Peace-loving insects of bees
No matter how strange it seems, bees are insects peaceful. Perhaps, everyone had to visit a flowering garden or admire the multicolored meadow grasses. Thousands of bees work at this time on flowers. And neither one pays attention to you. They are engaged in foraging. If you want to catch a bee, she will try to fly to a safe place as soon as possible. No bee collecting nectar or pollen will touch anyone.
Such a powerful tool, like a sting, was required for bees to protect their homes and hidden treasures. And to the treasure of priceless wealth of bees – honey matched many lovers of sweet: and insects – flies, butterflies, wasps, ants, bees, including alien bee-thief, and these dangerous predators like bears and martens. Even the name of the bear received from the words “honey” and “know.”
In other words, a scout of honey. This sensitive beast, sweetened by smell and sound, very quickly discovers a hollow with bees and will not miss the opportunity to ruin it to eat a medka. Bears often at night and now go to the taiga apiaries and, if they manage, break the hives or take them to the forest and there they savor fragrant honey. The bear is said to have nine songs and everything about honey.
They love honey and bird-eaters. And one of them – the medical student easily finds a nest of bees and with his shout and behavior shows the way to him to a person or even a bear, who, it turns out, understands it well. The bird is usually content with the remnants of honey. Here against these enemies, the bees and put into action their formidable “military equipment.”
Man also had and must experience the effect of this powerful remedy. After all, he also invades the possessions of the bees that they guard, sparing no life – after the bees sting, bleeding, dies. The stinging apparatus comes off together with the poisonous reservoirs.
If bees, far from their home, try to escape from danger, then near the nest, on the contrary, they are very decisive. A person who has become near the beehive in the summer of bees, or an animal that has entered the apiary, can not escape the stinging. Watchdogs will not leave this unnoticed. They, apparently, perceive this as a danger to their nest. Therefore, their protective reaction is natural.
Cells are of age.
The nest of bees changes with time. The newly built honeycombs are white as sugar. Then they darken, become creamy. This shade gives them a thin layer of propolis, which bees polish the walls of cells (propolis protects the future larva from the effects of microorganisms). The color changes from the pigment of the flower pollen left by the pickers when they walk on the honeycombs. After the release of 2-3 generations, the honeycomb stains even more, becomes light brown. After another 3-4 generations – brown, and after 12 generations – dark brown.
This is due to the fact that the larva grows, spins the finest thread and from it weaves a cocoon, yellow in color, densely adhering to the walls and bottom of the cell or to the cocoons left by other bees. From this layering, the honeycomb becomes old and in the end becomes black. The volume of cells also decreases. If in a new cell the diameter of the cell is 5.6 mm, then after the birth of 15 generations it is already 5.2 mm. The height of the walls also changes. The volume of cells decreases not only because the larvae leave their cocoons, but also because their bowel movements accumulate at the bottom. In such narrow and shallow cell-cells of a black honeycomb, bees grow small, lightweight, physically weak and less able to work.
Aging nest of the bee instinctively feel and try to stop it. They gnaw out cocoons, lengthen the cells, spending a lot of time and energy on this. There are cases when families left their old nests, although there was a lot of honey in them. They moved into empty hollows, settled them and created their nests anew, forgetting about the left riches.
Only then the beekeeper can count on large medosbori, when he timely replaces the old honeycomb with young ones and has a sufficient reserve of quality honeycombs.
Determine the condition of bees in winter can only by external signs and the voice of the family.
Watch the hibernation of bees.
If bees winter in the wild, it is enough to have only a rubber tube of 1 m length and a wire with a bent end.
Go to the hive, look in the tray. If it is free, then the air normally enters the hive. Insert one end of the tube into the tray, and the other one lean against your ear and you will hear the voice of the family. Quiet and even indicates that the bees winter normally. At the beginning of winter, he is close, and at the end, when the club moves up, is a distant, barely audible one. The different-voiced sound is a sign of bezmutochnosti.
To know how bees react to low temperatures, you must listen to them in severe frosts and thaw. Try to catch the difference in the voice of the bees. Record it on a tape recorder so that you can compare it later.
Wrap the wire from the beehive of dead bees and rubbish. On them it is possible to determine the course of wintering. Few dead bees are a natural waste, many are the result of some unfavorable conditions.
Dry shoe speaks of well-being, wet and moldy – about dampness in the nest. This is a signal of danger. Strengthen the ventilation of the hive. If at the bottom of the crystals – honey crystallized, ventilation and then help.
In the room where bees hibernate, go in and behave carefully, do not knock, use lanterns with red glass.
Using a thermometer suspended in the hibernate, determine the air temperature, compare it with the reference temperature (0 ± 2 њ C) and the outside temperature. Determine the humidity in the psychrometer. If the temperature and humidity of the air exceed the norm (0 – 4 њ у, humidity 80%), strengthen the ventilation of the room: open the supply and exhaust pipes more widely.
Listen to the general buzz of bees, and then use a rubber tube to listen to families to choose from, especially those that make noise more than others.
If individual families sit very quietly, you can just tap your finger on the wall of the hive. A friendly response, instantly subsiding speaks of well-being; weak, unfriendly, rustling – about starvation. Give this family honey or a thick sugar syrup.
The date of inspection, the testimony of devices, the behavior of families and the work done, put in a notebook. This information will help to make the right conclusion and choose the best method of wintering.
So you got acquainted with the fascinating and not at all simple life of honey bees, we hope, made friends with them. And if you are careful, you could not help but notice: as the sun reflects the dew in a drop of dew, so the perfection of living nature appears in the bee family. Only knowing the life and behavior of bees can learn how to manage them, become a literate beekeeper.
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