Beekeeping or apiculture, is concerned with the practical management of the social species of honey bees, which live in large colonies of up to 100,000 individuals. At some point humans began to attempt to domesticate wild bees in artificial hives made from hollow logs, wooden boxes, pottery vessels, and woven straw baskets or “skeps”. Traces of beeswax are found in pot sherds throughout the Middle East beginning about 7000 BCE.
Related to natural beekeeping, urban beekeeping is an attempt to revert to a less industrialized way of obtaining honey by utilizing small-scale colonies that pollinate urban gardens. Urban apiculture has undergone a renaissance in the first decade of the 21st century, and urban beekeeping is seen by many as a growing trend.
Some have found that “city bees” are actually healthier than “rural bees” because there are fewer pesticides and greater biodiversity. Urban bees may fail to find forage, however, and homeowners can use their landscapes to help feed local bee populations by planting flowers that provide nectar and pollen. An environment of year-round, uninterrupted bloom creates an ideal environment for colony reproduction
Modern honeybee colonies are designed to mimic the dimensions and environment of a bee’s nest built naturally by wild (feral) honeybees, with the added ability to remove individual frames of honeycomb for inspection and manipulation. The dimensions of the removable frames are similar in dimension to honeycomb built in the wild. One notable feature is that the space between each frame, known as the “bee space”, is approx. 8 mm. This space is sufficient for the bees to move around but not big enough so that the bees will build additional honeycomb in the space, thus facilitating easy removal of the frames.
A standard bee hive consists of:
- One bottom board
- One or two brood chambers (each containing 9 or 10 removable frames)
- One queen excluder (to prevent the queen from moving from the brood chamber to the honey supers)
- One or more honey supers (boxes each containing 9 or 10 removable frames)
- One inner cover
- One telescoping hive cover
The essential tools required by a beekeeper to manipulate honeybee colonies are:
- Smoker
- Hive tool
- Bee veil
Some beekeepers additionally may use a full bee suit with gloves, and a bee brush.
Beekeepers check their colonies approximately once every 10 days from spring until fall to ensure the colonies have good nutrition, strong health, and enough space. The best time to check the hive is on a warm sunny day with little wind to prevent chilling the brood and to take advantage of having most of the field bees away from the hive. The primary things that a beekeeper is looking for when doing a hive inspection are:
- 1.Are there fresh eggs present? This signifies that a queen is present, even if she is not seen during the inspection.
- 2.Is the brood pattern good? A spotty appearance to the brood pattern may indicate a poorly performing queen or disease issues.
- 3.Does the colony have enough honey and pollen? If there is not enough food stores, and there is little external food present, the colony may need supplemental feeding.
- 4.Are there any signs of disease? If so, appropriate disease treatment protocols may need to be initiated.
- 5.Is there enough space? If the colony is strong and there is an abundant food source, a lack of space will cause the colony to swarm.
Every Beekeeper has its own agenda, depending on location and weather factors. Beekeeper from the Mid-latitudes, between 23°26’22” North. and 23°26’22” South, in warmer climate, are always working year round, whereas as beekeeper from colder climates, their calendars is somewhat similar to this:
In February and March, beekeepers are checking to ensure that the bees have enough food and are strong and healthy. If a colony becomes weak, it is combined with a strong one. If a colony becomes too strong, it may be divided in half by the beekeeper, thus creating two colonies. Poor queen bees may be replaced with new ones, and beekeeping equipment is removed from colonies that did not survive the winter. In the world today, this unfortunately occurs 35% of the time.
During April and May, beekeepers are checking to ensure that the bees have enough room to expand the colony. If the bees outgrow their physical space, they will swarm. During swarming, a little over half of the population of bees leaves the hive to start another colony. If this happens, the beekeeper will lose the year’s honey crop from the colony that swarms.
In June and July, the majority of honey and pollen for the year is gathered. During this critical time, the beekeeper might need to visit the hives every day. Full boxes of honey are removed for extracting, and empty boxes returned to the hives for refilling. Pollen traps are emptied into freezers for storage, and no one gets a day off.
By August and September, the last of the honey crop is gathered and the bees are prepped for winter. Beekeepers ensure that brood is redistributed to make all colonies of equal strength. Colonies are fed if needed, and weak colonies are combined to make strong ones. In colder climates, all of the colonies are wrapped in an insulated blanket by October.
SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_latitudes
Urban Beekeeper geographical position is bountiful, in which we are able to rely on plants and trees at least 7-9 months in a year, for pollination.