Starting with Bees: An Introduction to Beekeeping.

Starting young.

Are you thinking of becoming a beekeeper, researching information for someone who is, or just wanting to learn more about the origins of honey bees and how they came to be semi-domesticated and productive livestock? This blog is about sharing some background information with you so that making good choices is easier for you.

Animal Husbandry.

Animal husbandry practice applies to everyone responsible for animals and their health and welfare.  I like that the Oxford English Dictionary defines husbandry as, “careful use of resources”. Bees are described as semi-domesticated animals, and we have no control or ownership over them once they decide to swarm and leave a hive. However, they still need from us responsible care and attention to their health and well-being while they live in our apiaries.

If you’re planning to start beekeeping soon, you’ll have started researching and thinking about how you are going to get the practical experience and help that you need. Nobody buys a herd of dairy cattle without prior knowledge and some experience of managing cattle. Honey bees are no different in theory, though, of course unlike cattle, thousands of honey bees can live in a small space in someone’s back garden.

Beekeeping Management.

Knowing some honey bee history may help you make better choices around which sub-species of honey bee to buy, or the type of hive to use. However, the reality is that most honey bees in the UK are mixed breed mongrels and the key is to buy locally adapted bees.

We beekeepers tend be a tendentious lot; ask three beekeepers in the UK the same question and you’ll likely get four different answers. There are as many systems for managing bees as there are different methods to achieve outcomes such as successful swarm prevention. The only bad methods of beekeeping are the ones that harm or kill bees. The key thing is to know where to go for information, and to be able draw your own conclusions. Always bear in mind that internet sources don’t automatically give accurate information, and some textbooks and beekeepers are not up to date on essential matters such as appropriate treatments for varroa and disease.

Threats to Honey Bees.

Honey bee foraging on wild thyme on the West Coast of Scotland by Linton Chilcott. Notice varroa on bee thorax and tattered wings from hard work!

Honey bees are currently under threat from climate change, agricultural policy, pesticides, diseases, varroa mites and related viruses, pests including Asian hornet, and the consequences of bad weather at mating time and during the main nectar flows. Probably the biggest threat though is from incompetent and untrained beekeepers. Despite these real threats, it is a media fabricated fallacy that honey bees are in decline and people should keep bees to save them. There are actually around 80% more colonies of managed honey bees today globally than in 1950. There is some evidence that  larger bumble bee species have to compete with honey bees for some forage plants so there is a lot to consider when taking up beekeeping responsibly. However, everyone can contribute to improving forage for all our pollinators by planting nectar and pollen producing plants, shrubs, and trees.

Many different species of animal pollinate important crop plants but honey bees are responsible for pollinating 47% of the world’s crops. In the UK, honey bees contribute around 651 million pounds sterling annually to the economy through pollination. That’s a staggering 150 million more than the Royal Family contributes through attracting visitors and trade to our country.

UK Government Involvement.

The UK Government has debated pesticide use, limited the use of neonicotinoids and formed a pollinator strategy. A fairly recently organised web-based initiative, BeeConnected, was set up to improve communications between farmers and beekeepers so that the latter are alerted to local farmers planning to spray insecticides and other agrochemicals harmful to honey bees. This only works if both parties have signed up to the programme.

Currently the UK government subsidises training courses for beekeepers, especially bee health training and disease diagnosis. Government bee inspectors play a role in supporting beekeepers and educating them.

Most Researched Non-Human Animal.

Why are honey bees the most highly researched animal on our planet? They have held a strong fascination for humankind since time began and honey was discovered. Once honey was the only sweet food to be found. Our earliest non-human ancestors probably raided honey bee nests too. Even after the discovery of sugar cane in Asia honey remained important. Honey bees produce such a wide variety of products including; honey, wax, propolis, pollen, pollination services, royal jelly, bee venom, queen bees, packaged bees, the ability to sniff out and pin point explosive chemicals, and to detect tubercular infections (following training). Bees have also been used in warfare but Ray Jones will tell you about their fascinating role in warding off the enemy in “Bee-Sieged: Bees in Warfare” available from Northern Bee Books.

Flowers and Bees.

Flowering plants (angiosperms) appeared during the evolution of the insects that feed on them some three hundred million years ago, give or take a few million years. Flowers have evolved with lots of tricks to attract insects that are the go-betweens during most plant sexual reproduction. Scent is the most obvious attraction, with the rewards for pollination services being sweet nectar and pollen.

The Origins of Honey Bees.

Honey bees (Apis) appeared around fifty million years ago and they built nests in the open, e.g., the species Asian Apis dorsata, and Apis florea that build comb mostly on tree branches. The former is sometimes found on cliff faces. Much later, around two million years ago, two other species, Apis cerana and Apis mellifera, evolved in Asia to cluster and shelter within cavities such as tree trunks. We have recent evidence that all honey bee species originated in Asia.  We know the timing of these events from the discovery of superb fossils of ancesters of our modern honey bee species. Apis mellifera, from around 1.6 million years ago, have been found preserved in amber-like materials in Asia.

Apis mellifera mellifera.

Honey bees migrated from Asia into Europe and Africa. The Apis Mellifera species (Western honey bee) evolved into many different sub-species including Apis mellifera mellifera which moved into Northern Europe adapting to the colder climate. We know this bee as the dark bee and it is perfectly suited to Scotland. I rescued a colony of bees from a house that was being demolished and they looked very much like our native dark bee having a much hairier body and several other typical features (see above). Other examples of sub-species are Apis mellifera ligustica which adapted to the warmer climes of Italy, and Apis mellifera carnica (Carniolan) which adapted to the cooler areas of Slovenia and nearby countries.

Rock Art.

Early hunters and gatherers tracked down the nests of honey bees for their wax combs filled with honey and we find evidence for this in Mesolithic rock paintings in Spain. Honey, having one of the highest energy densities of foods found in nature, 1500 Calories (kcal) per pound, and the sweetest most delicious taste, was an attractive resource.

The earliest known type of hive beekeeping was implemented in Ancient Egypt from evidence supplied by writings and pictures from about 2400 BC bearing testimony to bees being managed in cylindrical mud-formed hives. In northern Europe, beekeeping developed from plundering and destroying of tree nests to obtain honey, to creating doors in tree cavities and harvesting just a few combs whilst leaving the bees to continue in residence.

Tree beekeeping in Belarus by Kryskai Zyambi Wikkicommons.

Sustainable tree beekeeping is still practiced in Eastern European countries such as Poland, Belarus and Russia, and it is becoming popular with some beekeepers in the UK who want to care for bees as close to nature as they can.

Skep beekeeping developed in cooler countries using woven straw hives insulated with cow dung and these were still in regular use at the beginning of last century in the UK. The main disadvantage was that overwintering bees was difficult so most stocks were killed using sulphur fumes in the autumn. Utilising the wild bee colonies that swarmed in early summer was the easiest way to restock the following season. The swarms came out of the forests and took up residence in the skeps.

The ancient Greeks and Romans kept and studied bees, thus vastly contributing to the ever- increasing body of available beekeeping knowledge. It wasn’t until the 19th century though, that beekeeping really developed a pace with exciting inventions being made on both sides of the Atlantic which changed beekeeping forever and made it possible to make a good living from it.

Bee Space.

The discovery of bee space and the invention of moveable frames by the Reverend Lorenzo Langstroth in 1851 is undoubtedly the most significant development. He found that bees leave a space of 6-8 mm (the “bee space”) between the edges of their combs and the cavity wall. Naturally, bees in an empty cavity build combs from the top down making it impossible to examine them without destroying the nest. By creating frames, with correct spacing, Langstroth made it possible for a single comb to be removed for inspection and replaced undamaged. Modern hives are all built to reflect this concept. If you make your own hives, they must conform to this principle otherwise it will be impossible to examine frames without causing great disturbance to the bees. If the space is less than 6 mm bees gum up the space with the sticky resinous material collected from tree buds which they fashion into propolis. Interestingly, the Greek meaning for this word is, “before the city”. If a gap is larger than 8 mm then “brace” or wild comb will be constructed, anchoring frames to boxes and angering the bees when attempts are made to remove frames.

Monumental scientific discoveries made during the 20th century enabled ordinary beekeepers to better understand bee biology, diseases and behaviour. Austrian born Nobel Prize winner and pioneer of bee behaviour, Dr Karl von Frisch, discovered around the middle of last century that bees communicated the direction and distance to nectar sources by a waggle dance performed inside the hive on combs. Using information from this research, and studying closely bees in my glass -walled observation hive, I have been able to follow the foragers and pinpoint the flowers that they have been visiting and advertising to their nest mates.

Varroa destructor. Photo by BeeBase Crown Copyright.

You’ll be amazed to learn about some of the other more recent discoveries too. Beekeeping in the 21st century is probably more challenging than ever before since the arrival in the UK of the varroa mite from Asia around 1994. Imagine living with a dinner-plate-sized parasite on your body? This eight- legged mite, Varroa destructor, attaches itself to adult bees (and larvae) and feeds from their fat body tissue which is a metabolic organ and analogous to our human liver. In gaining access to this tissue, varroa pierce a hole which remains open, and, in the process, injects viruses which spread around the body in the haemolymph (bee blood).

Fat body tisse.

Varroa sneak into the uncapped cells of the larvae to breed and multiply rapidly. Add on the other already mentioned challenges, and compromised weakened colonies may not survive. You don’t get good honey harvests from weak colonies. As a direct result of the threat to bees and the surrounding publicity, beekeeping has become very popular; it is now a celebrity hobby. There are now around 25-40,000 hobbyist beekeepers in the UK. Equipment suppliers have increased along with the product range; with the arrival of each new pest, disease, beekeeping trend/fad, new products are marketed. Please be warned that not all are necessary to the successful management of bees and I recommend that that you research widely before investing in equipment.

Reasons for Beekeeping.

 Let’s consider some motives for keeping bees:

  1.  Pleasure; you want to enjoy watching them at work on your property.
  2.  Producing some honey for family and friends.
  3.  Pension; you want to supplement your income. A few colonies will generate only a small income but you could make candles soap and skin cream using wax.
  4. Pollination; purely to enhance the environment. Debatable motive given the discovery of forage competition among some native bees and other insect pollinators. Pollination on a commercial basis requires large numbers of colonies moved to crops at the right time, and is carried out professionally by bee farmers.
  5.  Profit; you want to earn a living from bees. You could join the c.540 bee farmers in the UK, who are earning an income from beekeeping and building a business. You would need to invest a lot of money to start up.
  6. All of the above require some beekeeping knowledge before responsibly taking on livestock.

Local Beekeeping Associations.

Local beekeeping associations usually run beginner courses and provide mentoring so that new beekeepers can work alongside the experienced ones. National beekeeping associations provide information about your nearest local association, education and training, monthly magazines and insurance. Government initiative BeeBase (sign up free of charge) offers information on bee health and notifies beekeepers if anyone in the area has a foulbrood infection in their apiary (Bees infected with the highly contagious American foulbrood would be destroyed by government bee inspectors).

Equipment.

Even if you choose to have only one colony of honey bees, you must expect to almost double the cost of having one hive because spare equipment is required during swarm season when most beekeepers increase stocks, at least for the season. So, for every one hive of bees you need a spare empty hive or a nucleus box (this holds around 5-6 brood frames and half the size of a full colony) if you want to keep the swarm at home rather than watch it fly off into the sunset. The more money that you hope to generate from bees the more you need to spend initially.

Marketing Honey.

Marketing honey involves sophisticated expensive processing equipment, honey jars, packaging and labelling that conform to food safety standards and honey regulations. Varroa treatments may be costly, and if the weather is poor in summer bees often need supplementary feeding of sugar syrup. Beekeepers who harvest all the honey at the end of summer must feed the bees to ensure that the average colony has around 40-50 lbs stored for winter. Most prospective beekeepers research for several months and join a local beekeeping association before buying bees. Many work with a beekeeper friend/mentor over a season to get the feel of beekeeping before committing themselves.

Buying Bees.

The following spring you might buy your first full-sized colony (around £400-500), or start with 5 or 6 frames of bees (around £230-275) and a queen in a small hive called a nucleus. The latter method allows you to grow in skills and confidence as the colony expands from around 10, 000 bees to around 40-60,000 at the height of the season. There are cheaper ways of obtaining bees through local associations, or by collecting swarms. If you don’t know where the latter have come from, they may be riddled with disease. On the other hand, the swarm may be vigorous and healthy. The most important consideration is to buy healthy local stock well adapted to local climate and conditions.

Time and Equipment.

Time is a consideration for beekeepers, and today colonies can no longer be left at the bottom of the garden to get on with it. Bees can starve easily in early spring when the queen starts laying prolifically and the weather and forage is uncertain, so you need to be around your bees from March to end of swarm season. Swarming urges should have passed by July-August depending upon where you live.

Necessary Equipment.

If you’re going out with a beekeeper to learn how to handle bees, personal protection is essential. You can spend up to £125 or more on an all-in-one bee suit, or you can adapt a boiler suit/overalls (£17), and buy a veil (£10) to go over your favourite hat ensuring that the veil stands away from your face, otherwise bees can get in close and sting if the veil is pressing against your skin. If you choose the latter, ensure that every tiny hole is covered since bees are adept at gaining entrance through the smallest of spaces. Elastic garters around ankles and wrists work well for me and a pair of wellies (gum boots) ensures that bees cannot find their way up the insides of trouser legs. I have several bee suits so that I can wash one at the end of each working day and have a clean spare for visiting other apiaries. Maintaining apiary hygiene is vital to avoid the spread of infection. Bees dislike leather – probably too similar to the animals that they have evolved to be defensive against so I don’t use leather gauntlets. I can’t move frames gently enough anyway whilst wearing them and if I needed to pick up a queen I couldn’t do so with thick gloves. But more importantly, they are also difficult to clean thus they are a source of infection. Thick washing up gloves are good to start with then you can to progress to thinner vinyl or nitrile gloves as your confidence increases.

My 18 year-old smoker.

The other essential pieces of equipment are hive tools and a smoker.

Resources.

Just a few of many useful resources:

British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) http://www.bbka.org.uk/

Scottish Beekeepers Association (SBA) https://www.scottishbeekeepers.org.uk/

 Welsh Beekeepers Association (WBA) http://www.wbka.com/

 Institute of Northern Ireland Beekeepers http://www.inibeekeepers.com/

Beebase- Beekeeping information resource for Beekeepers http://www.nationalbeeunit.com/

 Davis, I., & Cullum-Kenyon R, (2012) The BBKA Guide to Beekeeping, Bloomsberry Publishing Plc. London, ISBN 987-1-4081-5458-8

 Waring, C., & A, (2011) Haynes Bee Manual, Haynes Publishing, Somerset, ISBN 978-0-85733-057-4

Jones, R., Bee-Sieged: Bees in Warfare, Barny Books, ISBN 978-1-903172-03-0 Beekeeping Suppliers; Northern Bee Books.

8 thoughts on “Starting with Bees: An Introduction to Beekeeping.”

  1. Very nice article, Ann. Do we have an estimate in how wild colonies have changed in number over the last century in the UK?

    1. Hello, Maurice, Thank you for your positive comment and for raising this interesting question. I think that we need a definition of “wild” to make a start. Do we mean honey bees that have never been managed and have always lived in isolation somewhere? or are we talking about free-living colonies that originated from managed colonies that swarmed and that survived in the wild? I would love to have answers myself. I think that it is assumed that the former died out when varroa came but look at the Blenheim Palace discovery. I think that the answer is we don’t know yet because it hasn’t been researched fully. But if we look at the Arnot Forest (NY) and Euopean research we might guess a similar pattern here in the UK, but perhaps we don’t have the large enough expanses of forested areas away from managed colonies? Magnus Peterson in Dunblane is the only person that I know of who is actively collecting data over a number of years. I’m currently following 5 free-living colonies in Nairnshire but I think that these are most certainly colonies originating from swarms. Best wishes, Ann.

      1. Many thanks for your thoughtful reply, Ann. I was wondering whether the free living population of the past was more substantial than that from managed colonies. It may not have been but if so, has a bearing on whether total honey bee numbers have declined in the UK or not. It also raises an interesting perspective on the issue of genetic diversity and how it may have changed over the century, given Varroa and honey bee import activities.

        Best wishes

  2. What an great article and i am not a beekeeper but a gardener .
    The historical perspective very interesting and why hives were made in a certain way by the Reverend Langstroth shows how observing the bees was so important even then.They are amazing creatures.

    1. Hello, Mary. Thank you for commenting so positively and thoughtfully on the post. I’m glad that you enjoyed learning the history of honey bees as they link in perfectly with your gardening life. Best wishes, Ann.

  3. Wow, this is such an informative post! 🐝🍯 Beekeeping is such a fascinating and important practice that plays a crucial role in pollination and honey production. I’ve always been curious about it, and this introduction provides a great starting point for beginners like me. Looking forward to learning more about the world of bees and beekeeping! 🌼🐝 #SaveTheBees #BeekeepingBeginner
    Unlock the Buzz: Discover the World of Beekeeping 🐝🍯 Learn More at :https://ozarmour.co/en-us/blogs/news/is-beekeeping-profitable

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