Bees live by families
Honey bees live not alone, like many other insects, but in large communities, families. They are, like bumblebees, ants and wasps, and are therefore called public insects.
In the family of honey bees, as in every family, there should be parents and children. The way it is. In most social insects, including bees, the family is founded by a female. The family of bees consists of the mother and her children. All of its members, therefore, are close relatives.
Each family of bees lives independently of other families, even if they are neighbors. On the contrary, each family protects its independence and treats intolerantly, even mercilessly, other people’s bees. The family does not give credit to the family, the beekeepers say. This behavior was developed by bees in the course of their centuries-old development: only families survived that could procure a large amount of food and knew how to protect it, while the weak, unable to feed themselves and create reserves, perished. This principle also applies to modern honey bees.
Many millions of years ago, honey bees, as scientists believe, lived not by families, but alone, separately from each other. Each bee built itself a nest, extracted food, grew offspring, one wintered, that is, led the same way of life as all other single insects. Then, with climate change, especially the significant cooling that occurred on Earth, bees that failed to develop the property of accumulating a large amount of reserve substances in the body and falling into hibernation began to group. After all, it is warmer together, and it is possible to carry out any kind of work. Children did not leave the parent’s nest, families increased in size, and when they became too large, they shared. Led by young uterus, new families were formed – swarms.
This process of honey bees lasted millions of years. They are so adapted to live together that
They can not live alone anymore. The bee, who is outside the family, even if she has a lot of food, very soon, literally in a few hours, dies. Exactly the same happens with ants. Public insects can not live in isolation. If 2-3 bees linger on the blossoming sunflower basket and do not have time to return home at night, they will try to approach each other and together, pressing and sharing nectar, will stay till morning, even if these bees will come from different families.
When it gets colder, one bee can not maintain the necessary body temperature and is numb, and in the group, especially large, even in severe frosts, the bees calmly winter.
In a large bee family there are 70-80 thousand insects each. This is about as many as the residents in the whole city. For such an accumulation of insects to exist: to provide themselves with food, maintain the nest in the necessary order, create warmth in the cold season, each family member must have his duties and perform certain work.
The youngest, who were only 3-4 days old, already clean the cells in which they lived. In other words, they clean up after themselves. And when they grow up a little and their glands will give out milk, they themselves start feeding larvae.
Care of the offspring (brood) of bees is very tense. The larva has to feed literally every minute. It grows with a fantastic speed and requires a lot of food. Thanks to good nutrition for the first six days, its mass is increased 1300 times. But on this the care of worker bees for brood does not end. After sealing the cell, the larva needs heat, the wetting bees maintain a temperature of 35 њ C in the brood zone before exiting from the cell of the adult insect.
During his life, a working bee can feed 2-3 larvae. In the first days, it feeds more adult larvae, and when its glands finally develop and begin to produce more nutritious milk, the youngest, who just need such a valuable food.
Approximately at the age of two weeks, the bee-breadwinner changes her “profession” of the teacher to no less important – the construction one. This is due to the onset of the action of the waxing glands. The bee repairs the old cells, restores them, repairs the potholes and damages that occur during the life of the family, builds new honeycombs, seals with cells with adult larvae and with mature honey.
Open the nest of bees, and you will see in it the continuous movement of something busy, swarming insects.
Some are busy over cells with larvae, others are building honeycombs, and many are touching each other with their proboscis. Fodder ties, when one bee shares food with another, is very widespread in the family. Between all bees day and night there is an active and continuous exchange of nutrients. Young feed the feed along with the hormonal substances to the bees old and thereby support their energy, activity.
Family from the nursery.
For the organization of the apiary or its increase, packages are also very good. They can be written out from breeding nurseries even in May, much earlier than it is possible to create new families on the spot. They have time to work on almost all the spring melliferous. Traveling on an airplane or in a post car package families suffer without complications.
The bees and uterus in the packages are young. Therefore, under favorable conditions, they normally grow.
For each package family, a hive and 5-6 frames are prepared in advance. Having received the packages on the mail, they are kept in the evening in a cool room or in the shade. In the sun from overheating bees can die. At the end of the day, the bees are transferred to the hives: the cage with the uterus is inserted between the frames, the feeder is removed, the bees are poured into the hive and lightly lighten them. As soon as they go into the nest, they put the ceiling, warming, they put the roof on the hive, they open the door a little. Overnight, the bees will master the new nest, in the morning they will get acquainted with the terrain, and begin to work in the field. After that, the uterus is released from the cell.
At the new apiary, where there are no honeycombs, packaged bees have to be moved to frames with a honeycomb and immediately provide food – sugar syrup. Prepare it usually from the same amount of water and sugar. Sugar sand is dissolved in hot water. Once the syrup has cooled to the temperature of fresh milk, it is poured into the feeding troughs and distributed to packaged families. In the first two to three weeks, as long as they arrange the nests and grow brood, they will have to give 8-10 kg of feed. If bees bring a lot of nectar, the amount of food can be reduced.
The syrup is poured as the feeders are freed. It is good to strengthen the bags with 1-2 frames of the printed brood. For two weeks the nests are rebuilt, and soon they need to be expanded. To blooming plants of the main bribe, early packaged families can occupy 2 buildings and have 10 frames with brood of all ages, that is, they are able to stock a lot of food and prepare for the winter. Batch families do not swarm.
The school apiary in 10-12 hives is already a good apiary. It can be well acquainted with the life of bees and learn how to breed them. With proper care and abundance of honey, such an apiary gives a lot of honey.
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