First off: What is beekeeping?

Beekeeping (or apiculture, from Latin apis, bee) is the maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. A beekeeper (or apiarist) keeps bees in order to collect honey and beeswax, to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary.

Origins

There are more than 20,000 species of wild bees[2]. Many species are solitary[3], and many others rear their young in burrows and small colonies, like mason bees and bumblebees. 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. In Europe and America the species universally managed by beekeepers is the Western honey bee (Apis mellifera). This species has several sub-species or regional varieties, such as the Italian bee (Apis mellifera ligustica ), European dark bee (Apis mellifera mellifera), and the Carniolan honey bee (Apis mellifera carnica). In the tropics, other species of social bee are managed for honey production, including Apis cerana. All of the Apis mellifera sub-species are capable of inter-breeding and hybridizing. Many bee breeding companies strive to selectively breed and hybridize varieties to produce desirable qualities: disease and parasite resistance, good honey production, swarming behaviour reduction, prolific breeding, and mild disposition. Some of these hybrids are marketed under specific brand names, such as the Buckfast Bee or Midnite Bee. The advantages of the initial F1 hybrids produced by these crosses include: hybrid vigor, increased honey productivity, and greater disease resistance. The disadvantage is that in subsequent generations these advantages may fade away and hybrids tend to be very defensive and aggressive.

Wild honey harvesting

Collecting honey from wild bee colonies is one of the most ancient human activities and is still practiced by aboriginal societies in parts of Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America. Some of the earliest evidence of gathering honey from wild colonies is from rock paintings, dating to around 13,000 BC. Gathering honey from wild bee colonies is usually done by subduing the bees with smoke and breaking open the tree or rocks where the colony is located, often resulting in the physical destruction of the colony.

Colony reproduction; swarming and supersedure

A swarm about to landAll colonies are totally dependent on their queen, who is the only egg-layer. However, even the best queens live only a few years and one or two years longevity is the norm. She can choose whether or not to fertilize an egg as she lays it; if she does so, it develops into a female worker bee; if she lays an unfertilized egg it becomes a male drone. She decides which type of egg to lay depending on the size of the open brood cell which she encounters on the comb; in a small worker cell she lays a fertilized egg; if she finds a much larger drone cell she lays an unfertilized drone egg.

All the time that the queen is fertile and laying eggs she produces a variety of pheromones which control the behavior of the bees in the hive; these are commonly called 'queen substance' but in reality there are various different pheromones with different functions. As the queen ages she begins to run out of stored sperm and her pheromones begin to fail. At some point, inevitably, the queen begins to falter and the bees will decide to replace her by creating a new queen from one of her worker eggs. They may do this because she has been damaged (lost a leg or an antenna), because she has run out of sperm and cannot lay fertilized eggs (has become a 'drone laying queen') or because her pheromones have dwindled to a point where they cannot control all the bees in the hive anymore.

At this juncture the bees will produce one or more queen cells by modifying existing worker cells which contain a normal female egg. However, there are two distinct behaviors which the bees pursue:

Supersedure: queen replacement within one hive without swarming Swarm cell production: the division of the hive into two colonies by swarming Different sub-species of Apis mellifera exhibit differing swarming characteristics which reflect their evolution in different ecotopes of the European continent. In general the more northerly black races are said to swarm less and supersede more, whereas the more southerly yellow and grey varieties are said to swarm more frequently. The truth is complicated because of the prevalence of cross-breeding and hybridization of the sub species and opinions differ.

Supersedure is highly valued as a behavioral trait by beekeepers because a hive that supersedes its old queen does not swarm and so no stock is lost; it merely creates a new queen and allows the old one to fade away, or alternatively she is killed when the new queen emerges. When superseding a queen the bees will produce just one or two queen cells, characteristically in the center of the face of a broodcomb.

In swarming, by contrast, a great many queen cells are created — typically a dozen or more — and these are located around the edges of a broodcomb, most often at the sides and the bottom.

New wax combs between basement joistsOnce either process has begun, the old queen will normally leave the hive with the hatching of the first queen cells. When she leaves the hive the old queen is accompanied by a large number of bees, predominantly young bees (wax-secreters), who will form the basis of the new hive. Scouts are sent out from the swarm to find suitable hollow trees or rock crevices and as soon as one is found the entire swarm moves in, building new wax brood combs within a matter of hours using the honey stores which the young bees have filled themselves with before leaving the old hive. Only young bees can secrete wax from special abdominal segments and this is why there tends to be more young bees than old in swarms. Often a number of virgin queens accompany the first swarm (the 'prime swarm'), and the old queen is replaced as soon as a daughter queen is mated and laying. Otherwise, she will be quickly superseded in their new home.