Honey flow is a term used by beekeepers indicating that one or more major nectar sources are in bloom and the weather is favorable for bees to fly and collect the nectar in abundance.
Beekeeping is the maintenance of bee colonies, commonly in man-made hives, by humans. Most such bees are honey bees in the genus Apis, but other honey-producing bees such as Melipona stingless bees are also kept. A beekeeper keeps bees in order to collect their honey and other products that the hive produce, to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary or "bee yard."
A nectar source is a flowering plant that produces nectar as part of its reproductive strategy. These plants create nectar, which attract pollinating insects and sometimes other animals such as birds.
The higher northern and southern latitudes with their longer summer day time hours can be of considerable benefit for honey production. Flowers bloom for longer hours and the time per day that bees can fly is extended, so the number of trips per day is higher. In addition, the higher latitudes do not have hot and dry periods in the summer where virtually all of the excess nectar flow dries up.
Where there are a succession of nectar sources throughout the summer season, a honeyflow may last for many weeks. In other areas significant honeyflows may only last two or three weeks per year from one or a limited number of nectar sources. The rest of the year is spent in just maintenance – a situation where the incoming nectar and pollen nearly match the needed food for the hive, or where sufficient reserve stores must be present for the hive to survive a winter season.
Speed of work
Honeybees visit up to about 40 flowers per minute depending on floral type, nectar availability and weather conditions. Floral visitation rate by honeybees of some important crops:
The longer the time period, the greater the nectar availability. It takes twice as much time to collect a load of nectar compared with a load of pollen. A bee will visit 100–1000 flowers per trip from the hive.
Pollen is a fine to coarse powdery substance comprising pollen grains which are male microgametophytes of seed plants, which produce male gametes. Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gametophytes during the process of their movement from the stamens to the pistil of flowering plants, or from the male cone to the female cone of coniferous plants. If pollen lands on a compatible pistil or female cone, it germinates, producing a pollen tube that transfers the sperm to the ovule containing the female gametophyte. Individual pollen grains are small enough to require magnification to see detail. The study of pollen is called palynology and is highly useful in paleoecology, paleontology, archaeology, and forensics. Pollen in plants is used for transferring haploid male genetic material from the anther of a single flower to the stigma of another in cross-pollination. In a case of self-pollination, this process takes place from the anther of a flower to the stigma of the same flower.
There is general agreement that a single bee will do an average of 10 trips per day (range 7–13). Large single loads of nectar may weigh 70 mg for Italian bees. Sometimes a hive may gain 4–10 kg in a single day. For a 5 kg (11 pounds) gain this means:
Apis mellifera ligustica is the Italian bee which is a subspecies of the western honey bee.
In modern beekeeping, a Langstroth hive is any vertically modular beehive that has the key features of vertically hung frames, a bottom board with entrance for the bees, boxes containing frames for brood and honey and an inner cover and top cap to provide weather protection. In a Langstroth hive, the bees build honeycomb into frames, which can be moved with ease. The frames are designed to prevent bees from attaching honeycombs where they would either connect adjacent frames, or connect frames to the walls of the hive. The movable frames allow the beekeeper to manage the bees in a way which was formerly impossible.
In two days a strong hive with more than 20,000 foragers may fill a honey super. This is for nectar, ripe honey has its water fraction reduced significantly.
A honey super is a part of a commercial or other managed beehive that is used to collect honey. The most common variety is the "Illinois" or "medium" super with a depth of 65⁄8 inches, in the length and width dimensions of a Langstroth hive.
A honey bee is a eusocial, flying insect within the genus Apis of the bee clade. They are known for construction of perennial, colonial nests from wax, for the large size of their colonies, and for their surplus production and storage of honey, distinguishing their hives as a prized foraging target of many animals, including honey badgers, bears and human hunter-gatherers. In the early 21st century, only seven species of honey bee are recognized, with a total of 44 subspecies, though historically seven to eleven species are recognized. The best known honey bee is the Western honey bee which has been domesticated for honey production and crop pollination; modern humans also value the wax for candlemaking and other crafts. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the roughly 20,000 known species of bees. Some other types of related bees produce and store honey and have been kept by humans for that purpose, including the stingless honey bees, but only members of the genus Apis are true honey bees. The study of bees, which includes the study of honey bees, is known as melittology.
The Africanized bee, also known as the Africanised honey bee, and known colloquially as "killer bee", is a hybrid of the western honey bee species, produced originally by cross-breeding of the East African lowland honey bee (A. m. scutellata) with various European honey bees such as the Italian honey bee A. m. ligustica and the Iberian honey bee A. m. iberiensis.
Pollination of fruit trees is required to produce seeds with surrounding fruit. It is the process of moving pollen from the anther to the stigma, either in the same flower or in another flower. Some tree species, including many fruit trees, do not produce fruit from self-pollination, so pollinizer trees are planted in orchards.
Pollination management is the label for horticultural practices that accomplish or enhance pollination of a crop, to improve yield or quality, by understanding of the particular crop's pollination needs, and by knowledgeable management of pollenizers, pollinators, and pollination conditions.
Bee pollen is a ball or pellet of field-gathered flower pollen packed by worker honeybees, and used as the primary food source for the hive. It consists of simple sugars, protein, minerals and vitamins, fatty acids, and a small percentage of other components. Also called bee bread, or ambrosia, it is stored in brood cells, mixed with saliva, and sealed with a drop of honey. Bee pollen is harvested as food for humans, with various health claims, one of them being that the fermentation process makes it much more potent than simple flower pollen.
For bees, their forage or food supply consists of nectar and pollen from blooming plants within flight range. The forage sources for honey bees are an important consideration for beekeepers. In order to determine where to locate hives for maximum honey production and brood one must consider the off-season. If there are no honey flows the bees may have to be fed. Bees that are used for commercial pollination are usually fed in the holding yards. Forage is also significant for pollination management with other bee species.
Nectar contains sugars that are the primary source of energy for the bees' wing muscles and for heat for honey bee colonies for winter. Pollen provides the protein and trace minerals that are mostly fed to the brood in order to replace bees lost in the normal course of life cycle and colony activity.
Pesticides vary in their effects on bees. Contact pesticides are usually sprayed on plants and can kill bees when they crawl over sprayed surfaces of plants or other areas around it. Systemic pesticides, on the other hand, are usually incorporated into the soil or onto seeds and move up into the stem, leaves, nectar, and pollen of plants.
Hive management in beekeeping refers to intervention techniques that a beekeeper may perform to ensure hive survival and to maximize hive production. Hive management techniques vary widely depending on the objectives.
A round dance is the communicative behaviour of a foraging honey bee, in which she moves on the comb in close circles, alternating right and then left. The round dance indicates that the forager has located a profitable food source close to the hive. When the food source is relatively far away, the round dance transitions into the waggle dance. By performing the round dance, the forager communicates information pertaining to the food source's distance and direction from the hive to the follower bees. Elements of the round dance also provide information regarding the forager's subjective evaluation of the food source's profitability.
The East African lowland honey bee is a subspecies of the western honey bee. It is native to central and eastern Africa, though at the southern extreme it is replaced by the Cape honey bee. This subspecies has been determined to constitute one part of the ancestry of the Africanized bees spreading through America.
The western honey bee or European honey bee is the most common of the 7–12 species of honey bee worldwide. The genus name Apis is Latin for "bee", and mellifera is the Latin for "honey-bearing", referring to the species' production of honey.
Beekeeping in the United States dates back to the 1860s.
The June Gap refers to a phenomenon in which a shortage of forage available for bees occurs and has been observed in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Flower constancy or pollinator constancy is defined as the tendency of individual pollinators to exclusively visit certain flower species or morphs within a species, bypassing other available flower species that could potentially be more rewarding. Flower constancy is different from other types of insect specialization such as innate preferences for certain colors or flower types, or the tendency of pollinators to visit the most rewarding and abundant flowers.
Bombus fervidus, the golden northern bumble bee or yellow bumblebee, is a species of bumblebee native to North America. It has a yellow-colored abdomen and thorax. Its range includes the North American continent, excluding much of the southern United States, Alaska, and the northern parts of Canada. It is common in cities and farmland, with populations concentrated in the North Eastern part of the United States. It is similar in color and range to the American bumblebee. It has complex behavioral traits, which include a communication system that involves dancing and a coordinated nest defense to ward off predators. B. fervidus is an important pollinator, so recent population decline is a particular concern.
Bumblebees, like the honeybee collect nectar and pollen from flowers and store them for food. Many individuals must be recruited to forage for food to provide for the hive. Some bee species have highly developed ways of communicating with each other about the location and quality of food resources ranging from physical to chemical displays. Honey bees are known for their specialized dances, such as the waggle dance which recruit other bees to the precise location of the food source. Bumblebees are not capable of transmitting this type of detailed information. Instead, the nest serves as a hub where bees receive information about the foraging bouts of her conspecifics. Differences between the communication methods of honeybees and bumblebees are mainly due to differences in colony size and nest structure. Bumblebees are distinct from honeybees because they lack receiver bees and are not capable of trophallaxis. They deposit collected nectar directly into the honey pots and don't share information of the quality of the resource with other bees through nectar transfer. Another bee may sample the nectar brought into the nest, and if the colony is in need of food or the nectar is high quality she will likely go out foraging herself. Other means of alerting passive bees to a potentially rewarding resource include releasing pheromone signals and increasing physical activity. For information on communication methods in honey bees, see Bee learning and communication.