Equipment
Bee keepers equipment mainly consists of a bee suit, smoker and hive tool.
With these and entle hands we can work and handle bee swarms and colonies.
Populations of bees and other insect pollinators have fallen dramatically in recent years and there is growing scientific evidence that pesticides are playing a significant role.
Our role as bee keepers is to try and manage bees had in hand with the local farmers.
Pesticides
Swarming is the process by which a new honey bee colony is formed when the queen bee leaves the colony with a large group of worker bees. In the prime swarm, about 60% of the worker bees leave the original hive location with the old queen.
This swarm can contain thousands to tens of thousands of bees.
Swarming is mainly a spring phenomenon, usually within a two- or three-week period depending on the locale, but occasional swarms can happen throughout the producing season. Secondary afterswarms may happen but are rare. Afterswarms are usually smaller and are accompanied by one or more virgin queens. Sometimes a beehive will swarm in succession until it is almost totally depleted of workers.
Swarming is the natural means of reproduction of honey bee colonies. In the process of swarming the original single colony reproduces to two and sometimes more colonies.
Entomologistsconsider a colony as a superorganism. A colony with a queen needs a certain colony size to reproduce. An individual queen, drone or bee without a colony cannot survive for long.
A swarm has to be tested for several diseases incuding Acarine and Nosema and quarantined to check for foulbrood disease. They also have to be treated for varroa mite.