Collection of nectar and pollen

Bees collect nectar and flower pollen from the flowers of plants. Nectar is distinguished by special glands of plants – nectaries. After processing with a bee, it becomes honey. Bees can collect other sweet substances.

Flying from flower to flower, bees gradually fill with nectar their crabs, in which, under the influence of enzymes in saliva, it undergoes chemical processing. Thus cane sugar turns into fruit and grape. With such processing, other complex substances are added to the nectar, mainly the products of the salivary glands of bees and the amount of water decreases. The processed nectar is called honey.

Return to the hive, the bees do not always directly pour honey into the cells, usually they give it to bees working in the beehive, and they themselves fly behind the nectar again. The arrival of bees of honey and pollen is called a bribe.

If the bribes are plentiful, the beekeepers do not add the nectar they brought themselves, but pass it to the young bees that process it and place it in the right places.

With a weak bribe, pickers can do this job themselves. Only they add the nectar to the first honeycombs that are free, and the young bees then take it, process it and transfer it to other free cells. Further processing of nectar is also carried out by young bees.

It requires considerable time and a large number of bees. Since spring, bribes are usually small, and in the summer gradually increases. The time when the largest number of honey-plants blossom and the bees collect the most honey, is called the main bribe.

In Russia, looking on the ground, the main bribe is mainly in June and July, less often in May and August. In August – most often with late buckwheat and heather. Bee honey is easy to recognize, because it seems fuller, heavier in flight and while holding the end of the abdomen is hanging downward.

If it is pinned, then

a drop of pure nectar comes out of her mouth, and in the case when she carries water, a drop of water is squeezed out. The nectar brought by the bee to the hive contains, with a few exceptions, 60-80% of the water. Evaporation of water in the hive is accelerated by the movement of air, which bees produce, strenuously flapping their wings.

Bees put the honey in honeycombs, starting from above, and gradually fill them to the bottom.

When honey is folded, European bees often adhere to this order: if the frames in the hive are parallel to the tap (“warm drift”), then the nearest honeycombs, except for the first one, will be almost entirely occupied by the brood, and only at the top will have a little, pollen and honey, and the rear distances from the tap, the honeycomb can be completely filled with honey.

On the first from the tap frame is placed mainly pergus and a little honey, and sometimes – and brood. If the frames in the hive are placed edge-to-edge (“cold skid”), the honeycombs located to the right and left of the tap hole will usually be filled with honey, and the honeycomb with the brood and pollen, folded mainly around the brood, will be located before the tap.

In the superstructure, the honeycomb is first filled with honey over the brood. Caucasian bees are more likely to fill with honey free cells in the nest inside the nest. The cells into which the honey forms, are lengthened by bees so that between the two honeycombs there is hardly a passage for one bee.

When honey, which is in the cells, evaporates sufficiently, the bees begin to seal it with wax lids. Honey, closed with a wax lid, is called sealed, or abandoned.

Printing honey prevents it from excessive evaporation and crystallization, the so-called “sugaring”. In crystallized form honey becomes unsuitable for feeding bees. On the other hand, by printing honey is protected from excessive moisture. The fact that honey has the property of hygroscopicity, that is, it strongly absorbs water from moist air, and therefore in damp rooms the unsealed honey soon liquefies and sour.

In addition to honey (carbohydrate substances), bees, like other animals, also need protein substances that they receive from the pollen they collect.

Flowers of some plants have so much pollen that it can be easily collected. If you take the mature earrings of hazel or aspen, or a brush of flowering hemp and shake, then the pollen will pour out of them like flour.

Flying from flower to flower, the bee is dusted with pollen. With the help of brushes on legs, she sweeps the pollen off the body, folds it into “baskets” and carries this pollen into the hive. Beekeepers say: “bees carry update”, or “go with the update”.

The color of the update can be different: white, yellow, pink, red, etc., depending on what colors it is taken from. Willow gives yellow renovation, white mountain ash, red sirloin, chestnut crimson, hawthorn and blackthorn pink, etc.

According to the form, the pollen grains are also different depending on which plants they are taken from. The bee usually brings a monochrome one. It depends on the fact that each time it collects pollen from one type of flowers. Only in the case of a lack of flowering plants, bees are visited at the same time by different plants.

The bees brought to the pollen are folded into cells and tamped. Put in the cells and tamped pollen (rejuvenation) is called a perga. If the perg is harvested for the winter, then the bees lightly, cover it with honey, so that it does not deteriorate.

With a copious bribe, honey bees are supplemented with honey from the pearl box and sealed.

Added to perge saccharic substance (honey) is processed by bacteria into lactic acid, which is a preservative and protects the pergue from spoilage.

Perga can deteriorate from dampness. In beehives with poor ventilation (with a single tap with a solid wooden ceiling), the pepper spoils quickly.

Bees fold the pollen into the bee cells, which are located mainly near the brood. Therefore, when expanding the nest of a honeycomb with a pearl, it is necessary to move aside and put new frames in their place.

On the honeycomb, the brood, honey and pollen are as follows: in the middle of a honeycomb brood, above the semigree of pergus, and even farther to the top – honey. In addition, the hundredth with the brood is a honeycomb with pollen, followed by honeycombs or empty, depending on the season, a bribe, the strength of the family and other conditions.

This is the location of the brood and. food reserves should not be impaired aimlessly by the beekeeper, so as not to cause unnecessary work to bees.

Due to the increase in the brood and the number of flowering plants, the bees are mostly brought by the Pergis in spring and early summer, less by the end of summer and even less in autumn. Therefore, the late swarms often in the spring lacks pergi. If the hive does not have a uterus and an unprinted brood, then the bees collect very little pollen. But when they have a lot of larvae that require food, and there is an opportunity to take out the uterus, the bees carry the renewal as hard as they do. in the presence of the uterus. That is why the absence of the uterus and the cessation of further broods sometimes lead to the piling of honeycombs.

The bee brings at once such an amount of pollen, which is about 3 of its own weight. Multiple experiments have shown that bees during the rearing of brood can not do without pergi. If there is no Perga or if the bees are forced to feed the brood with a spoiled Perga, then it soon dies, which can not be allowed. However, without honey, neither a bee nor a brood can eat.

Uterus and drones do not eat pepper.

Perga often so hardens that the spring seems to be stony. Such a pengu bee is thrown out of the cells. This is extremely difficult for them to work. Bees are forced to gnaw honeycomb and throw out hard lumps. In this case, the beekeeper must himself cut off the cells with such a penguin to the honeycomb of the honeycomb or remove such honeycombs from the hive. Water bees are brought in honey cinders. It is necessary for bees, especially at a time when brood rearing is produced. Water is required to dilute the thickened honey, prepare the brood for brood, to maintain the humidity of the air in the nest and to quench thirst with too warm a hibernation.

In a normal winter, bees are content with the water that the printed honey absorbs into itself from the air. In summer they take water outside the hive. In a strong heat, bees take a lot of water and squirt it on the rulers of the frames, where it evaporates, lowers the temperature and increases the humidity in the hive. If the family, due to the rearrangement of the beehive or for other reasons, loses its flying bees, then it takes 3-5 days to put water in such a hive until the young bees fly, otherwise the bees will suffer from thirst without water and will throw out the unprinted brood. Therefore, receptions, in which bee colonies are deprived of flying bees, must be avoided.

In the spring in search of water, bees fly at a temperature of 8-10 њ, and sometimes even at 7 њ. On cold and windy days in streams and reservoirs, many bees coming here to the watering place perish, so on the apiary you need to put water in the water bowls. Bees need alkalis, salts and other minerals, so they willingly take salted water, sometimes visit cesspools, puddles of slurry, etc. So that they do not fly to such places, it is better to give them, except for ordinary still slightly salted water.