remove from the bee yard in order to avert robbing and spreading the disease to other colonies. However, if there are a few bees, they need to be resettled to the new hive and fed with syrup. Then, ill and weak colonies should be joined together /2-3 colonies together/, but they can never be joined with a healthy and strong colony. This joined colony has chances to survive and expand. It is necessary to replace a queen as quickly as possible.

The newest scientific information confirms that unfortunately the occurrence of Nosema ceranae in Polish bee yards, which is a new parasite brought from Asia. Effects of its invasion are similar to those in case of Nosema apis, however, diarrhoea does not occur and the disease expands also in summer and autumn. It is considered that the expansion of the disease in a colony lasts ca. 2 years. Within this time, a beekeeper does not observe any alarming symptoms. At the end of the second year, usually in late summer or in autumn, there is a sudden death of all bees that leave their hive earlier and abandon the reserves, rest of brood and a queen. Beekeepers use herbal preparations to fight this disease, similarly like in case of Nosema apis.

Tracks of the waist on the walls of the hives – heavy nosemosis d/ Chalkbrood / Ascosphaera apis /.

It is an infectious brood disease caused by Ascosphaera apis fungus. This disease is usually chronic, develops slowly, does not cause the death of the whole colony, but is very heavy. It disables e.g. collecting pollen since chalked parts of larvae soil collected pollen loads. The disease may last even a couple of years. It is genetic, but various factors may foster its occurrence, e.g. cooling brood, high air and ground dampness on the bee yard etc. The source of infection are spores coming from dead larvae, brought in infected combs and robbing and wandering bees from ill colonies.

Symptoms:

Fungal spores infect larvae that are a couple days old, die and are subsequently overgrown by mycelium, which looks like a piece of chalk. At the end, chalks are covered with black coating of spores. The whole process lasts 4-5 weeks. Chalks adjust to the cell walls and are easily removed by bees. A beekeeper finds them on the bottom on and under the hive entrance. Spores sprouting on dead brood infect other larvae, disease expands.

Fighting infection:

It consists in removing combs with ill brood, collecting chalked brood from the hive and from the ground in front of the hive. When infection is acute, it is necessary to resettle bees to the new hive. We insulate a colony and feed with syrup. However, the key procedure is replacing a queen. We eliminate old queen and place a new one on her place. This procedure has two aims. First, temporary lack of brood breaks the chain of infecting next larvae. Second, we hope that a new queen will distinguish herself with higher immunity to mycosis. You may, for example, use a queen car GR1, which is genetically immune to this disease. Unfortunately, there are no preparations to treat bee mycosis apart from, recommended as a supporting preparation, Chitozal in sprays. Beekeepers tried to use various fungicidal medications recommended to use by humans. Colonies were also “sulphanised” with the syrup with the addition of citric acid or even vinegar. Nevertheless, all these procedures are not recommended, since they are not effective or even harmful. e/ Viral bee diseases.

Virus is an element on the verge of living matter and non-living matter. It does not create cells, consists only of the chain of nucleic acids that the carriers of genetic information. They are extremely tiny. The biggest virus is equal to bacteria. Viruses are not capable of reproducing outside the host organism. Besides, they may reproduce only in organisms of particular plant or animal species. In Poland, there are 7 bee viruses. 4 other viruses are suspected to exist too. Viral diseases were described already in Ancient times, however, nowadays we may observe their dangerous attack on all continents and also in our country. The main culprit is parasite Warroa destructor, which transports some viruses and starts viral infections in bees that carry viruses. In this case, the disease may last even two seasons. There are symptomless infections and clinically evident ones that may cause the death of colonies. Viral infections may sustain in colonies for even a couple of years without any symptoms. Only mass proliferation of varroa leads to infecting a colony. Some viruses accompany nosemosis or amoebiasis. They shorten bee’s life radically. Viruses are not transmitted on tools, equipment, hives and frames with food reserves.

Unfortunately, there are no medications against these diseases. Averting and fighting viruses consists in using hygienic-breeding procedures such as: resettling colonies, disinfecting, examining dead bees, replacing combs, replacing queens, fighting bee parasites.

Below, we will describe some most important viruses that attack bees:

Sacbrood virus / SBV/.

It is an infectious disease that attacks 2 days old larvae, mainly in May and June. Larvae die, turn yellow and brown under the capping, their rear part is swollen and forms a sac, their front part is bent upwards /shoe/. Larva that has not been removed dries and turns into a brown scab. Dead larva is filled with reproducing viruses that may infect 1000 families. Virus is foodborne. Worker bees’ infection is symptomless, but they quickly lose an ability to produce royal jelly. A colony defends itself against the virus by switching the role of nurse bees into collecting nectar.

Fighting the virus consists in removing infected combs, narrowing and insulating the nest, feeding with warm syrup and, possibly, resettling onto the foundations, and replacing a queen.

Acute paralysis virus / APV/.

It was discovered in the 1960s, however, it did not cause big losses in the bee yards at that time. It occurs worldwide. It is an infection that accompanies varroosis. The occurrence of varroosis activates the infection. It attacks mainly adult bees. It shortens their life radically. It is foodborne: bee-bee, bee-brood.

Its symptoms sometimes include death of open brood, but above all mass, rapid death of bees in autumn /like in case of Nosema ceranae/. Bees leave the hive and abandon intact reserves, there is no diarrhoea or traces of robbing. Sometimes, a queen with several bees remains on the combs. Dead bees have tongues that are put out, like in case of poisonings. It happens that infected larvae die in combs before uncapping and it may look like American or European foulbrood. Larvae that survived infection turn into bees that carry the virus.

This virus is nowadays the main killer of our bees. Fighting it consists only in improving the living conditions of colonies, replacing queens and destroying varroosis.

Chronic paralysis virus /CPV/.

It is a chronic disease that accompanies varroosis. The virus penetrates into bee’s body through wounds in the armour caused by a parasite. It may be transmitted without the presence of varroosis due to the phenomenon of trofalaxis , i.e. mutual transmission of small amounts of food by bees. Expansion of the infection is enhanced by bad weather that does not create conditions to fly and the lack of honeyflow, which is connected with bees’ staying in the hive.

The disease occurs in the whole country, it may sometimes be mistaken for nosemosis or considered a poisoning. There are two variants of this disease:

- bees with swollen abdomens crawl on the ground and climb the grass blades under the hive entrance, they have wings spread apart, shiver, lose an ability to fly, they may sometimes have diarrhoea, they die in a mass in the course of time and lie under the hive entrance, a colony weakens and in the course of time the whole colony dies.

- single bees lose hair. These smaller, black and metallically shining specimens retain their ability to fly in the beginning, but they are treated as robbers by other bees and they are removed from the hive.

It is a chronic disease, it may last for many years.

In order to fight, we destroy varroosis and replace queens.

Black queen cell virus /BQCD/.

Virus attacks adult bees that suffer from nosemosis. It shortens their life. Ill nurse bees, during feeding, infect queen larvae. In a capped queen cell, larva dies and turns yellow. Then, a queen cell is covered with brown stains. It may attack bee brood and then it is mistaken for bees’ cold or European foulbrood. The way to avert the disease is nosemos is prophylaxis. Deformed wings virus /DWV/.

It was the first virus observed in Poland on bees after the invasion of varroosis in the 1980s. However, it was observed then that deformations were the result of the fact that female parasites sucked out larvae. Virus is transmitted by female varroa. In the parasite’s organism, the virus actively reproduces. To a small extent, infection may be foodborne or, as it is suspected, even transmitted in eggs laid by a queen and drones sperm. It is usually symptomless. However, in case of acute infection with varroosis, there are disabled bees without wings and shortened abdomens, unable to live.

Averting the disease consists in comprehensive fighting varroosis.

Virus Y.

It is a symptomless bee infection. It shortens life of bees that are infected by nosemosis. It is foodborne. The way to fight it is nosemosis prophylaxis.

Virus X.

It is foodborne. It is more vicious than virus Y. It is a disease that develops in bees infected by amoebiasis, especially in the generation of overwintering bees. It shortens worker bees’ life and, consequently, causes the collapse of the whole colony during overwintering. f/ Varroosis.

Varroa destructor parasite appeared in Poland in the middle of the 1980s. Parasitic acari spread rapidly in all bee yards and bee colonies. It was one of the reasons that, in the 1980s and the 1990s, led to the collapse of large quantities of bees in Poland – from 2,5 mln to 900 000. It happened in spite of quite good diagnosis and preparations of Polish beekeepers against the upcoming danger.

Harmfulness of this parasite consists in the fact that Polish bee races cannot fight it on their own and it occurs commonly in bee yards, transmits to neighbouring bee yards and colonies. It is even more dangerous since it attacks all bee developmental stadiums, i.e. larvae, pupas and adult bees, which shortens their life even 50-80%. It burdens mechanically and irritates bees by piercing their armour and sucking hemolymph. Additionally, it transmits viruses or activates bee viral infection in bees that already carry the virus. If we do not fight it, it will cause the death of colonies.

Via experiments, it has been discovered that the threshold of mortality is infection caused by 0,5 acari per 1 bee. Above this threshold, a colony dies /usually in autumn or during overwintering/. The intensification of infection occurs in untreated colony in the third year of invasion or earlier.

The biology of a parasite.

It reproduces only on brood. Female parasite settles the cell with larva for 2-3 days before capping. It feeds intensely on larva hemolymph and begins to lay eggs. Their quantity depends on the type of brood. The complete development of a parasite lasts 12 days. After this period, the cell is abandoned by adult and fertilised females-daughters. The quantity of these females-daughters raised on bee brood comes to 2 and on drone brood – 4. It is connected with the size of drone larva and its longer developmental period. Therefore, in spring and early summer, vorroa females attack mainly drone brood. The biological methods of fight against this parasite are based on this fact.

10 or even more generations of varroosis may occur within one year and the number of parasites increases in a geometric progress. The lifespan of female varroa is 3-8 months. Fortunately, 80% of females lay eggs only once in the lifetime.

Diagnosing varroosis.

It consists in observing drone brood in spring by so-called “fork test”, i.e. using uncapping fork, we take out some pupas from capped drone brood and we assess the level of varroosis infection. Another method is examining the natural collapse, i.e. mortality of varroa females. One dead varroa female on the bottom during one day indicates /according to Woyski/ the presence of 120 females in the hive.

The symptom confirming the infection with the parasite is the presence of disabled bees with deformed wings or abdomens or symptoms of other viral infections as well as mass, easy to observe, presence of females on bees.

For the purpose of control, you may smoke or carry out a different chemical procedure in a chosen hive in the bee yard.

Mite of varroa Varroa larvas

Fighting varroosis.

There are numerous methods of fighting this dangerous parasite whose invasion does not weaken, on the contrary, it gets stronger and causes the increase of infections with other diseases, especially viral diseases.

Breeding methods.

They consist in selection and strengthening the instinct of removing and destroying the varroa females. It is a prospective method, but we will have to wait for satisfying effects.

Chemical methods.

They are used in the honeyflow period to avert the contamination of bee products. Nowadays, at our disposal, there are flammable tablets Apiwarol with amitraz as active ingredient, which are very effective; Biowar stripes coming from national production, also based on amitraz, and Baywarol with the content of flumetrin, whose effectiveness is variously judged by beekeepers.

Using organic acids.

It is quite popular to use 60-85 % formic acid in the form of steam in the honeyflow period when using chemicals is impossible. Application of acid is conducted with special spongy mats or with a batcher-evaporator. It is considered that an effective dose of acid is ca. 10-12 ml /day. And here is a problem that is quite difficult to solve in bigger bee yards. The concentration of acid steam, depending on various factors, may be too high and then it is harmful for bees and brood, or too low and then ineffective.

Oxalic acid used in warm syrup in late autumn /November/ is quite effective. It is applied by dropping ca. 5 ml of 3% solution into each row with varroa. The proportion of the solution is as follows: 200 g of sugar : 200 g of water : 15 g of 2-hydrate oxalic acid.

Oxalic acid is used also in a gas form by evaporating it in the hive using special devices.

Using organic acids have to be done very carefully, since they are caustic and harmful for humans substances. Especially skin, eyes and respiratory tract of a beekeeper have to be protected. Recent researches have indicated that acids are harmful also for bees. Using essential oils.

Ecological methods include not only using acids, but also essential oils such as peppermint oil, eucalyptus oil, camphor oil, thymol. Ecological methods do not contaminate the hive and bee products. These methods are allowed in ecological bee yards.

On the market, there are two preparations available at the moment: Tymowarol with the content of thymol and BeeVital Hive Clean with the content of essential oils, oxalic acid and propolis.

Prophylaxis.

Prophylaxis comprises common influence of beekeepers associations aiming at fighting against varroosis on the particular terrain, eliminating wild swarms, controlling wandering bee yards and so-called neglected bee yards and finally immediate treatment of swarms with unknown origin.

Biological methods. /biotechnical/.

They are numerous methods of eliminating parasites consisting in hindering their reproduction. The basic spring procedure is removing the drone brood, which contains the majority of female varroa. You may also use drone foundation or other frames-traps e.g. modified unwired empty frames. The aim of these methods is enticing female varroa to drone brood and then eliminating it by cutting it out and melting it down in the solar melter.

Temporarily, you may also place queens in isolators on 1-3 frames and after brood, the frames are transported to special “hospital” hives, where, after the emergence of brood, chemical procedures to fight parasite are conducted. Autumn removal of the residues of brood from the hive and transporting them to hospital hives plays a similar role.

A popular method, used e.g. in Germany, is creating splits between early honeyflow and summer honeyflows, so-called “splitting varroosis”.

Integrated method of fight against varroosis.

Due to the incredibly dangerous attack of varroosis and, connected with that, bee diseases, we need to take up year-round fight against this parasite. Therefore, in spring, we cut out the drone brood and we obligatorily use frames-traps. In summer, if necessary, we use formic acid and immediately after the last honey harvest, we treat bees with chemical preparations /Biowar, Baywarol/. After removing stripes, in late autumn, when there is no brood in the nest, it is necessary to smoke colonies once again with Apiwarol or use oxalic acid.

Fight against varroosis conducted in this way may save our bee yards, protect them against losses and even the collapse.

Modified frame to fight with varroa 8.5 Disinfecting in prophylaxis and fight against bee diseases. Beekeepers are often helpless against escalating bee health problems. Apart from the medications against varroosis, there are almost no veterinary medicines. In this situations, prophylactic methods, among others disinfecting beekeeping equipment, are particularly important.

Periodic disinfection should comprise all beekeeping equipment and devices, from protective clothing and tools to hives and bee yard.

Disinfecting methods may be divided into chemical and physical. Physical disinfection includes using high temperatures and fire, hot water, water vapour, low temperature and solar radiation. Chemical methods comprise using soda lye, calcium oxide, organic acids, formalin, alcohols, detergents etc.

Disinfecting protective clothing consists in periodic washing in hot water with detergents, which is a combination of chemical and physical method. Small, hand equipment such as a hive tool or a brush should be cleaned and washed after every use. You may use hot water and e.g. denaturated alcohol or Cagrosept or Alvisept. We wash and disinfect hands soiled with propolis with these spirits too.

Wooden equipment, including hives and frames, should be disinfected as often as possible, i.e. frames should be disinfected always before putting a foundation into them and hives always before settling a new colony. After removing old wax, frames should be carefully scraped of wax and bee glue and the placed in the sun and frost by putting the under the eaves or shed on the heaps crosswise. Before wiring and putting the foundation, it should be scorched carefully with flames from gas burner. We do the same with the interior of the hive. Exterior walls of the hive should be cleaned and painted. Hives and frames should not be disinfected with soda lye, since it penetrates into the wood pores and is difficult to remove, which is harmful for bees. This method may be used only in exceptional situations, e.g. after discovering American foulbrood. Then, we disinfect only the hive. Frames with wax and infected brood should be entirely burnt. Frames that we use to melt wax using steam are already partially disinfected by water vapour. Nevertheless, there is no harm in scorching them with flames from gas burner before putting a foundation.

Styrofoam hives are disinfected carefully by scraping the interior of the hive and washing it with hot water with detergents. In case of American foulbrood, we may use hot 2% solution of caustic soda. Finally, we rinse the hive carefully and let it dry. We paint the exterior walls.

In case of fungal diseases and nosemosis, we use 3% solutions of formalin solution to disinfect.

In the past, it was recommended to disinfect combs that were stored during winter in the magazine with pure acetic acid steam. This procedure eliminated endospores of nosemosis and all developmental forms of honeycomb moth or fluke disease destroying combs. However, using this acid is troublesome, harmful for a beekeeper and … unnecessary, since combs that are more than 2 years old should be unquestionably melted down and not stored for the next years.

Frequent replacement of combs, even 50% of combs a year, is a fundamental procedure recommended in bee health prophylais.

Honey extractors, other equipment and vessels used to collect and store honey should be carefully washed with hot water and dried after every use.

Wax infected with American foulbrood bacteria should be boiled in the temperature of ca. 1200C in special devices called autoclaves in order to be disinfected.

Bee yard, especially places under the hive entrances, where litter is removed from the hive and dead bees fall should be disinfected at least once a year by pouring them with calcium oxide or watering with its ca. 20% water solution. 9. Bee products.

Bees produce 6 products. Three of them are collected from plants /honey, pollen, propolis/ and three are produced by bee’s organism /royal jelly, wax and venom/.

9.1 Honey. Honey is a food product produced by bees out of plant nectar or honeydew. Depending on its source, we may distinguish three types of honey:  nectar  honeydew  nectar-honeydew.

Nectar honeys may occur in different variants, depending on the source of nectar. We may distinguish rape honey, heath honey, acacia honey, linden honey, buckwheat honey, polyfloral honey etc. Each of them has its peculiar qualities, such as colour, smell and taste.

Honeydew honeys may be divided into broad-leaved and coniferous. In the mountains, there are usually honeys that are produced of coniferous trees honeydew, mainly spruce and fir. These honeys, due to their exceptional taste and health values, are the most desirable on Western markets as well as in our country. They are also the most expensive.

Honey is a natural carbohydrate product used by humans since prehistoric times. It is high caloric (ok. 3300 Kcal/kg) and, at the same time, it is easily digested. a/ How is honey produced?

Nectar honey is produced out of nectar secreted by nectar glands of plants. Collecting bees collect drops of nectar and mix them with saliva. Next, they transport them in the honey sac to the hive. At the same time, saccharine is decomposed into glucose and fructose by invertase enzyme that is present in bee’s saliva. In the hive, drops of nectar are processed by storing worker bees, enriched with enzymes and, meanwhile, water evaporates from them. Finally, nectar is stored in the comb cells where it ripens for several days, disposes of the rest of the excess of water and is sealed by wax capping. It lasts circa 5-7days and, as a result, ripe honey is produced, however, slow chemical processes occur in it also later, even after taking it from the hive.

Honeydew honey has different origin. Its source is sweet secretion of different species of greenflies and scale insects, small insects feeding on juice of different plants, mainly trees. These insects prick the plant tissue and collect juice. Due to the fact that this juice contains more carbohydrates than insects need to their development, its excess is secreted and in the form of sweet dew settles on leaves and tree needles, where it is collected by bees. Its further processing is done in the same manner as in case of nectar honeys.

Ripe honey is thick, half-liquid substance with the specific weight of 1,38-1,45 g/cm3 (1 litre weighs almost 1,5 kg). Thanks to the content of water and other protective substances, honey is a durable product. When properly stored, it does not go bad. Its use-by date expires after 3 years, which is a very long period in comparison to other food products. In addition, honey does not require any other special storing conditions. b/ Ingredients of honey.

The main ingredient of honey are monosaccharide – glucose and fructose, disaccharide – saccharine, and in honeydew honeys also trisaccharide – melecitose that is produced in greenflies’ organism. Ingredients that are less plentiful but very essential are enzymes. They are proteins that come mainly from bee’s organism, but also from plant juice. The most important enzyme – invertase – causes the decomposition of saccharine into monosaccharide. Enzymes that are in honey cause changes in its content after collecting honey from the hive and during storing, even after many years. Therefore, we say that honey “lives”. That is why it is forbidden to overheat honey and keep it in the temperature higher than 40°C, since higher temperatures cause the decomposition of enzymes and other organic ingredients, which makes honey only the mixture of carbohydrates. In the honey content, there are also organic acids: malic acid, succinic acid, tartaric acid, citric acid, lactic acid, benzoic acid and others, which influence the taste of honey and preserve it. The content of acids come to 0,1-0,2%. Thanks to their presence, honey acidity (pH) is ca. 4.0 (i.e. honey reaction is acid).

Honeys contain also 0,3-1,2% of mineral ingredients. Honey that has the highest amount of mineral elements is honeydew honey. Among ca. 50 macro- and microelements, the majority of them are constituted by potassium, phosphorus and calcium.

There is very little protein in honey (0,1-1,5%). There are also few vitamins. However, there are 11 free aminoacids.

The presence of enzyme – the glucose oxidase – is very important. In some particular conditions, it causes educing the hydrogen peroxide, which destroys bacteria. It functions as preservative substance averting going off. Thanks to this substance, honey has prophylactic and remedial qualities for human organism. This enzyme works several times more effectively when it is dissolved in water. Another enzyme - lysozyme, which also comes from bee’s organism, has similarly destructive properties on bacteria.

Apart from these ingredients, there are also pigments and essential oils, which give honey various colours and smells. c/Storing

In domestic conditions, honey may be stored in the temperature of 4-20°C. Temperature has influence on the process of crystallisation. Liquid honey is called strained honey and crystallised honey or granular honey.

Crystallisation is a natural process. It definitely does not indicate the forgery of honey. Its progress is the fastest in the temperature of 5-15°C. In the temperature below 0°C and above 25°C, crystallisation ceases. Honey has to be stored in closed containers, since it easily absorbs damp from the surrounding and then it may ferment. It may also absorb external smells. For domestic needs, it is the best to buy and store honey in jars, since even after its crystallisation it may be still used, without the need for warming it up. Bigger amounts are stored in tight containers made of enamelled or tinned acidproof steel.

Each container of honey has to have a label that gives information about its type and other basic qualities as well as beekeeper’s /producer’s/ address. It enables possible complaints. d/ Remedial qualities of honey.

They are quite well known. It is commonly known that, for example, eating honey helps treat heart diseases (e.g. neurosis). Moreover, honey lowers blood pressure and improves sleeping. Blood vessels widen under its influence, which improves blood flow in the cardiac muscle as well as strengthens it and regulates its functioning. Honey has also beneficial influence in case of the diseases of the respiratory system. Its antibacterial, antiphlogistic and sudorific qualities make it a wonderful prophylactic remedy against the diseases of the respiratory system, especially when it is used in the first phase of the development of a disease.

It disposes of hoarseness, cough, sore throat, and pain in the nose, tonsils, sinuses, trachea and larynx. It has also anti-allergic qualities; it is very effective in healing hay fever.

In case of the bronchial asthma, administering honey has supportive value in treating pneumonia and pneumoconiosis. It is used to increase general immunity of an organism.

It regulates functioning of stomach and intestines. It is slightly laxative. It hastens healing stomach and duodenum ulcers, gradually alleviates pains connected with these illnesses.

In case of children bacterial and viral infections, it shortens the period of diarrhoeas and averts dehydrations of organism.

It is beneficiary in case of liver diseases and gall bladder diseases as well as in case of medications and alcohol poisoning. It improves functioning of kidneys and urinary bladder. Some of its ingredients slow down the expansion of prostate.

Antiphlogistic and anaesthetic qualities of honey are used to treat wound, burns etc., which do not want to heal. In conclusion, it may be stated that honey has multi-directional beneficiary influence on human organism due to:

 high germicidal qualities (mainly honeydew, buckwheat and linden honey),

 nutrient qualities (easily digestible monosaccharide),

 strengthening and immunising qualities,

 regeneration and aesthetic qualities,  anti-allergic qualities,

 regulating the functioning of organism.

Honey plaster 9.2 Bee glue. Bee glue, called propolis after Greek language, is a glutinuous, resinous, dark brown substance with an intensive smell. Below the temperature of 15°C, bee glue is hard and crumbly, in the temperature of 35°C it becomes plastic and very sticky, it melts in the temperature of 100°C.

It is collected by bees from tree buds, mainly birch and poplar. In the hive, there is little bee glue, but it plays a very important role. It is used by bees to coat the interior of the hive, frames and comb cells in which brood grows. All cracks in the hive are sealed with bee glue and frames are mounted on it. When a rodent, e.g. a mouse, gets into the hive and bees after killing it cannot dispose of the corpse, it is covered with a layer of bee glue. It averts decomposition and contaminating the interior of the hive.

People have wondered for a very long time how bees maintain hygiene inside the beehive. How is it possible that in the temperature of 34°C, at the conditions of very high dampness and the presence of honey and brood, the mass development of all microorganisms does not occur? On the contrary, the interior of the hive is almost sterile. Numerous researches indicate that it is done thanks to propolis.

Bee glue was “discovered” in the 1970s and 1980s, but it was already known in Ancient Egypt where it was used to embalm corpses. Egyptians knew also that it was an effective remedy for many diseases. In Ancient Greece, it was an ingredient of many medications. In modern times, it was used as an ingredient of lacquers. For example, famous violin maker Stradivarius covered his unmatched violin with lacquer that contained bee glue.

Bee glue does not dissolve in water, only partially in organic solvents, such as: ethyl alcohol, chloroform, ether, acetone, benzine and glycerine. a/ The empirical formula of bee glue

It is a very complicated and not fully discovered substance. Till now, ca. 300 ingredient have been distinguished. They are bioflavonoids, Alpha hydroxy acids, terpenes, aromatic esters, aromatic oils, bioelements, lipid compounds, vitamins and carbohydrates. The content of bee glue is changeable, depending on the plants that it was collected from.

As I mentioned earlier, there is little bee glue in the bee hive, therefore, it is difficult to collect its bigger amounts. Generally, bee glue is a by- product when frames and bars etc. are removed. Its amount does not exceed several dozens of grams from one hive.

In order to get bigger harvest of bee glues, beekeepers construct and mount special “collectors” that are grids or bars with cracks etc. However, it is quite difficult to force bees to increase the production of bee glue and it may be even harmful for the quality of bee glue. Collected bee glue has to be refined of wax parts, wood and other additives. It is stored in tight glass containers or in foil bags in the temperature of 20°C and without access to light. Then, it does not lose its valuable qualities. b/ The use of propolis.

Bee glue is the strongest product that influences human organism. It is strongly germicidal, regenerates tissues, stimulates metabolism and human immune system, and has aesthetic influence. Active germicidal qualities depend mainly on the bioflavonoid substances. There are many bioflavonoid substances in bee glue, but the effectiveness of their functioning consists in summarising the qualities of every single one /synergism/. This mechanism causes that bacteria cannot immunise to the bee glue like e.g. to antibiotics. Therefore, we may use bee glue permanently and it will always be an effective medication.

Proceeding to the details, bee glue has harmful effect on pathogenic staphylococci (including Staphylococcus aureus), diplococci, streptococci, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, fungi, viruses (e.g. flu and Encephalitis), Protozoa (Trichomona and lamblia). There are superb effects of conjoined treatment with antibiotics and bee glue.

Medical research has proven that bee glue has regeneration influence on soft tissues, even cartilages. It has also good influence on the synthesis of antibodies and their activation in human organism, which eliminates pathogenic elements quicker. What is more, bee glue has inhibitory influence on the development of some types of cancers.

Bee glue is used to cure all skin problems: infections, boils, festers, eczemas, acne, mycoses and allergic skin diseases. The effectiveness of treatment in these cases is very high.

Bee glue has also positive effects of treatment in case of viral diseases, such as herpes labialis, herpes zoster, venous ulcer on leg, pressure ulcers and all injuries. There are exceptional effects of using bee glue in cases of thermal and chemical burns, frostbites and radiation sicknesses. There are also good effects of treatment of acute and chronic nose, pharynx and throat illnesses and of all diseases of mouth (thrushes) and dental complications. There is very high effectiveness in treating post-surgical wounds and fighting against Trichomonas vaginalis. It was successfully used in mycoses, bacterial infections of vagina, inflammations and Cervix cutaneous conditions.

As far as internal diseases are concerned, bee glue lowers blood pressure, treats inflammations and stomach and intestines ulcers and haemorrhoids. It is also effective in treating upper respiratory tract and lungs diseases, such as: asthma or pneumonia. It is also helpful in case of rheumatic diseases and degenerative joint diseases, hyperthyroidism, diabetes mellitus, gall bladder, bile duct and urinary bladder infection. It has protective and regenartion influence on liver cells harmed by medications or alcohol.

Propolis has very important influence on human organism since it removes free radicals, which partially protects against very serious effects of atherosclerosis or neurodegeneration /Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, SM/ c/ Use principles.

Bee glue is used mainly as so-called ethanol extract of propolis (EEP) and in the form of ointment.

Today, there is no necessity to produce these medicines at home, since in nearly every chemist’s and herbal shop you may get propolis drops /3- 30 %/, ointments and gels /3-30%/, creams, sprays, tablets, candies, suppositories, shampoos, and toothpaste. Recently, non-alcoholic solution of propolis appeared on the medications market.

Since bee glue is a highly influencing substance on human organism, treatment, especially in more serious cases, has to be consulted with a doctor. Moreover, you have to be careful to allergies, 1 patient out of 400 is allergic to propolis.

In skin diseases and wounds, we use ethanol extract and ointment. In mycoses, ointment or extract is applied onto ill places three times a day. Early stadia of pressure ulcers and varicose veins are treated in a similar way. You may also use compresses and hydrated ethanol emulsion (solve the extract with 1:10 ratio).

In mouth, throat and tonsils diseases, brushing with extract and rinsing with emulsion several times a day or spraying is used till the disappearance of symptoms. The similar steps are taken in case of the nasal mucous membrane inflammation.

Internally, we use approximately 20-80 drops 1-3 times a day before eating /the quantity of drops depends on the type of disease/. Children may get the same number of drops as the number of years they are old. The effectiveness in treating chronic diseases depends on systematic and long-term use of propolis for at least a couple of weeks.

Propolis on the frames 9.3 Flower pollen. Flower pollen consists of spermatozoa produced by plants in large quantities. One corn inflorescence may produce several dozen millions of pollen grains. Pollen may have different colours, from white, through all shades of yellow and red to green, blue and black. Each plant produces pollen of a different colour and shape of grains. It is a phenotypic trait.

For bees, pollen is the source of protein necessary for feeding larvae and young worker bees. Bees are anatomically adjusted to collecting pollen. On the last pair of legs, they have so-called “baskets”, where a pollen ball is formed. For better compactness, pollen grains are dampened with saliva and nectar. Filling pollen baskets lasts from several to several dozen minutes. At this time bee collects pollen from a large amount of flowers (usually belonging to one species). Worker bee comes back to the hive with her harvest and passes the load to other bees that dampen it with honey and beat strongly in comb cells. The same reactions as e.g. in the sauerkraut occur in the collected pollen. As a result of influence of bacteria, lactic acid is produced, which excellently preserves pollen and makes it possible to store for a very long time in proper conditions. This pickled pollen is called bee bread. A bee colony uses ca. 20 kg of bee bread annually.

Pollen, as nourishment and remedy for human, has not been used for a long time. In Poland, it is probably the least advertised bee product. Nevertheless, the interest in pollen is constantly increasing. Collecting pollen from flowers would be inconceivably arduous. It is no wonder that people use bees that we partially “rob” of reserves brought to the hive.

Collection of pollen consists, generally speaking, in using various collectors whose fundamental part is a board with openings with proper diameter. When coming back to the hive, bees have to squeeze through these openings and some of them lose pollen load that a beekeeper takes afterwards. Immediately after collecting, pollen has to be preserved, since fresh pollen contains 18-25% of water and goes bas quickly. The best way to preserve it is drying with warm air (not in the sun) so as the dampness fell below 6%. After drying, pollen has to be tightly sealed so as it did not absorb water again. Another way is freezing it or freeze drying. For domestic needs, pollen may be mixed with honey in 1:1 ratio. This mixture may be store even one year.

The empirical formula of pollen is very complex and determines its value. The most important group is proteins, whose content, depending on the type of pollen, may vary between 15 and 40% as well as free amino acids and nucleic acids. The content of carbohydrates, mainly glucose, fructose and saccharine, comes to 20-40%. Fat compounds occur in the amount from 1 % to 20%. The content of 14 different fatty acids is very significant for, among others, feeding children. Pollen distinguishes itself by the content of the complete set of vitamins. The dose of 60 g of pollen a day covers daily demand for vitamins. There are more than a dozen vitamins in the content of pollen, among others the largest group is constituted by vitamin A, E, C and vitamins from B group. Pollen has also plentiful mineral compounds (1,5-5% of weight), including 40 bioelements and microelements. Up to 3 % of weight is constituted by biologically active compounds, including more than 30 enzymes. Finally, in pollen there is ca. 25% of dietary fibre, which is indigestible by human but very beneficiary for the functioning if intestines.

Bee bread has slightly different content from raw pollen, since in the course of chemical transformations, it is devoid of proteins and is enriched with amino acids. There are also more monosaccharide and lactic acid in the bee bread. Bees add also a little honey and digestive enzymes to bee bread.

All this contributes to the fact that bee bread is even more valuable product than pollen. Unfortunately, collecting bee bread is very laborious and therefore it is rarely encountered on the market.

a/ Remedial qualities of pollen

Medical researches revealed many valuable qualities of flower pollen. It has been confirmed that it lowers the content of cholesterol in blood, protects and detoxifies liver tissue, improves functioning of gastrointestinal tract. Moreover, it intensifies secreting of digestive juices and some hormones (testosterone, insulin, thyroid hormone). Rutin, which also occurs in pollen, helps strengthen blood vessels. Other ingredients are antiphlogistic and anticoagulant. They ensure also the growth of the organism and are antibiotic.

Due to these qualities, pollen is used as nourishment and the main medication or supporting medication in many diseases. It is an effective medication in gastrointestinal tract diseases (ulcers, diarrhoeas, constipations), especially when it is used with honey and propolis. Pollen is antiaherogenic, it is used in heart blood vessels diseases, post heart attack conditions, hypertension and disorders of blood circulation. When administered to older people, it helps hinder atherosclerosis changes in cerebral vessels, alleviate pain and improve memory and general mood. Pollen is effective in treating prostate diseases; among others, it hinders the process of excessive expansion of this gland. Pollen supports also effective treatment of mental conditions and neuroses, e.g. depression. It strengthens nervous system, improves mental and physical agility and eliminates the effects of tiredness. It is a valuable supporting medication in fighting alcoholism. It cures also anaemia, helps in case of the lack of appetite, developmental delays, overweight and undernourishment of children. The valuable quality of pollen is its detoxifying ability and protecting qualities against ionizing radiation.

b/ Dosing pollen

The remedial dose of pollen for an adult is 4-8 spoons in tea and 1-3 spoons for children daily. Pollen may be taken 3 times a day, 30 minutes before eating. The effectiveness of treatment is reached by taking it systematically and for a long time, e.g. 2-4 times a year for several weeks. Bee bread, as a stronger medication than pollen, should be taken in smaller doses or shorter periods. Carefully minced pollen load should be accurately chewed before swallowing or mixed with water, milk, juices or eaten with honey, yoghurt, jam etc.

Apart from dried pollen baskets, there are also available on the market pollen tablets and mixtures that contain pollen, propolis and royal jelly or bee honey with pollen.

9.4 Royal jelly. Royal jelly is a bee product that is widely discussed in Poland and in the world for several dozen years. In the 1960s, it was considered a wonderful medication, irreplaceable elixir of youth. Today, its fame has passed, however, it is still considered a valuable nourishment and outstanding medication. Royal jelly is the secretion of hypopharyngeal glands of young worker bees. It is cream white substance with jelly consistency, acidulous taste and sharp smell. In a bee colony, it is used to feed worker bees and drones larvae for the first three days of their development. Royal jelly is the only nourishment of a queen, who receives it in the larva stage and during her whole life. Royal jelly that is given to a queen has richer content than the one given to worker bee larvae. Mainly, due to the increased content of sex steroids. This empirical formula causes that a queen hatches from a normal egg in the shorter period of time. The queen has a capability of faster metabolism, large egg productivity, longevity and bigger size. In order to illustrate her qualities better, it is worth imagining that this “superfemale” may lay up to 3000 eggs a day and that these eggs weigh twice more than a queen herself and, in spite of this enormous effort, e queen lives several times longer than a worker bee. a/ The empirical formula

Royal jelly has ca. 65% of water and 35% of dry mass that includes ca. 15% of proteins, 12% of carbohydrates, 3% of fatty substances and 1,2% of mineral compounds. Moreover, there are 5% of organic acids, whole range of vitamins and hormones, including sex steroids: estradiol, progesterone and testosterone. Ca. 3% of the content of royal jelly is still unknown.

Gaining royal jelly consists in establishing by a bee colony as many queen cells as possible, i.e. special, large comb cells, where queens develop. In these queen cells, nurse bees collect the reserves of royal jelly for developing larvae and, when there is sufficient amount of royal jelly, a beekeeper takes it out and preserves. 1 gram of royal jelly is gained from ca. 5 queen cells. The productions of royal jelly from one bee colony may come to several dozen grams in a season. Royal jelly is very undurable, therefore, immediately after taking it out of the hive, it has to be preserved. In the fridge, in the temperature of 2- 3°C, it may be stored for several weeks; when frozen, it may be stored for several months. It is always necessary to hide it from the light. The best way to preserve royal jelly is freeze-drying, i.e. drying in the vacuum. For domestic use, royal jelly may be preserved by mixing it with honey. 2 per cent additive of royal jelly in honey is considered the most beneficiary. This mixture is preserved for 1 year in the room temperature.

Fresh royal jelly is rarely an object on the retail market. We usually use preparations that contain royal jelly produced by pharmaceutical companies. b/ Remedial qualities

Medical research projects have revealed the regulating qualities of royal jelly in the metabolic processes and its regeneration and reconstruction qualities for tissues. It is also undeniable that royal jelly has strong, antibacterial influence and it improves the immunity of organism. It has also beneficiary influence on the nervous system. Royal jelly helps treat arteriosclerosis of heart arteries and vessels (Buerger’s disease). It is used also as a supporting medication in treating stomach and duodendum, liver, gall bladder and pancreas inflammations. It is very helpful in treating diabetes. It is beneficiary in treating asthma, bronchitis and lung tuberculosis. Royal jelly is used in treating blood diseases of children and babies, even in mental diseases and neuroses.

The most important use, as it seems, is found in geriatrics, i.e. treating diseases of an old age. It improves cerebral circulation, mental agility, hearing and eyesight. It regulates circulatory and gastrointestinal system of older people.

Finally, royal jelly may be used, similarly to bee glue, in curing severe skin injuries (wounds, burns, pressure ulcers, warders, lichen) and in mucosal inflammations. c/ Dosing

Fresh or lyophilisated royal jelly is applied under the tongue, since in case if contact with stomach juices, some of its ingredients are decomposed. Royal jelly with honey is applied into the mouth. Prophylactically and in case of light conditions, you should take 35-100 mg of royal jelly a day. In the treatment of more severe diseases, the dose and the method of treatment has to be consulted with a doctor. Royal jelly should always be taken 0.5-1 hour before eating. In case of chronic diseases, treatment should be carried out twice a year and last 2 months each.

Royal jelly 9.5 Venom. Bee venom, known in folk medicine as a medication against rheumatic diseases, is after many clinical researches considered an effective remedy for many diseases. Treatment with bee venom is called apitoxin therapy.

Venom is produced by venom glands that are located in bee’s abdomen. The glands are connected with the venom container and sting apparatus. The sting is a bee’s weapon, directed against enemies, including other bees, other insects, animals and humans. Queen uses sting only against her rivals (venom is lethal also for bees), only drones are devoid of this weapon.

In the moment of stinging a human, sting pierces skin and venom gets form the container into the subcutaneous tissue. Bee cannot take the sting out since it has hooks, so stinging apparatus with the part of intestine is ripped off and a bee has to die. In spite of the fact that the amount of venom entered into human organism at one stinging is only 0,012 mg, it causes strong reaction of human organism.

Stinging is always painful, stung place is swollen, redness sustains for 2-3 days. Oversensitive people may suffer from the following reactions: shivers, headache, nausea, vomiting, in some extreme cases also tissues oedema, cardiac dysrhythmia, shivers and even death.

The content of venom is very complex. In majority, there are various protein compounds (peptides, amines, enzymes). There are also bioelements, inorganic acids (hydrochloric acid and orthophosphoric acid), monosaccharide and many other compounds.

Bee venom is used naturally, i.e. through stinging and in medications (injections and ointments) prepared from dry bee venom. Obtaining dry bee venom is conducted in the following way: put so-called venom combs into the hive between empty frames without honey or brood. Venom combs are built of aluminium load bearing deck and two adjacent (from both sides) sliding glass decks. They are wired with electric conduit. The conduit is connected with the generator of electric impulses. Bees are irritated by these impulses and begin to “sting” the glass decks. Water evaporates from the drops of venom that are left on the glass and grey deposit of dry venom is left. Using e.g. a razor, it is scraped off and stored or transformed into medications. This method lets us produce venom without losing our bees and the product that we gain is very clean. This way, we may get 0,5-2,5 g of dry venom from one colony a year. a/ Remedial qualities of venom.

Particular ingredients of venom have various influences on human organism. For example, melitine has antibacterial and antifungal qualities, increases immunity of organism to diseases and ionizing radiation, lowers the amount of cholesterol in blood and is anaesthetic. Apamine stimulates central nervous system, whereas MCD peptide has highly antiphlogistic qualities. Other ingredients exert negative influence on human organism due to their allergic qualities.

Remedial qualities of venom are used mainly in rheumatic diseases. There is high percentage of cured patients who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis and osteoarthritis. 85% effectiveness was reached in treating sciatica and low back pain. In comparison, there were 60% of cured patients when traditional medications were used.

Venom was also successfully used in the treatment of migraine, degenerative disc disease, discopathy and post-injury pains. It was also effective in the treatment of rheumatic myocarditis and Buerger’s disease. Bee venom is highly effective in the treatment of allergic diseases (asthma, pollen allergy) and gynaecological disorders (inflammations, cysts). Tuberculosis may be also successfully treated with venom. Treatment is particularly effective when other bee products, e.g. honey or pollen, are applied simultaneously. b/ Use principles

As an introduction, I want to emphasize that treating with venom may be conducted only by order of a doctor and under his supervision.

People who are oversensitive to venom cannot use it. If someone takes up treatment on his own, he does it at his own risk.

Venom may be used in different ways. The basic, traditional method is bees’ stinging. Modern methods include injections, electrophoresis, iontophoresis, chemo acupuncture (acupuncture connected with injections of venom), using ointments and liniments, baths and inhalations. When traditional method is used, stinging is performed on outer side of thighs and arms. During one treatment cycle, a patient gets a series of even several dozen stings. Subcutaneous injections are usually applied near the focus and they are made of preparations prepared by pharmaceutical industry. Doses have to be determined by a doctor and treatment has to be preceded by checking patient’s tolerance of the preparations. Very few doctors in Poland use treatment with venom.

Ointments and liniments should be rubbed into painful place, prior to that, on the small area, we need to check if venom does not evoke allergic reaction.

Unfortunately, in Poland we do not have any preparations that contain bee venom. These preparations are available in Germany, France, Russia, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria.

Stinging bee 9.6 Bee wax. The last discussed bee product is wax produced by wax glands located on the abdominal side of bee’s abdomen. Wax, which flows out of glands, solidifies in the form of tiny boards that bees use to build combs. The majority of wax is produced by young, 12-18 days old, bees, so- called wax bees, which do not leave the hive yet. In favourable conditions, a bee colony may produce 2-3 kg of wax during a season. In order to produce 1 kg of wax, bees use 4-5 kg of honey. Bee wax is solid, lighter than water, with characteristically pleasant smell. There are different colours of wax: from white, through all shades of yellow, to dark brown. The purest wax is taken from empty combs without brood or honey and from cell cappings. Wax is the mixture of many organic compounds (acids, alpha hydroxy acids, alcohols, esters and hydrocarbons). It dissolves in benzene, acetone, benzene, turpentine and chloroform. In beekeeping, wax is used mainly to produce the foundation. Foundation is a thin (thickness of cardboard) piece of wax with stamped germ of bee cells, which is put into frames. Beekeepers make also decorations and candles out of it. Recently, a tradition of using candles /paschal candles/ made of real bee wax has been brought back in churches. Besides, wax is used in pharmaceutical industry, cosmetics, typography, founding etc. Generally, demand for bee wax decreased, but its prices maintain on the same, very low level for many years. In the bee yard, wax is obtained by removing old or broken combs and uncapping frames during honey harvest. Light wax may be melted in solar melters. This way, its best type is obtained. Older wax is melted in special electric or steam melters.

In households, apart from traditional use (candles), wax may be used to produce various creams and “ecological” pastes for painting floors or other wooden interior elements.

Bee wax

9.7 Summary. Remedial qualities of bee products demonstrate general range and possibilities that are in natural medications. It is worth knowing that Polish science exerted and exerts big influence on the development of apitherapy. It is a pity that this knowledge is not passed to medicine students.

Finally, it is worth to highlight that: treatment using these products, especially in more serious cases of diseases, should always be consulted with a doctor. Additionally, pharmacological treatment cannot be replaced with apitherapy.

10. Economics of a bee yard production.

Beekeeping as every field of human activity may be assessed in terms of its economic effectiveness. Here, we omit the big group of beekeepers hobbyists, who keep bees for pleasure, not for profits. However, they also, involuntarily, take part in increasing agricultural production via work of their bees as pollinators. The majority of beekeepers try to make some profits from their work. They are beekeepers who work in bigger bee yards, including professional beekeepers.

Nowadays, when there is a big variety of products and strong competition on the beekeeping market, beekeepers cannot rely only on production of honey. In order to have financial satisfaction, they need to take up also a role of a distributor of his bee yard products. They have to know the strategies generally referred to as marketing.

Marketing, according to one of the definitions, is executing certain economic activity connected with the flow of services and products from a producer to a final receiver. There are various marketing strategies, such as identification of a market, evoking a demand, shaping prices, promotion and advertisement.

Two kind of honey in one jar

Bee products market is very abundant at the moment. Apart from Polish products, there are also many foreign ones. Honey imported from e.g. China is very cheap and constitutes big competition for our domestic production. On the other hand, national production is not capable of satisfying the growing demand for bee products. Annual import comes even to several thousand tons. On the market, especially in large chain stores, we can more and more frequently encounter mixed honey, coming partially from national producers and partially from foreign ones. It is worth presenting honey of national origin. Evoking a demand for bee products may have nationwide character of promoting campaigns or local, even individual, enterprises such as: organising workshops for adults and children, exhibitions, fairs, presentations etc. Many actions are organised by Beekeepers Circles and by individual beekeepers.

Information concerning the health qualities of bee products given in the press, on the radio and on TV is also very important. These actions may be undertaken on a national or local scale.

Shaping prices of bee products is also an essential task of producers. Price depends on the production costs, attractiveness of the product, the guarantee of its quality, range of products /e.g. honeydew honey, species honeys/ and, on the other hand, on the limited purchasing power of potential customers /e.g. retired people/ or prices on local markets and competition. Generally, prices of bee products are higher in big cities and lower in small localities, especially with low tourism movement.

Promotion and advertisement of bee products is directed at particular group of receivers. In case of amateur bee yard, it is limited to regular customers, who have to be found at first and then maintained. In order to do that, a beekeeper offers possibly wide range of products, e.g. several species of honey, pollen, propolis, wax candles etc. It is sometimes enough to have only one product, but of high quality /e.g. a desirable species of honey/. It is worth trying to keep our product on the market. All products have to have labels that describe a product and identify its producer. A board at the side of a road, a website, extra gifts, such as candles, leaflets or business cards etc. may also be very beneficiary. You may drag new customers, e.g. during a local fair where you could present the representative hive and provide some curiosities, e.g. slices of section honey or two honeys in one jar.

Bee wax products Other profits from bee yards.

Additional, but very considerable profit in some bee yards at the moment, may be production of splits and queens. When the extra funds were established for the purchase of queens and splits, the demand for them grew rapidly. There are more and more bee yards that produce queens of pure lines and crossbreds. Production of splits is performed usually by bigger bee yards that supply beekeepers from neighbouring bee yards.

Unfortunately, in Poland paid service of pollinating crops is not practiced. Beekeeper often has to “invite himself” into blooming plantations and bee are exposed to the risk of being poisoned with pesticides.

Investing in beekeeping.

Setting up a bee yard is always an investment, bigger or smaller. By investing the financial sources, we plan to receive their repayment in the future. In beekeeping practice, the biggest investment is building and adaptation of rooms for bee yard workshop, equipping it, purchasing the hives and colonies and possibly the transportation means.

When planning the bee yard arrangement, we need to know that the size of a workshop has to be adjusted to the planned size of a bee yard from the very beginning whereas the amount of hives and colonies may increase gradually, in the course of even a couple of years. The profits gained after the first year may be invested partially or entirely into the expansions of the bee yard.

Smaller, amateur bee yards and half-professional ones may use annual financial help realized from EU and national funds for the purchase of new beekeeping equipment /apart from the hives/, purchase of queens or splits and fighting varroosis. This help is realised by Agricultural Market Agency (Agencja Rynku Rolnego) via the Beekeepers Associations. It is also very common to support financially beekeepers by local governments, i.e. municipalities and poviats.

Bigger beekeeping investments may be realised using help of funds for agricultural investments. These funds may be received via the Agency for Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture (Agencja Restrukturyzacji i Modernizacji Rolnictwa) after meeting formal requirements, including writing a business plan of the investment.

The third way of getting the subsidy for our investment is taking agricultural investment credit. It is worth knowing what possibilities may be given to us by subsidised loans, which are cheaper.

11. Dictionary of beekeeping terminology.

“Dry” sealing – between honey in a comb cell and cell capping, there is air layer. For example Carnica bee seals this way.

“Wet” sealing – cell capping adheres to honey. Caucasian bees seal honey this way.

American foulbrood – infectious brood disease caused by bacteria Paenibacillus larvae bacteria. It infects mainly sealed brood.

Anaphylactic shock – very strong and rapid reaction of human organism to stinging, its symptoms are: rash on the whole body, general swelling, weakness, heart work and respiratory disorders. In extreme cases, it may lead to death.

Apitherapy – treatment with bee products.

Apitoxin therapy – treatment with bee venom.

Bee colony – it is formed by a queen with her offspring: worker bees and drones (during the season). Commonly, it is also called a swarm.

Bee escape – a device that allows bees to pass only in one direction. It is used to remove bees from the honey magazine before honey harvest.

Bee honeyflow – the stock of natural plant resources, used as food for bees and the source for honey and bee bread production.

Bee pasture – plant community located within the reach of effective bee flight (within 1,5-2 km radius from the bee yard).

Bee yard – primarily, a place where a forest has been rooted out. At present, this term refers to the terrain where hives, workshop and bee yard devices are located.

Bottom – the part of the hive, which closes it from the top. It consists of 2-4 planks or (in Styrofoam hives) it is a uniform Styrofoam board.

Carnica – common name of a bee race carnica.

Cell capping – wax lid that closes a cell with honey.

Cluster – spherical gathering of bees around a queen formed in winter or during swarming. Clustering a queen – bees that encircle a queen and have hostile attitude towards her. A queen dies of suffocation.

Cold way – placement of frames in the nest perpendicular to the front wall of the hive.

Crystallization – natural process consisting in honey’s turning into a solid. It depends on the species of honey and the temperature in which it is stored.

Decrystallization – the process of bringing honey back to its liquid consistency. It is done by using special devices or decrystallization chambers in the temperature of max. 40 oC.

Division bars – movable element of a hive made of metal or plastics with openings enabling queen’s passing. A beekeeper uses it to separate the nest from the honey magazine.

Division board – in the past, it was a board that closed the traditional hive. In modern hives, it is a board that separates frames with bees from the empty space in the hive.

Drone laying queen – a queen that lays unfertilised (drone) eggs. She is usually an effect of running out of sperm in spermatheca.

Egg-laying – laying eggs by a queen into the comb cells.

Empty, unwired frame – common frame without foundation or a frame divided into halves with a horizontal bar. In empty spaces, bees build “wild” drone comb. It serves detecting swarm mood and biological fight against varroosis.

European foulbrood – bacterial bee brood disease.

Feeder – a vessel used for administering liquid food to bees. It may be a jar, a box, a frame or a bucket etc.

Field bee – older bees working in the field (collecting bees, scouting bees, robbers).

First flight – first orientation flight of young bees or a young queen.

Flight – bees flights in the vicinity of the hive, not connected with collecting honeyflow; cleansing flight – after overwintering; orientation flight – conducted by young bees when they leave the hive for the first time. Fresh nectar/honeydew – fresh nectar/honeydew collected in the comb cells with watery consistency.

Hive – room for bees built by human from various materials.

Hive entrance – the opening through which bee leave the hive.

Honey extractor – a device that, thanks to centrifugal force, serves to extract honey from combs, without destroying them.

Honey hygroscopy – a quality of absorbing dampness from the environment. Therefore, we never store honey in open vessels.

Honey magazine – the part of the hive (upper or lower) where honey reserves are stored.

Honeydew – sweet liquid occurring on leaves and needles of trees and understory, produced by tiny hemiptera /aphids, scale insects, psylloidea/ from plant juice, collected and used by bees to produce honeydew honey.

House bee – young bees (up to 3 weeks) that perform works in the hive. They are nurse bees, storing bees, guard bees and cleaners.

Hungry swarm – swarm that leaves the hive due to the risk of hunger, diseases or unfavourable living conditions.

Intake – part of the honeyflow that may be taken into the hive by bees. In case of nectar honeyflows, intake may come up to 50% of honeyflow, in case of honeydew honey only 10%.

Isolator – casing for the part of, all or several frames that enables queen’s and bees’ passing. It serves the temporary separation queens during egg-laying.

Laying worker bee – worker bee that lays eggs in the situation of the lack of a queen in a colony.

Log hive – hive in the carved tree trunk. It might be a lying or standing trunk depending on the arrangement of the bee yard.

Mandibular gland – located at the base of mandible, occurs in females. Mandibular gland secretes so-called queen substance, a pheromone that integrates a bee colony. Marketing – performing any economic activity connected with the flow of services and products. Marketing strategy includes: identification of a market, evoking a demand, shaping prices, promotions and advertisement.

Mead – alcoholic beverage that is produced in the course of fermentation of wort and lagering.

Nasonov gland – scent gland located on the dorsal side of the worker bee abdomen. Its secretion serves calling worker bees and marking the hive entrance.

Nectar – sweet liquid secreted by glands called nectaries, situated usually on the bottom of the flower. Nectar contains 10-30 % carbohydrates.

Nest – the part of the hive where a queen lays eggs.

Nosemosis – gastrointestinal tract disease of adult bees, caused by Nosema apis or Nosema ceranae fungus.

One family bee hive – small box with small frames or skewers, settled by small colony, serves to impregnate queens in a natural way in the bee yard or protected mating area.

Opaliths – colourful discs used to mark queens. They are stuck to the queen’s thorax. Five colours are used: white, yellow, red, green, blue.

Oversensitivity – particular sensitivity of some people to bee venom, which may cause anaphylactic shock. These people cannot be beekeepers. Oversensitivity may be cured by desensitization.

Overwintering – the period when a colony creates a winter cluster and does not leave the hive. Overwintering is finished by the first sprig flight.

Pheromones – aromatic substances /hormones/ secreted by organisms, they are the source of information and evoke particular behaviours of other specimens. They are particularly important among insects.

Pollen load – load of flower pollen in the form of colourful balls transported to the hive on the shins of the third pair of legs.

Pollination – transmission of pollen from thecae into the stigma. Entomophile plants pollination is mediated by bees.

Propolis – bee glue. Resinous substance collected by bee from tree buds, used to seal the nest. It is highly antibacterial. Queen cell – special, elongated comb cell directed downwards where a queen grows.

Queen warbling – “quacking” sound made by a queen that stays in the queen cell. In the past, beekeepers used to auscultate hives in the evenings. Queen’s quacking indicated the upcoming of the emergence of a swarm. “Tooting” – sound made by a queen after leaving the queen cell.

Queen’s colony – colony that started a split.

Queenless colony – a colony without a queen.

Quiet robbing – robbing bees that take the smell of robbed colony and, therefore, are not attacked by guard bees.

Raid – mass flying from one hive to another. It may lead to robbing. Controlled raid is one of the methods of balancing colonies powers in the bee yard or when doing the splits.

Reserve queen – a queen, e.g. in a split in overwintering colony, that is intended to use in spring.

Robbing – stealing reserves from other colonies by robbing bees.

Royal jelly – the secretion of young worker bees’ (so-called nurse bees) hypopharyngeal glands, used in a colony to feed younger larvae and a queen during the whole period of her development and egg-laying. It is a substance with the consistency of dense cream with abundant empirical formula and nourishing qualities.

Scouting bees – the groups of collecting bees that look for new honeyflows.

Section comb honey – honey capped entirely in the cells of an intact comb and intended to be sold in this form.

Settler – a big vessel made of stainless steel with the valve, used for clarifying and pouring honey.

Skep – straw hive in the shape of a bell or a cylinder. It has been used in Poland since the times of Piast.

Skewer – wooden bar on which a comb is built by bees. It was a predecessor of a frame. Nowadays, used in one family bee hives and as an empty, unwired frame. Smoking – smoking a colony using a smoker in order to decrease its aggressiveness or removing bees from the place where a beekeeper performs some tasks.

Solar melter – closed from the top with a double pane box painted in black, into which wax or uncapped honey is put in order to melt it.

Species fidelity /or flower/ - worker bees pollinating only one plant species, which simplifies the work of collecting bees and increases the effectiveness of pollinations.

Split – artificially created new colony formed out of a few combs with brood, reserves and a new queen.

Swarm – bees and an old queen that leave the hive. It is colony’s natural way to reproduce.

Swarm collection box – a device used to collect swarms, possibly to detain them temporarily, in the form of a box, bag or bin.

The number of bees – the number of bee colonies per 1 km2. In Poland, it comes to ca. 3 colonies/km2 and it is half too low in the relation to the needs.

Traditional beekeeping – management of wild beehives, the predecessor of today’s beekeeping.

Trophalaxis – the phenomenon of transferring small drops of food by worker bees. It is not a way of nourishment, but rather exchange of pheromones.

Uncapper – a device used to uncap the comb cells before extracting honey. There are uncapping forks, uncappers in the form of heated knives or mechanical uncappers for bigger bee yards.

United colony – a colony made of the excess of bees e.g. after the end of honeyflow. After adding impregnated queen, it is placed in the new bee hive.

Varietal honey – honey that comes from one plant species.

Viral diseases – bee diseases caused by viruses. Their transmitter is varroosis. In Poland, there are many viral bee diseases, among others: sacbrood, deformed wings virus, acute and chronic bee paralysis etc. Waggle dance – the way scouting bees inform other collecting bees about the found honeyflow and it location in relation to the hive. Austrian bee researcher Karl Frisch received a Nobel Prize in 1973 for reading the meaning of bee dances.

Warm way – placement of frames in the nest parallel to the front wall of the hive.

Wild beehive - natural or prepared by human room for bees in a living, growing tree.

Wild comb - combs built outside the frames, in the form of tongues, e.g. on side mats or in empty hive spaces.

Winter collapse – dead bees and other contaminations lying on the bottom of the hive after overwintering.

Wort – water solution of honey used to produce mead in the course of ethanol fermentation. 12. Case study

Beekeeping - Bee health problem

Objective of case study: presentation of the problem of keeping bees in good health - the use of natural remedies to treat bees. Description apiary: In southern Poland there is an Apiary, which produces honey and other bee products, which are basis for manufacturing drugs, parapharmaceutics, cosmetics, nutritional blends and others products. It offers good apiary honey only from their own hives and gains the credibility and good reputation of customers. The apiary shop gives the ability of getting honey, pollen, mead, wax candles, cosmetics, parapharmaceutics, literature and souvenirs. It is also a place where the lectures and advertisements are given. You can get answers to any questions related to bees and honey. In addition, full information about the treatment with bee products – apitherapy – is provided. People who once bought products at the apiary often become loyal customers. With all these activities apiary brand has become recognized throughout the country as a producer of high quality bee products.

Apiary has three types of activities:

1. Breeding queen bees. 2. Acquisition of bee products and using them in apitherapy 3. The practical training of beekeepers and young people from high schools and universities.

Farm apiaries produce virtually all bee products, besides the venom. These include:

- Honey bee - Propolis - Royal Jelly - Pollen

Problem: The apiary recovery and protection against diseases. In February 2011, despite the application of the principles of apiary and procedures performed in the usual way there was a sudden and unexpected loss of bees. In front of beehives there were seen dead bees. Laboratory study was conducted, but it did not show any disease. After restoring the apiary all activities related to the apiary were made as to date, following the principles of beekeeping good practice. The only difference was, the uses of probiotics were introduced. Bio-spraying with probiotics was conducted inside the hive, including frames and bees, as well as the outer surfaces of the hive, particularly hive entrances. Already after the first treatment, the recovery of bees could be observed and increase of their activity. Treatments were carried out several times during the season.

In four hives the chalkbrood occurred before adaptation of probiotics. It was planned to conduct prevention operations. However, they proved to be unnecessary because spray by means of probiotic removed symptoms of the disease. Development of bees was so strong that it was able to collect a certain amount of honey despite the apiary recovery. The only issue was the varroa, which intensified in varying degrees in different families. The attempts have been made to cope with the problem using mechanical and biological methods. The bees spent overwintering in good condition, and in front of beehives there were no dead individuals.