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Beekeeping
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Apiculture in Arkansas
Introduction to Beekeeping
Honey bees are perhaps the most beneficial animals on the planet. Their foraging activitiesensure the successful reproduction of countless plant species as well as the animals thatdepend on plants for survival. Bees emerged as a distinct group, evolving from their cousins,the Sphecid Wasps, during the Cretaceous period over 100 million years ago. There are about20,000 described species of bees in the world. About 4000 are native to the new world. Mostare solitary to gregarious, and do not make honey, but all are important pollinators in theirhabitats. The species we know as the honey bee probably originated in Africa, and has changedlittle in the past 30 million years. Prehistoric peoples discovered honey and produced cavepaintings depicting the gathering of wild honeycombs more than 10,000 years ago. For much of human history, honey was the only sweetener available. Often a rare find it was a highly prizedseasonal treat.The ancient Egyptians were probably the first culture to maintain bees in artificial hives. Theywould float barges laden with clay hives up the Nile River where flowers were plentiful. Theywould allow the bees to forage by day, and then drift back down the river at night as newflowers bloomed through the season. Later, the Greeks adopted beekeeping, inventing the firsttop-bar hives. The Romans also kept bees. The practice was widespread in medieval Europe,where castles, monasteries and peasants commonly kept bees in various types of hives for theirhoney as well as their wax. The lightweight straw skep largely replaced the heavy terracottahives of the ancients. In the forests of Eastern Europe, colonies of wild honey bees were huntedand carefully managed. Sometimes sections of a hollow bee tree were removed andtransported to home to be kept. Often the bees were left in the trees, which were modified bymaking a larger opening in the tree, and securing it with a plank of wood. This allowed a honeyhunter to periodically open the cavity and remove combs of honey without destroying thecolony.European colonists have transported honey bees to much of the rest of the world. Brought tothe Jamestown colony in the early 1600s, bees adapted well to the climate, and thrived in theold growth forests along the east coast and into the Appalachian Mountains. Often precedingthe westward spread of the colonist pioneers, Native Americans referred to the bees as WhiteMan's Flies. Today honey bees have been established on every continent except Antarctica.Beginning in the second half of the 19th century, beekeeping underwent a revolution of invention and innovation. With the widespread adoption of moveable frame hives, bee colonies
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could be inspected and honey could be harvested without destroying the bee colony. Withsteamship travel shortening transatlantic travel, new races of bees became available in the U.S.,and the gentle Italian bees (
Apis meliffera
lingustica) began to replace the temperamental anddisease-prone German variety (
Apis meliffera
meliffera). Suddenly beekeeping became a viableand profitable industry.
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The Three Bees
There are different castes of honey bees: Worker, Drone and Queen. Each castehas its own important roles and performs specific duties in a bee colony.
Worker
Workers are the smallest of the bee castes, but are by far the mostnumerous. All workers are female, but normally incapable of reproduction.They are unable to mate, but in a hopelessly queenless colony, workers maybegin to lay unfertilized eggs, which develop into drones. Workers do all of the necessary tasks within a colony. They secrete the wax used in the hive,and form it into honeycombs. They forage for all of the nectar and pollenbrought into the hive, and transform the nectar into honey. They produceroyal jelly to feed to the queen and young larvae. They also tend to the needs of the larvae andqueens. They cap the cells of mature larvae for pupation and remove debris and dead beesfrom the hive. Worker bees defend the hive against intruders and maintain the optimaltemperature by heating or cooling and ventilating the hive with their wings. Workers have well-developed compound eyes on the sides of their heads, and three simple eyes (ocelli) at thevertex. Their tongue is well developed and elongated for sucking up nectar from flowers.Workers reared in the spring and early summer tend to live for five to six weeks. The first twoweeks of their lives is spent as house bees, doing tasks in the hive. The remainder of this time isspent as field bees, foraging for food outside the hive. Workers that reach maturity in the latefall may live well into the following spring. They must maintain a cluster of bodies around thequeen bee, keeping her warm through the winter months. Later, when egg-laying resumes,they must raise the first generation of young bees the next year.
Queen
The queen bee can be recognized by her abdomen, which is usuallysmooth, and elongated, extending well beyond her folded wings. Herfunction in the hive is one of production. She is the only reproductivefemale in the colony. Egg-laying begins in early spring, initiated whenthe first spring pollen is brought home by the workers. Eggproduction will continue until fall, or as long as pollen is available. Atthe height of her productivity, the queen could lay as many as 2000eggs each day. A queen bee can live for up to five years, but her
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