Beekeeping, also known as apiculture, is vital in enhancing food resources and agricultural ecosystems worldwide. Food is the basic requirement for all living organisms to grow and function. As bees pollinate a wide variety of crops, they contribute to the production of fruits, vegetables, and nuts. By maintaining colonies of honeybees, beekeepers produce honey, beeswax, and other hive products.
Through the careful management of bee colonies and the promotion of sustainable beekeeping practices, beekeepers play a role in supporting biodiversity and enhancing ecosystem services. In this article, you can find the beekeeping class 9 notes, products obtained from apiculture, and more.
Apiculture or Beekeeping
The word ‘apiculture’ comes from the Latin word ‘apis’ meaning bee. Beekeeping or apiculture is the rearing, care, and management of honeybee for acquiring honey, wax, and other substances. Beekeeping has been practiced for centuries and is integral to agriculture, horticulture, and ecological conservation. By managing bee colonies, beekeepers not only harvest valuable products like honey but also play a crucial role in pollinating crops, thereby improving agricultural yields and food security. Beekeeping is a low-investment enterprise.
Products Obtained from Apiculture or Beekeeping
Apiculture or beekeeping give us many useful products such as honey, wax, propolis, royal jelly and bee venom.
- Honey: It is a sweet, viscous edible fluid consisting of sugars, water or moisture, minerals, vitamins, amino acids, enzymes, and pollen. Honey's minerals are calcium, iron, phosphate, and manganese. Vitamins present in honey are Pantothenic acid, Biotin, Pyridoxin, Choline, Ascorbic acid, Thiamine, Riboflavin, and Niacin. The color, flavor, and odor of honey usually depend on the flowers from which nectar is collected. 1 Kg of honey contains 3200 calories and is basically an energy-rich food.
- Bee wax: Bee wax is utilized in the construction of the hive. This wax is used by human beings for numerous purposes such as manufacturing cosmetics, cold creams, shaving creams, polishes, candles, ointments, lipsticks, lubricants, modeling work, etc.
- Propolis and balms are another gathering of bee from the plants. These substances are helpful in repairing and fastening of the comb.
- Poison of bees is used in making certain Ayurvedic and Homeopathic medicines.
Honeybee Varieties Used for Bee Keeping
The scienitifc name of honey bee is Apis indica. In India, both indigenous and exotic varieties of honeybees are used for the commercial production of honey.
Indigenous Varieties of Honeybees
- Apis cerana indica F. (Indian bee).
- Apis dorsata F. (Rock bee).
- Apis florae F. (Little bee).
Exotic Varieties of Honeybees
- Apis mellifera (European or Italian bee).
- Apis adamsoni (South African bee).
Why is Italian bee variety preferred for commercial production?
Italian bee is preferred as it:
- Provides a higher yield of honey.
- Have a good honey collection capacity.
- It has self-defense ability.
- Stings lesser than that of the local variety bees.
- Has a longer breeding period.
- It has a prolific queen with less swarming.
Colony and Castes of Honeybee
The bee is a social insect. The nest of the honeybee is termed the beehive. Honeybees provide a good example of teamwork and division of labor. A colony of Italian bee usually has a single queen, 40,000 to 100, 000 workers, and a few hundred drones. A caste is defined as the collection of individuals within the colony that are morphologically different from individuals in other castes and perform specific tasks. Based on the roles, there are following three kinds of castes in the colony of bees:
Queen Bee
- The Queen is bigger than other castes of bees in the colony.
- Bee's legs are strong.
- The queen plays a significant role in laying eggs. She lays up to 2000 eggs per day of each season.
- The queen lays both fertilized (diploid, 2n) and unfertilized (haploid n) eggs.
- Queen and workers emerge from the fertilized eggs, while drones come out from unfertilized eggs. Thus, queens are larger, they mate, lay eggs, eat proteinaceous food, and often do not forage or defend the colony.
Drone Honey Bee
- The drone is a haploid, fertile male. Drones are larger than workers and are quite noisy.
- They are unable to gather food but eat voraciously.
- They are stingless, and their main role is to mate with the queen and remain in the colony to sleep and eat honey.
- Their role is only in the breeding season; hence, they are made to leave the hive to save honey from them.
Worker Honey Bee
- The worker is a diploid, sterile female (i.e., it can't reproduce).
- The size of the worker is the smallest among the castes of bees.
- Workers are the most active members of the colony; they have almost all responsibilities on their shoulders.
- For various indoor and outdoor chores, the workers are provided with a variety of organs such as hypopharyngeal glands (for secretion of bee milk), wax glands (for building the cells of comb), pollen baskets on their hind legs (for the collection of pollen), sucking type mouth parts (for collecting the nectar), high level of secretion of invertase enzyme (in the honey sac for honey formation) and a sting at the tip of the abdomen (for the defense of the colony).
- Workers live for 3 to 12 months. The function of workers changes with age. During the first half of their life, workers are engaged in indoor duties as scavengers, nurse bees, fanner bees, and guard bees. During the second half, they perform outside duties as scout bees and forager bees, the worker of a hive falls under three major age groups. These are:
- Scavenger Bees: For the first three days, each worker bee acts as a scavenger. Cleaning the walls and floor of empty cells of the colony for reuse.
- Nurse Bees: From the fourth day onwards, each worker bee feeds the entire brood, like a foster mother, with a mixture of honey and pollen. By the seventh day, it starts producing royal jelly, which is fed to the queen and future queen bees. Nurse bees also perform guard duties. They defend the colony from intruders. They kill the intruder by stinging, but also get killed with the loss of sting.
- Foraging or field Bees: They explore new sources of nectar (as scout bees). Forager bees collect nectar, pollen, and propolis. Nectar is changed into honey in their crops.
Bee Colony
Also Read: Honey Bee Life Cycle
Diseases and Enemies of Honeybee
Honeybees are commonly infected by viruses, bacteria, fungi, and protozoa:
| Pathogen | Disease |
|---|
| Bacillus apisceptious | Septicemia |
| Paenibacillius larvae | Brood foul disease |
| Nosema apis | Nosema disease |
| Entamoeba histolytica | Amoeba disease |
| Acarapis woodi | Vahlkampfia and acarine diseases |
| Wasps, wax moths, mites | Common pests/enemies of bees |
Paralysis flycatchers, chaffinch, green blue eaters, sparrows, etc., use bee as their meal. Wasps are controlled manually (i.e., by destroying the wasp nests from the locality of apiary). The wax moth is controlled by exposing bees in bee hives to the sun, by increasing temperature. Bee-eater birds are scared away by some device.
Importance of Beekeeping
Some of the importance of beekeeping are:
- Enhances pollination of crops, leading to increased agricultural yields and improved food security.
- Produces valuable hive products such as honey, beeswax, propolis, and royal jelly, which have various culinary, medicinal, and commercial applications.
- Supports biodiversity by maintaining healthy bee populations and promoting the conservation of pollinator species.
- Contributes to sustainable agricultural practices by reducing the reliance on synthetic pesticides through natural pollination services.
- Provides economic opportunities for beekeepers through the sale of hive products, pollination services, and bee-related products and services.
- Plays a vital role in ecological balance by facilitating the reproduction of flowering plants and maintaining ecosystem stability.
Working at Beehive
There are 10,000 to 60,000 bees in a colony. But all of them do not play a role in collecting nectar. The queen bee and female bees lay thousands of eggs. All larvae of bees are fed on special proteinaceous food, called royal jelly or bee milk, which is secreted by the hypopharyngeal glands of the young workers. And the duration that they fed will decide their role as a worker or queen. The drone bees are male, and they only take part in fertilizing the eggs laid by the queen, and the worker bees do the real work of collecting nectar.
Conclusion - Bee Keeping
Beekeeping is an important practice that benefits both the environment and humans as a whole. Individuals who keep bees can help to replenish the declining bee population, contribute to increased biodiversity, and enjoy the many products that bees produce, such as honey and beeswax. Beekeeping plays a crucial role in improving food resources by helping in the pollination of crops, increasing crop yields, and enhancing biodiversity. By supporting bee populations through sustainable beekeeping practices, ensure a more secure and sustainable food supply for future generations.
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