Beekeeping

From Wiki 5A

Beekeeping is a job that you take care of honey bees. The person who cares for the honey bees is called a beekeeper. The honey bees live in a bee hive. The honey bees are dying. They don't know what is killing them. But some beekeepers are treating spring and fall and there honey bees aren't dying. But treatments costs $4 a hive. You may say that’s not much but when you have 2,000 hives one treatment is $8,000 dollars and if you do a fall and spring it would cost $16,000 dollars! If you don't get honey your in debt.

Contents 1 Parts to a beehive 2 The beekeeper's jobs 3 Process 4 Interview 5 The Honey bee

Parts to a beehive

The beehive has many parts. First there is the bottom board. Then the brood box the brood box is where the queen lays her eggs the eggs turn into baby bees. The brood box is also where the bees keep their food: honey and pollen the honey we leave in what is in the brood box so the bees can eat during the winter. The brood box has a big frame. Then in the summer and late spring there is the queen excluder. The queen excluder keeps the queen out of the honey super. If the queen got into the honey super she would lay eggs in places where honey is supposed to be. Then there is the honey super. The honey super is where the bees put the honey during the honey flow. The honey super has a smaller frame then the brood box. We take the honey that is in the honey super. Next there is the inner cover the inner cover is used in the fall. Last there is the lid. The lid protects the bees and also keeps them from flying out of the top. In the fall there is every thing except the queen excluder and the honey supers. Then on top of the inner cover is a feeder bucket. The feeder bucket may not be on there in just depends if the bees got enough food or not. In the feeder bucket there is sugar water that the bees can suck out through a screen. In the winter there is no feeder bucket, queen excluder, or honey super.

The beekeeper's jobs

The beekeeper has many jobs in the spring, fall, summer, and even some in the winter. In the spring the beekeeper has to:

• Feed bees if food supply is getting low
• Treat the bees for any diseases the bees might have
• Look for eggs to see if the queen is still alive
• Make sure the bees have a queen if not put a new one in the hive
• Maybe replace or get more bees shipped from a company so the bees can feed on the honey flow
• Get ready for swarms or split a hive to make it smaller so they don't swarm
• Weeded and mow bee yards
• Set up traps for swarms
• In late spring start putting honey supers on the hive
• Maybe pull a few honey supers

The next season is summer. Summer is probably the busiest season for a beekeeper because:

• Add more honey supers
• Take off honey supers
• Have bee inspector
• Store honey supers
• Extracted honey
• Try to sell honey if the beekeeper has a good honey crop
• Mow and weeded around hives

This may not seem like a lot of work but really is.

The next season is fall. In the fall...

• Take late honey supers off
• Put extracting equipment in storage
• Buy fall treatments
• Put in fall treatments in hive
• Get new queens to replace the ones that have died
• Feed bees if they do not have enough food for winter.

The last season is winter. Winter is the slowest season for a beekeeper.

• Get ready for spring by building hives and frames
• Put away bee hives that have died (hopefully you don't have to do this)

When the honey bees swarm during spring and summer. When the honey bees swarm the beekeeper has to:

Process

He uses a refractometer, (it’s to check the moisture in the honey) extractor. During the honey flow the beekeeper has to get honey to sell. First take the honey super off and take it to the honey house. Then he/she takes honey super frame and set in on the uncapping tank. Then take the electric knife and slice the cappings off in to the ucapping tank. Put the frames into the honey exctractor. Wait for a few mins. Then take the honey super frame out of the extractor. Then put it back into the honey super. When the honey extrator is full there is a valve and it gets strind there screens. Then there is another vavle that is atached to the bucket the we bottle the honey. Then we put a lable on the botttle or jar. Then we sell it. When the honey bees swarm during spring and summer

Interview

This is a interview with my dad. I would like to be like my dad. My dad is a beekeeper. He works in a beeyard. To get started he talked to a beekeeper. He had to read bee books and bee magazines. He works alone but, the bee state inspector has to make sure the bees are in good shape and the make sure the honey house is clean and in shape. He has owned honey bees for three years and he has twenty-five bee hives. His bee yards are by Wabash and Kokomo Indiana. He gets his money by selling honey. A person that likes nature and not scared of bees will be a good beekeeper. Since my dad has owned honey bees there have been more diseases. He said, "If you what to be a beekeeper you should talk to another beekeeper.” If you sell honey yourself, it goes for $4.00 to $5.00. If you sell it by the bulk to someone it sells for $1.00 to $1.90. He wears a bee veil to for protection when he works. One bee hive can produce 80 to 100 pounds of honey. His job is special because not very many people are in beekeeping. Here is the process to get the honey. First he takes the honey supper (where the honey is in the frames) from the beehive. Then he takes it to the honey house (where honey is stored) to cut the capping (the bees make the capping to keep the moisture out of the honey) off, extract the honey, strain the honey, bottle the honey, and then to sell the honey. My dad would like to have more bee hives. His favorite part of beekeeping is extracting the honey. He learned to realize if the bees are sick. Beekeepers paint the bee boxes to keep rain out. You have to put a brick or rock on top of the lid so the wind does not blow it off. Some beekeepers wrap the beehives in the winter to keep the bees warm. My dad puts a block under the box to keep it off the ground or, he puts two long boards connecting the two and you can put a lot of bee hives on the boards. Most beekeepers heat the honey to make the excreting process faster witch makes the honey darker and is not raw honey. Sometimes the honey turns into sugar so, you have to heat it a little but, not an enough to make it heated honey. Some beekeepers have a pole building to store all the equipment. When they store the honey suppers they put moth crystals so moths do not eat the wax.

The Honey bee

The Honey bees are what pollinate our fruit and nut trees without the honey bees there wouldn't be as much fruits and nuts produced so the prices of the fruit and nuts would soar. To live bees colect nectar or pollen. The pollen sticks to the bee's legs. Then they put it in to bee cells. With the nectar they eat it. Then they throw it up into the cell. Which then becomes our honey we eat. But only the female bees,also called the worker, can do this. The male bee,also called the drone, is for mating with the queen to reproduce. The female bee can sting you only once because once she stings you she loses her stinger and dies but the queen bee keeps her stinger so she doesn't die. The male bee does not have a stinger. The life span of a worker is from about 45 days. It depends on the season though because in the summer they work hard to collect pollen and nectar they die from over work. The queen bee lives around 3 years but now they are dying faster because beekeepers have to treat the bees( to kill the mite, something that kills the bee). It affects the queen bee a little so therefore they do not live as long. The male bee may live up to 7 months old but come winter they get shoved out of the hive to save on food. Honey bees are dying more because of diseases.