Honey bees are kept by beekeepers using a variety of management practices to ensure their health, productivity, and survival. These practices focus on providing adequate space, managing hive strength, and maintaining a healthy environment for the bees.
Here's a breakdown of how honey bees are typically kept:
- Hive Structure: Honey bees are typically housed in manufactured hives, most commonly the Langstroth hive, which consists of stackable boxes (hive bodies and supers) containing frames. These frames provide a structured foundation for the bees to build their honeycomb.
- Providing Adequate Space: Beekeepers proactively provide additional hive bodies and supers as the colony grows or when the bees begin to collect honey. This ensures the bees have enough room to expand their brood nest and store honey, preventing overcrowding and swarming (when a large group of bees leaves the hive to establish a new colony).
- Managing Hive Strength: Beekeepers may split strong hives to create new colonies. This helps to control population growth and prevent swarming.
- Brood Nest Management: Beekeepers may expand the brood nest by placing alternating frames of empty drawn comb (comb previously built by the bees) between the existing frames of the brood nest. This encourages the queen to lay more eggs and helps the colony grow.
- Feeding: Beekeepers may supplement the bees' diet with sugar syrup or pollen substitutes, especially during periods of nectar dearth (when natural food sources are scarce).
- Pest and Disease Management: Honey bees are susceptible to various pests and diseases, such as Varroa mites, tracheal mites, hive beetles, and American foulbrood. Beekeepers employ different strategies to monitor and control these problems, including using chemical treatments, integrated pest management (IPM) techniques, and breeding for resistant bees.
- Queen Management: The queen bee is essential for the colony's survival and productivity. Beekeepers may requeen colonies that have failing or unproductive queens. They also monitor the queen's health and laying pattern.
- Swarm Prevention: Beekeepers employ various techniques to prevent swarming, such as providing adequate space, splitting strong hives, and removing queen cells (cells where new queens are developing).
- Honey Harvesting: Beekeepers harvest surplus honey from the hive supers, leaving enough honey for the bees to survive the winter.
In summary, honey bees are kept through careful management of their hive environment, food supply, health, and population to ensure their well-being and honey production.
