As the main pollinators of our ecosystem, honey bees help pollinate for up to one-third of the food humans eat. They are the center of pollination and provide essential services to the environment. In order to make use of these friendly creatures, environmental helpers, such as beekeepers come into harvest honey and ensure the wellbeing of the honeycomb habitat.
So, what is beekeeping and how does it work? Keep reading for more!
First, let’s walk through the steps every Beekeeper takes when conducting a hive check:
A hive check is a chance for the beekeeper to get inside the hive and make sure there is nothing wrong with it
Step 1: If you have long hair, tie your hair back.
Step 2: Throw on your suit and make sure the zippers are up all the way and the elastics at the end or flushed with your skin. This is to prevent bees from entering the suit. Cause I mean, who wants that to happen?
Step 3: Prepare and light the most important tool - the smoker. Light it up by putting newspaper and dried leaves into the chamber, then set fire to it until it emits a thick opaque smoke through the nozzle. This is an important tool as it lets the bees know that the beekeeper is there. It can move bees out of the way so the beekeeper can reach their target area.
Step 4: Now that tools have been gathered, zip the hood of the suit and put on rubber gloves. Rubber gloves are the best option because bees cannot sting through them as they could through cotton.
Step 5: Puff a little bit of smoke near the entrance as a courtesy to let the bees know you are about to enter their hive.
Step 6: Open the hive and quickly look for and kill any hive beetles (these pests can damage honey bee colonies).
Step 7: Take the frames out one by one and do what you came to do.
- Harvesting honey? Watch this video to follow a beginners guide into this process.
- Treating for mites? Try a sugar roll. Get a jar with powdered sugar, put some bees in it, shake the jar and see how many mites fall out. This will help determine the mite level.
- Looking for the Queen Bee? Find her and use the Bee Catcher clip and beekeeping marker to put a dot on her.
Step 8: Time to close up! Hives cannot be open for more than 1-hour because the Bees will get pesty… You will notice and it won’t be fun.
UnBEElievable Bee facts!
- The bees don’t like black so don’t wear black clothing because it will agitate them)
- They don’t have ears but they are sensitive to vibrations, so when you are doing a hive check don’t yell or make loud noises
- Bees use pheromones to communicate with one another
- All worker honey bees are female (Who Run the World?)
- A bees sense of smell is 50x more sensitive than a dogs
- Scientists think bees developed color vision before flowers developed colored patterns
- Bees visit 2million flowers to make one pound of honey
- One honey bee will make 1/12th teaspoon of honey in her lifetime
- Bees can fly up to 15 miles per hour
- Honey bees beat their wings 11,400/per minut
- Honey wine is the oldest alcoholic beverage we have record of
- Bees can see in ultraviolet light
- The average American consumes a pound and a half of honey each year
- There are over 20,000 species of bees
- Bees to dance to communicate direction and distance to different food sources (different bees can have different dancing dialects)
- The queen bee only leaves the hive twice in her lifetime
- Male bees have no stingers
- Beeswax is secreted by four pairs of wax glands on worker bees
- A queen bee can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day (it’s her only jon)
- Pollination of U.S. agricultural crops is valued at $10B/year
- Honey is the third-most-faked food in the world following milk and olive oil
There you have it, folks! Beekeeping 101. Put your rubber gloves on, secure your suit tightly and join the other worker bees in maintaining a BEEautiful honey-filled hive!
