Beekeeping Guide Omlet Beekeeping Guide Issue 1 Page 1 Table of Contents Introduction 3 Swarm control 23 What do you need to start? 3 What are swarms? 23 The history of the bee 3 Swarm control methods 23 The role of the beekeeper 4 Catching a swarm 25 Why are bees so important? 4 How to hive a swarm 26 About bees 5 The beekeeping year 27 Queens, drones and workers 5 January 27 Honey bee population 5 February 27 Bee anatomy 6 March 27 What do bees forage for? 6 April 27 Bee life cycle 7 May 28 June 28 Beekeeping 8 July 28 Equipment 8 August 28 Components of a beehive 8 September 29 Siting your beehaus 10 October 29 Acquiring your bees 11 November 29 Transferring bees to your beehaus 11 December 29 Moving your beehaus 12 Bee stings 12 Bee health 30 Best health practices 30 How to inspect your bees 14 Pests 30 Preparing to Inspect your beehaus 14 Varroa 30 Smoking your bees 14 Varroa treatment 30 How to open your beehaus 14 Foulbrood 31 How to inspect the frames 15 Sterilising your beehaus 31 How to mark a queen 16 When to add honey supers 16 Honey 32 Managing your beehaus with Supers on 17 How do bees make honey? 32 Honey in jars 32 Advanced beekeeping 19 Honey collection 32 Feeding your bees 21 Getting additional help 33 Making sugar syrup 22 When to feed? 21 Trouble shooting 34 Bee glossary 36 Contributors License & Copyright This guide could not have been made without the help and advice from This guide is copyright Omlet Limited 2009. It many experienced bee keepers. We would like to thank the following: is licensed under the the Creative Commons John Chappel, Caroline Birchall, Robin Dartington, Paul Peacock and License: Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 Sally Wadsworth. UK: England & Wales. This means that you are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work under the following conditions: • Attribution. You must give the original author (i.e Omlet) credit. • No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. • For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the licence terms of this work. Full details of the license are located here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/uk/legalcode. If you have any comments or suggestion please email us at [email protected]. Omlet Beekeeping Guide © Copyright Omlet 2009 Page 2 Introduction The history of the bee This bee guide has been written as an introduction and manual to The honeybee is a highly sophisticated insect that has evolved over keeping bees. It does not cover every single beekeeping activity, however millions of years. The earliest recorded Bee was found in Myanmar. It it covers all the basics you need to get started in beekeeping. In this was found encased in amber and has been dated as 100 million years fantastic guide to keeping bees you will learn about the bees, the role old. It’s likely that the bee originated in the Far East. In those early days, of the beekeeper, how the beehaus works and much more. the bees were more like wasps, eating other insects rather than nectar and pollen. It’s unclear exactly when bees decided to become vegetarian There is also a complete instruction manual for assembling and but considering the choice between eating a fly and some delicious, using your beehaus which you should have received with your sweet tasting nectar from a cherry tree in full bloom, it seems like a beehaus. This guide will assume that you have read this instruction good decision. manual first. Today bees live all over the world and there are approximately 20,000 We hope you find the guide useful. If you have any feedback or any species. These range from the giant leaf eating bee, which is over 3cm queries please email [email protected] long to the tiny dwarf bee which is just 2mm long. The honeybee is just one of these species. Most other bees do not live in colonies preferring a more solitary existence. Bumblebees for example live in burrows in the ground. As well as crop pollination scientists believe that bees are responsible for the rich flower diversity we enjoy today. Most flowering plants cannot self-pollinate and pollination that relies on the wind to carry their seed is not very efficient, so flowers evolved with bright colours and markings to attract bees and to ensure that they were rewarded for the pollination What do you need to start? service provided them with a nutritious nectar too. The bees drink the nectar and transport it in a special stomach back to the hive to share If you are reading this guide you have most likely received a with the Queen, of course, and also to feed the hive bees and the larvae beehaus kit. In addition to the beehaus the minimum requirements for which will become the new bees. keeping bees are as follows: For early man, discovering honey Bees was as life changing as the discovery Obviously to keep bees – you need to find some bees. There are lots of of fire. Until the invention of the options for finding bees and this is covered in more detail on Page 11 beesuit it produced a similar painful sensation if you got too close. Equipment However, the bravery was worth it Beekeeping requires a few pieces of essential equipment including because it seems humankind had, clothing, tools and (obviously) a beehaus. These are covered later in the in preparation, already developed guide. See Page 8 a sweet tooth. A location for your bees Honey was the most important Bees can be kept anywhere from country orchards to urban gardens sweetener for food and alcoholic to small city balconies. It is a common misconception that you need drinks in ancient times. So a large garden or the countryside on your doorstep. Although lots of important were these activities that space can make siting your bees easier, urban gardens are arguably parents named their children after better. Nectar and pollen can be gathered from a wide variety of plants the bees. Both Deborah and Melissa that will give your honey a wonderful flavour. This means that there is mean “bee”, in Hebrew and Greek often a constant source of food throughout the summer and a lack of respectively. It has been sought as harmful pesticides. This is covered on Page 10. an antiseptic and sweetener for at least 100,000 years. In Ancient Time Egypt and the Middle East, it was Keeping bees requires small amounts of regular time with the bees. used to embalm the dead. During the summer you typically have to spend around one hour per Spanish cave painting dated around week with a hive. You can do this at the weekend or, if the weather 6000 BC is still good, when you return from work. Most beekeepers would like Surprisingly then, it wasn’t until to spend more time with their bees rather than less, as beekeeping is Egyptian times that peoples started highly addictive. Unlike keeping other animals, the bees mostly look to keep bees at home. The Egyptian after themselves and will not notice if you go on holiday. From October hive design was a simple upturned through to February you don’t need to inspect your bees at all as they straw basket called a skep. These hibernate over winter in the hive. In all, you might spend 20-30 hours are still used today although mainly over the course of a year with the bees. for temporarily housing a colony of bees that has recently swarmed. Support Beekeeping is an interesting hobby with lots to learn and it is often Early beehives, such as the skep, helpful to have someone friendly to support you. You can do this by were not designed for long attending an Omlet Course and meeting follow beekeepers (see www. term use. The honey couldn’t be omlet.co.uk/courses for more information). It’s also a good idea to extracted without destroying the join your local Beekeeping Association (see www.britishbee.org.uk for hive and therefore the colony. The more information). system only worked if the colony produced enough bees to create a swarm, which would be caught and go on to provide the honey in the following year. Otherwise, each An early Greek hive year a new swarm of bees had to be caught. There was a desperate need for a way of keeping the same colony of bees year after year so that more honey could be produced and the apiary expanded. Omlet Beekeeping Guide Page 3 A breakthrough discovery in beekeeping was made by a man Why are bees so important? called Lorenzo Langstroth. He The most important reason for bees are the pollination service that they discovered that bees would keep a provide. Pollination is the process by which many plants reproduce. It ‘bee sized’ pathway clear within a involves the movement of pollen between plants - i.e. the male gametes hive if it was between 6 and 8mm (or sperm) are transferred to the female gametes. The honey bee is one wide. He named the discovery ‘spazio of many essential pollen transporters for the plants. They are responsible di ape’ ( or ‘bee space’ in English for the pollination of a wide variety of crops, fruits and flowers. ). This discovery was important because it led to the development How does pollination work? of hives with moveable frames of The plants and bees have a symbiotic comb.