How to care for bees

Caring for bees is a rather exciting, but rather laborious process that requires the performer to strictly adhere to a number of rules.

Tips for beginners

A beekeeper, being a beginner, is faced with a large number of questions, the success of the event as a whole largely depends on finding the correct answer. He does not even know the basics: where to start, how many families to buy, how best to scare the bear away from the apiary and how to care for the bees. Answers to a number of the listed questions are formulated in the following rules:

• Breeding honey insects requires a significant investment of time. When spring and summer come, bee colonies need to take care of at least six hours a week. On average, it takes at least an hour to serve one family. Further time costs depend on the number of families in the hive.
• Due to the laboriousness of the process, novice beekeepers are recommended to purchase no more than 5-6 families to begin with. This amount will be enough to hone skills. You should focus your attention first of all on the basics. Only after having firmly mastered the beginner's bee care can one begin to expand the existing knowledge.
• The place for the installation of hives must be chosen taking into account the conditions in which bee swarms live in nature. Experts recommend placing an apiary in close proximity to the hills.

  In this case, it is imperative to take into account which wind prevails in the selected area, and choose a place protected from it by natural barriers.

• When choosing a location for an apiary, you should make sure that there are enough melliferous plants within a radius of two kilometers.
• The hives themselves should be installed at a well-defined distance from one another. Within one row, the distance between the houses should be 3-4 meters, the rows themselves are separated from one another - by 5-6 m.

Cebro method

Bee care

Cebro's method in beekeeping at one time made a lot of noise. Its creator has developed a whole system, which is a clear algorithm of consistently performed actions, which allows you to spend time as efficiently as possible for caring for bees and increase the productivity of the apiary as a whole.

The essence of the method is as follows:

1. Insects are kept in spacious three-body hives.
2. In the spring, during the growth of families, it is not allowed to occupy the top of the houses with store extensions. A new building should be built.
3. Only healthy and strong families are left in the apiary. The rest should be discarded.
4. In the second week of development of the queen cell, several bends should be organized and a new bee colony should be made.
5. After the layering bribe, the family is introduced and the uterus is changed.
6. For wintering, two-hull hives are used - a store is sent to the lower one, the upper one is used for nesting frames.

Apiary according to the Cebro method

As part of this method, bees need to provide a particularly comfortable wintering place. All hives should be well ventilated and insects should have adequate food.

Removal of bees from a swarm state

Swarming is a natural breeding process for bees. He needs to be kept under control to keep families from getting weak.But whatever method of prevention is used at the same time, one should be prepared for swarming of bees. In this regard, the question of how to quickly remove the bees from the swarm state is very relevant.
The first thing you need to do is capture the swarm. To do this, you should always have an empty hive in stock for such cases, set up traps before swarming and buy special baits: Alimil or Apira.

Swarming bees

Roevni is recommended to be cooked in autumn. They should be pretreated with boiling water, dried thoroughly and stored. To successfully capture the swarm, you will need at least two traps.

There is a way to remove bees from a swarm state without using traps. In this case, the lower body of the dadan hive (or lounger) is used for catching. It is placed about 15 meters from the apiary. It contains 8 frames with dry, which are pre-rubbed with aromas attractive to bees.

How to get bees out of a hollow

Sometimes the uterus chooses hollow trees as a home for her family. In such a situation, the beekeeper has a quite reasonable question of how to get the bees out of the hollow without harm.

Removing bees from the hollow

A wire cone will help solve the problem. The beekeeper moves the nucleus with the queen cell into a small box or light hive, which can be easily delivered to the hollow in which wild bees nest. The work will require, among other things, a hammer, a saw, nails and a few planks to build a temporary platform.

The first step of the bees in the hollow is to smoke. Fumigation is carried out as follows: first, smoke is blown into the hole to drive away the bees, then a remover is attached to it. As a result, it turns out that the bees can get out of the hollow, but do not have the opportunity to return to it.

The bees driven out of the hollow are alternately moved to a new hive. In about a month, a minimum number of bees and a completely insignificant amount of brood will remain near the queen. It is at this moment that the remover is removed from the hollow and the bees are re-lit with smoke. The purpose of this process is to kill the uterus and the remaining family members.

Since the remover is removed, all bees that are in it (including recently caught ones) bring honey there. As soon as they get used to it, the hive is removed, the platform is dismantled. In this case, it is recommended to hammer the hole so that the situation does not repeat itself.

Short distance transportation

Bee care for beginners involves gaining a certain amount of knowledge and how to transport bees over short distances.

Transport of bees

Practice shows that transporting honey insects is a rather difficult task to perform. Flight bees love to return to their original place. But there is one simple way to solve the problem.

The day before transportation, the ceilings and laps are removed from the nest, the nest itself is covered with a race with a frequent metal mesh. At the same time, the frame is nailed to the body of the house, insulation is placed on top.

The next morning, before the beginning of summer, the entrance is closed as tightly as possible, the insulation is removed from the frames. The bees are left in this state for a while (about 5-10 hours).

It is very important that the hives are exposed to direct sunlight. In especially hot weather, it is worth putting tampons moistened with water on the net. Transportation to a new location is carried out on the same day. The frames can be removed the next day and replaced with the covers.

The described recipe has been tested in practice by many beekeepers, everyone is usually satisfied with the result - insects do not try to return to their old place. At the same time, it is noted that the method works exclusively in sunny weather - there will be no result on a non-flying or rainy day.

Tagging queen bees

Tagging queen bees is another process that should be familiar to anyone who wants to master the art of how to care for bees for beginners.

There is no definite answer to the question of how much it is necessary to mark the uterus. Some beekeepers are sure that tagging individuals greatly facilitates work, others are convinced that the procedure is harmful to insects.

Tagging queen bees with a marker

However, most beekeepers prefer to tag the queen bee. This is done in order to reduce the time spent on finding a queen and to understand when to replace it (over time, the productivity of queen bees begins to decline).

You can make marks in one of the following ways:

• clip wings;
• using a special marker or paint;
• by gluing labels.

Humpback brood

Even a novice beekeeper should know what to do if a humpback brood appears in bees. Humpback, or as it is also called drone, brood can be identified by a number of signs. If the queen becomes sick or dies, the bees of the breadwinner begin to eat her food. As a result, their reproductive function is activated, and they begin to lay unfertilized eggs, from which exclusively drones are obtained.

Humpback bee brood

For such a brood, bees begin to build large combs, located at the edges of the frame or in its lower part. Since the drone uterus does not differentiate between normal and drone combs during egg laying, when sealing begins, the lids are high. They determine the presence of humpbacked brood bees.

The solution to the problem is possible in the following ways:

1. Small families are easier to dissolve.
2. If the presence of a problem manifested itself in the fall, such a family should be moved to a stronger one.
3. If there is a humpback brood in a large family, it should be transplanted to a new fertile uterus. To do this, a few weeks before the end of the summer season, the frames and canvas are removed, all the bees are shaken off them into the hive. As a result, the drone uterus is deprived of its nest.
   The holes of the taphole are tightened with a fine mesh, the hive itself is removed to a cool place for several days. Then, in the evening, the house is returned to its original place, fresh frames are installed and a new uterus is inserted.

The most effective way to control humpback brood is to prevent it from forming. For experienced beekeepers, it will not be difficult to stop the problem at the root of its appearance.

Candy for bees

While learning the science of how to care for bees, it is important to master a lot of knowledge. So, for example, it is no less important than knowing how to attract bees to the greenhouse for pollination, to be able to cook kandy.

The classic kandy recipe for the bee family will perfectly support insects in the cooler season Preparing top dressing is a snap.

Candy contains the following ingredients:

• icing sugar - 74%;
• water - 0.18%;
• vinegar - 0.02%
• liquid honey - 26.8%.

The composition is prepared as follows:

1. Place honey and sugar in a bowl and heat to 55 degrees. The resulting heated mixture should not contain any crystals or lumps.
2. The product is cooled to about 40 degrees and powdered sugar is added. The amount required is such that the sweet mass can absorb.
3. The mixture is thoroughly mixed until a dough-like consistency is obtained.
4. The mass is spread on a board and kneaded (about half an hour). As a result, the composition should keep its shape, be thick, but not sticky.

Then the kandy is divided into portions of about 1 kg and put away for storage.

Lighting up bees

No beekeeper can do without the procedure of lighting up bees. The fact is that periodically the bees begin to hurt, die, or the replacement of the queen is required, and it is impossible to approach them due to their aggressiveness. Actually, the answer to the question why you need to smoke bees in this context becomes quite obvious.

Before proceeding with the procedure, you should understand how and with what bees are fumigated.

Usually, specialized drugs are used, which do not pose a danger to either the bees or the beekeeper.

Lighting up bees

For fumigation, coal is placed in the smoker and allowed to flare up normally. The tablet with the drug is placed on the smoker's grid. As soon as the bright and acrid smoke changes to gray, you can start the process.

You should prepare for the event:

1. Close up all places in the house where smoke can come out.
2. Smoke should be supplied evenly and in dosage.
3. It is unacceptable to start fumigation immediately after lighting the mixture - it will kill insects.
4. After fumigation, the house must not be opened immediately. You need to wait until the bees calm down and the medicine starts to work.

Summarizing everything described above, we can conclude that caring for bees is not the easiest job, which requires a certain package of knowledge, skills and abilities. But, if you approach the process thoroughly, the result of the effort expended will exceed all expectations.