Beekeeping – Royal Jelly And Basic Beekeeping

Here is the procedure of how to harvest “Royal Jelly”…

• First you will need a bee family without a queen bee, (or remove her to start another beehive colony temporarily)
• Give them a bee “frame” with added piece of wood with specially pre-formed “queen cells”.
• In these cells put 20 to 36 hours’ old bee larvae.

Because bees cannot live without their queen they will try to raise a new one. They feed their larvae with a lot of royal jelly, trying to make new queens (this is “bee-bread”, the food for the up to 3 day old worker larvae, and for the whole larval cycle of queens being raised in the hive).

• After 48 to 52 hours take these added queen cells away and take the royal jelly away with a special spoon
• Put some more new cells with larvae into the bee hive and the bees will fill it up again.
• Freeze harvested royal jelly to keep it fresh, and keep it in a dark place, (the refrigerator freezer compartment obviously)

Royal Jelly is a milky secretion derived from the pharyngeal glands of the honey bee. It is very good for you, but extremely expensive, as only small quantities can be made and harvested in one go, especially as this can deplete a colony without a queen, and you will lose some honey production, besides not helping the colony to thrive!

Royal Jelly Jar

Keeping Bees At Home And Managing A beehive – A Rough Quick  Guide!

“So he said to them: Out of the eater came what is eaten, and out of the strong came what is sweet. But three days went by and they could not solve the riddle.”

Judges 14:14 (New Jerusalem Bible)

What am I talking about here?

Honey, and beekeeping with the “common honeybee” Apis Mellifera”. Yes on “The Generalist’s Repository” I have had experience of beekeeping, as I did it for seven years at my parents’ house, but gave it up when I moved out and got married, as I hadn’t got the time, space, or such forgiving neighbours!

Apis Mellifera Common European Honey Bee

The honeybee is a “social insect”, having large colonies of 40,000 or more, and they gather nectar from flowers, converting it to honey as we know.

Don’t get them mixed up with furry “bumble bees”, as these do not have colonies any where near as large as honeybees, and they do not produce honey. People seem to think that these are honey bees, but although very useful as pollinators of plants, they are not at all honey bees as we know them.

Honeybees may look a bit like “wasps” to some people, but be rest assured that they are nothing like them, although people have often said otherwise!

Bees also produce other products, such as wax and propolis (“bee glue”, the reddish sticky stuff that bees use to stick things in the hive together with; which is taken from trees), which is a known antiseptic and antibiotic agent.

I purchased the beekeeping equipment, and I managed to get some “free bees”, which basically was a surplus swarm from a local Beekeeper at the Staffordshire (UK) beekeepers association in Shugborough, near Cannock.

Before keeping bees it is wise to discuss it with your neighbours, and reassure them this is a good hobby, an that you will supply them with a jar of honey to keep them sweet!

Also be aware that on some bee-lines or their flight path that people get in the way,  so keep them in an area where they have to fly up in the air, or otherwise people in the “flight path” may be stung as “intruders”, impeding the “honey flow”!

One final aspect is that bees may clean their “pollen baskets” on their legs; to do so they may occasionally choose someones “whiter than whites!”, and turn them yellow by putting the odd pollen spot or two on them where they have rubbed their pollen baskets clean.

If they are out of  the centre line with garden mounted clothing drying lines, and they have a “funnel” to fly out of, such as a fenced or painted apiary (apiary is the name of the place where the bees are kept), you will be fine (mostly).

Shugborough Hall Staffordshire UK

I used “William Carr Broughton” hives (WBC), which have an outer shell of wooden lifts, shown in the second lower white hive picture, and inside they have a separate set of bee chambers, or brood box, and supers. They are like the National hive shown below inside, but looser fitting, but with an “outer cladding” of separate wooden surrounds, often painted white to look “picturesque”.

There are other designs of hives, such as Dadant, National, and Langstroth, and each has its own advantage and problems, just to name a few types.

National hives are the most popular, being easy to transport, and they fit together nicely, as well as being ideal for moving around, such as for commercial beekeeping. They are not double walled, but they do the job just fine One is shown below.

National Beehive

The WBC hive scores on being “double walled”, but the other types are only single walled, and have no outer lifts. This is a lot warmer in winter, and the hives are heavier so they are stable in high winds, although I recommend putting a couple of heavy house-bricks on the roof in the winter to keep it on during winds and storms, as they can be quite loose fitting.

The brood box is where new bees are raised, and the supers are where the queen isn’t allowed to go because she is separated by a “queen excluder”, which will not allow her to pass upwards to lay eggs in the chambers (supers), where we want our pure honey to be deposited. These supers are on top of the base brood chamber at the bottom, and are smaller boxes. I used to use four supers per colony, and they were totally full of honey in most years I kept them.

Queen Excluder Stops Queen Entering Honey Chambers Keeping Them Clear Of Brood

The supers above are then filled only with pure honey, and not worker larvae, and so they can be taken off and used by the beekeeper to get honey from them.

Enough honey is left on for the winter, so that the bees have enough food to last them through it.  The WBC hive like I had is shown below. I kept two hives of bees for seven years before I sold them and gave up beekeeping (for now that is!)

WBC-Beehive

I’ll now briefly talk about the “basics” of beekeeping, and what you need to start doing this hobby. Also I’ll talk about safety, and the pests that can bother bees in the main, such as “Varroa” mites, which are the worst of all affecting colonies everywhere now; once thought to be wiped out, but now has to be controlled, although never totally eradicated.

The equipment you need is as follows…

• A decent set of beekeeping clothing or safety apparel for protection from stings while handling bees and the hives etc…

Now I have been stung a few times, but I’ll say in my seven years of beekeeping that if I wear a full bee suit and gloves, as well as wearing a pair of wellingtons and proper bee trousers over the top of my clothes, or a full beekeeping “boiler suit”, that covers your whole body, that then, when geared up correctly I have never had a sting. The veil for your head and face can be separate and tucked in, or built into the “bee-jacket”.

My combination was a pair of goat skin leather gloves with built-in sleeve covers, a full boiler suit, and a head veil with a double ring around it to keep the netting, and obviously any stinging bees away from your face.

One does not know if they are allergic to bee stings, but they’ll soon find out! If any swelling is severe, or you feel in any way unwell; then it is time to see your physician, doctor, or G.P.

If you are not allergic to bee stings you should get treatment or take anti-histamines if you have  more than a dozen or so stings in one occasion.

A rumour exists that bee stings may be beneficial, and help arthritis etc. but how true this is I am unsure.

Always “suit up”, even though the weather may be hot; it pays to be safe!

The personal apparel consists of…

• A pair of decent beekeeping gloves, the “kid leather”, (goat skin) give greater dexterity, but good sting protection; the plastic gloves are too cumbersome. Rubber gloves are quite good, but bees can just about sting through those if they are determined.

Beekeeping Gloves Kid Leather

• A bee jacket or full boiler suit possibly with a veil built in, and with metal supports to keep the veil away from the face and limit the bees reach to sting you.

Full Beekeeping Suit White

• Make sure that your apparel is clean, and usually white, as bees tend to go for black and dark colours.
• Wellingtons that are quite close fitting, and to tuck the trousers into this, and also your trousers into your socks. I recommend a good seal between your trousers and the wellingtons to keep the bees out, bicycle clips are good, and metal arm bands that hold up your shirt sleeves are also a good idea.
• The best is an “all in one bee suit” and a pair of wellingtons, available from many beekeeping outlets on the web.

You also need…

• A smoker… Copper ones are the best, and last the longest, other types corrode and rust quickly. The smoker causes the bees to gorge with honey, which calms them down a lot for handling, (like as if there was a fire nearby, and the bees have to top up with food reserves first, and then to leave quickly to go elsewhere to live)

Bee Smoker Copper

• Fuel for the smoker (from your supplier), or rolled up cardboard or newspaper will suffice instead.
• A “hive tool”, this is used for prizing open the parts of the hive, and also double up for lifting frames out of the hive.

Hive Tool With Frame Lifter

• A brush to gently remove excess bees from a frame removed from the hive.

Bee Brush

• Treatment to control Varroa mites, (such as Folbex VA, but there are other methods) which are a pest, and deplete colonies. They are the equivalent to having a cat around your neck living from your food resources! So you can see why control of numbers is the norm, as prevention is near impossible so far even in this day-and-age.

Folbex VA Varroa Treatment

Do not let this horrible Varroa mite pest affect your colonies to any extent if you can!

Varroa Mite On Bee Pupa - Always Try To Control This Pest

By the way, this mite should not make the honey inedible or “dangerous”, it slows down and kills your bees, and makes their honey yield a lot less; so don’t let these pests put you off.

They are unfortunately part of beekeeping, and something that you have to accept and work against, around, and live with, always keeping an eye on your colonies for its affects.

The hive is a precisely put together piece of kit, as the bees will use this space, and build “brace comb”, or stray bits of comb to fill gaps, and they also will stick parts together a lot more if they are sloppy and ill-fitting.

Buy a precisely made hive, which will consist of the following roughly…

National Beehive Parts

• The hive bottom and the hive lid obviously.
• Some spare lifts if it is a WBC hive, you’ll need a brood chamber lift, and one for each super at least.
• Brood chamber -  where the queen lays her eggs, and new bees are raised, and in the frame corners a small amount of honey is stored. These frames are the largest frames in the hive.
• Queen excluder -  this is placed over the brood chamber to stop the queen from laying eggs in the honey, (shown above)  chambers or “supers”, where you want your possible honey crop to be stored. A wire excluder is the best quality to buy.
• Supers, or honey chambers – you need about four per hive (well I did anyway).
• Glass lid – the lid on top of the frames to keep the bees on the frames, and enable viewing and fitting of Porter Bee Escapes, or feeding via a syrup feeder container. (Syrup is dissolved sugar in water, 1 bag 2.2lb, or 1kg in 1 Pint or 570ml of water).

National Hive Glass Quilt

• A “porter bee escape”, this enables you to clear a super of bees over 24 hours

Porter Bee Escape

• A feeding container to feed the bees with sugar syrup for the Winter, and for weak colonies.

To harvest your honey you will need the following…

• A comb uncapping fork or knife

Uncapping Fork

• A radial or tangential frame extractor, (hone extractor) on radial the frames point away from the centre, on tangential extractors they are sideways on. Tangential extractors may get more honey out in a shorter time, but you have to turn the frames over to do the other side; but radial extractors do both sides at once, and they do not stress and warp the honeycombs,  so the frames are better for re-use in the hive.

Tangential Hand Operated Extractor Polythene

• Stainless steel electric twelve frame radial extractors are the luxury item here, but if you are on a budget, a four frame tangential polythene hand wheel driven extractor will suffice. (I had one of these as I only had two hives)
• A honey filter to strain out the stray bits of honeycomb etc.
• A settling tank to settle out the air bubbles, and to store it ready for bottling, this also has a dispensing tap.
• Possibly a honey heater if it sets solid, or is very viscous to enable easy pouring.
• Extra storage vessels for the honey if required
• Jars to fill with honey.
• Labels for the honey jars.

For collecting swarms and raising new colonies it is advisable to get…

• A “nucleus hive”, (a small brood only hive for swarm collection and transport).

Nucleus Hive

• Some old sheets to cover up the hive for transport, or a plug for the hive entrance, (assuming that it is bee-tight).
• Spare frames to fill the nucleus hive.

Between May and August in the UK, the hives need to be looked at every week, or nine days and swarm controls put in place, which involves the removal of queen cells from the brood chamber to prevent them from swarming.

Honey Bee Swarm

A new queen should be purchased or raised from your colonies every two to three years to maintain optimum performance from the bee colony.

Bees swarm for a number of reasons, and they are not all fully understood. One theory is that the queen’s br0od chamber isn’t bug enough, and that there isn’t enough room in the hive.

The worker bees begin to raise queen cells by elongating them, and making them point downwards. Basically a queen bee is fed on Royal Jelly for all sixteen days of it’s upbringing before emerging, whereas a sterile female worker bee is only fed on Royal Jelly for the first three days of its larval life.

Queen Cell In Honey bee Brood Chamber

Drone bees are made by the queen laying unfertilised eggs, which hatch out as male bees or drones, which have no sting, and make a deeper “drone” when they fly, hence the name. In the “Fall” or Autumn, the drones are driven out of the hive and killed off by the workers, as they are burdensome, and do not gather nectar. Their one and only purpose is to mate with new queens.

The original queen flies off to make a new home, and the main foraging bees (the ones that are old enough to get nectar from flowers) in the hive also fly off with her to a nearby tree or object. Scout bees have already found a new home, and the bees once again fly off a second time to make their new home.

The remaining bees left in the hive from which the swarm emerged finish raising a new queen, and when she is nearly hatched she will start “piping” (making a high pitched noise) The workers help her out of her cell, and then she will kill the other queens before they hatch, unless one escapes and beates her to it with another very small swarm (cast).

Queen Bee Transport By Post Box which is Then Introduced Into The Hive

Raising a new queen involves removing the old queen and some bees into a nucleus hive, and selecting the earliest and best queen cell in the original hive, leaving this alone, and then removing the rest of them. Inspect them again for more queen cells the next week, remove those if the original one is still OK. If not then select the best one of those. If they are short and stubby they won’t be any good, so it will pay to re-unite the original bees back again, or merge them with a strong colony.

To merge colonies of bees, I have found that a light sprinkling of flour does the trick, or a sheet of newspaper between the two lots of bees. This enables them to get used to each other’s hormonal odour, and to not attack each other!

Extracting honey involves the following…

• Clearing the supers of bees with a bee escape, brushing them off gently, or shaking them off the frames.
• Removing the frames without bees to a “bee tight” hygienic area for extraction of the honey from them.
• Uncapping the frames.
• Spinning the honey from the frames with a centrifugal extractor.
• Returning the extracted frames to the hive for the bees to clean up and use towards the winter.
• Removing the empty supers and storing them with newspaper in between, and anti wax-moth crystals placed in between each layer.
• Store the supers ready for next year in a safe and dry place, away from pests etc.
• Filtering the newly extracted honey to get rid of the bits of wax etc.
• Settling the air bubbles out of the honey
• Bottling the honey
• Labelling the honey jars
• Selling off (if you want to), and enjoying your honey!

That is the “basics”, but I will be back to expand this, or possibly split it up into a series of new pages.

The hive parts are shown also below again for extra guidance..

Hive Parts Diagram

Thank you, Have fun, and happy beekeeping in this absorbing and rewarding hobby!

Mark Lawton

http://mark-lawton.com

Webmasters Earn Money Here!

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