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The Africanized bee, also known as the Africanized honey bee and known colloquially as the "killer bee", is a hybrid of the western honey bee, produced originally by crossbreeding of the East African lowland honey bee (A. m. scutellata) with various European honey bee subspecies such as the Italian honey bee (A. m. ligustica) and the Iberian honey bee (A. m. iberiensis).
A beehive is an enclosed structure in which some honey bee species of the subgenus Apis live and raise their young. Though the word beehive is commonly used to describe the nest of any bee colony, scientific and professional literature distinguishes nest from hive. Nest is used to discuss colonies that house themselves in natural or artificial cavities or are hanging and exposed. Hive is used to describe an artificial/man-made structure to house a honey bee nest. Several species of Apis live in colonies, but for honey production the western honey bee and the eastern honey bee are the main species kept in hives.
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".
The Buckfast bee is a breed of honey bee, a cross of many subspecies and their strains, developed by Brother Adam, who was in charge of beekeeping from 1919 at Buckfast Abbey in Devon in the United Kingdom. Breeding of the Buckfast bee is now done by breeders throughout Europe belonging to the Federation of European Buckfast Beekeepers (G.D.E.B.). This organisation maintains a pedigree for Buckfast bees, originating from the time of Brother Adam.
The European dark bee is a subspecies of the western honey bee, whose original range stretched from west-central Russia through Northern Europe and probably down to the Pyrenees. They belong to the 'M' lineage of Apis mellifera. They are large for honey bees though they have unusually short tongues (5.7-6.4 mm) and traditionally were called the German Dark Bee or the Black German Bee, names still used today even though they are now considered an Endangered Breed in Germany. Their common name is derived from their brown-black color, with only a few lighter yellow spots on the abdomen. However today they are more likely to be called after the geographic / political region in which they live such as the British Black Bee, the Native Irish Honey Bee, the Cornish Black Bee and the Nordic Brown Bee, even though they are all the same subspecies, with the word “native” often inserted by local beekeepers, even in places where the bee is an introduced foreign species. It was domesticated in Europe and hives were brought to North America in the colonial era in 1622 where they were referred to as the English Fly by the Native Americans.
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.
The Ideographic Research Group (IRG), formerly called the Ideographic Rapporteur Group, is a subgroup of Working Group 2 (WG2) of ISO/IEC JTC1 SC2 (SC2), the subcommittee of the Joint Technical Committee of ISO and IEC which is responsible for developing standards within the field of coded character sets. IRG is composed of experts from China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and other countries and regions that use Han characters, as well as experts representing the Unicode Consortium. The group is responsible for coordinating the addition of new CJK unified ideographs to the Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set and the Unicode Standard. The group meets twice a year for 4-5 days each time, and reports its activity to the subsequent meeting of WG2.
The small hive beetle is a beekeeping pest. It is endemic to sub-Saharan Africa, but has spread to many other locations, including North America, Australia, and the Philippines.
Johann Dzierzon, or Jan Dzierżon or Dzierżoń, also John Dzierzon, was a Polish apiarist who discovered the phenomenon of parthenogenesis in bees.
A bee smoker is a device used in beekeeping to calm honey bees. It is designed to generate smoke from the smoldering of various fuels, hence the name. It is commonly designed as a stainless steel cylinder with a lid that narrows to a gap with a half inch diameter. The base of the cylinder has another small opening that is adjacent to a bellow nozzle. Pumping of the bellows forces air through the bottom opening. The cylinder also commonly has a wire frame around it acting as a structure the user can grab without risk of burning their hand. Some smokers have a hook on the side allowing the user to hang the whole instrument on the side of a hive for easy access during an inspection.
Bees can suffer serious effects from toxic chemicals in their environments. These include various synthetic chemicals, particularly insecticides, as well as a variety of naturally occurring chemicals from plants, such as ethanol resulting from the fermentation of organic materials. Bee intoxication can result from exposure to ethanol from fermented nectar, ripe fruits, and manmade and natural chemicals in the environment.
Langstroth Cottage is a historic building on the Western College campus of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. It was designated a National Historic Landmark on June 22, 1976. The cottage, built in 1856, is now the home for the Oxford office of the Butler County Regional Transit Authority. It was purchased for Beekeeper L. L. Langstroth in 1859, and he lived there for the next 28 years, conducting research and breeding honey bees.
Commercial Beekeeping in the United States dates back to the 1860s.
Beekeeping in New Zealand is reported to have commenced in 1839 with the importing of two skep hives by Mary Bumby, a missionary. It has since become an established industry as well a hobby activity.
Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is an abnormal phenomenon that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a honey bee colony disappear, leaving behind a queen, plenty of food, and a few nurse bees to care for the remaining immature bees. While such disappearances have occurred sporadically throughout the history of apiculture, and have been known by various names, the syndrome was renamed colony collapse disorder in early 2007 in conjunction with a drastic rise in reports of disappearances of western honey bee colonies in North America. Beekeepers in most European countries had observed a similar phenomenon since 1998, especially in Southern and Western Europe; the Northern Ireland Assembly received reports of a decline greater than 50%. The phenomenon became more global when it affected some Asian and African countries as well.
Beekeeping has been practised in Ireland for close to 1,500 years. It has seen a surge in popularity in modern times, with the membership of beekeeping associations exceeding 4,000. The growth in the practise has occurred despite increased pressures on bees and beekeepers due to parasites, diseases and habitat loss.
The Apiary Laboratory, more often referred to as the Apiary, is a research laboratory at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Originally built for the study of honey bees and apiculture, today it is primarily used to study native pollinator species and the chemicals and pathogens impacting their populations. This academic building is unique in that it is credited as being the first in the United States to be erected exclusively for the teaching of beekeeping.
Bees for Development is an international charity working to alleviate poverty through beekeeping. Beekeeping contributes to supporting sustainable livelihoods in poor and remote communities; honey bees provide an essential ecosystem service. Bees for Development currently runs projects in Uganda, Zanzibar, Ethiopia and Kyrgyzstan. Its offices are in Monmouth, South Wales.
Precision beekeeping (PB) is an apiary management strategy based on the monitoring of individual bee colonies to minimize resource consumption and maximize the productivity of bees. It can be considered a branch of precision agriculture (PA). Similar to PA, implementation of PB also can be split into three phases: data collection, data analysis and application. During the data collection phase, measurements from bee colonies and the environment are collected. The data analysis phase draws conclusions regarding bee colony behaviour and activity trends based on measurement data, predefined models and expert knowledge. In the application phase, decisions are made and actions undertaken based on data analysis for improving apiary performance.
References
- ↑ "Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium".
- ↑ "MAAREC About Us".
- ↑ "Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) Working Group - Summary of purpose and responsibility" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on February 16, 2008.
