BEEKEEPING

the care and manipulation of colonies of honeybees (Apis species) so as to enable them to produce and store a quantity of honey exceeding their own requirements. Beekeeping is one of the oldest forms of animal husbandry. Man first domesticated honeybees by establishing colonies in cylinders made of such materials as bark, reed, straw, or mud; removal of the honeycombs frequently destroyed the colony. Early American settlers, observing that wild bees preferred hollow logs, developed the bee gum, a section of hollow log providing for comb removal at one end. European beekeepers developed the skep, a woven-straw hive resembling an inverted basket; combs could be removed through the bottom. By the 17th century, European beekeepers were making a hole in the hive and placing a box of straw or wood over the hole; the bees also filled this box with honey. Two developments in the United States during the mid-19th century led to modern beekeeping methods. A multiple-story beekeeping system, devised by Moses Quinby, employed boxes placed over holes in the tops of box hives. Removal of the boxes as they became filled with honey did not disturb the main chamber. In 1851 the Rev. L.L. Langstroth invented a movable-frame hive that provided a foundation on which the bees could build honeycombs and allowed for simple removal and replacement of the filled combs. With several improvements this hive and similar types are in wide use throughout the world. Such hives consist of a base; a hive body; one or more removable sections, or supers; and a weathertight cover. The hive body is a brood chamber, fitted with frames, where the queen lays eggs and the young are nurtured; the supers are also fitted with frames for the storage of honey. Hives frequently have queen excluders, barriers with small holes allowing passage between the brood chamber and supers to worker bees but not to the larger queen. When a colony is at the peak of its activity during the summer months, completed honey supers must be replaced with empty ones to prevent overcrowding and, ultimately, swarming (the formation of a new colony). In preparation for swarming, the worker bees select several larvae to be cultivated as potential new queens. Fed copiously with a substance called royal jelly, the new queens emerge shortly after the old queen's evacuation and fight to the death for supremacy of the hive. Drones are produced for the sole purpose of mating with the queen, after which they die. Swarming is undesirable in cultivated hives, since after swarming a colony is too busy hatching new workers to make extra honey. To prevent swarming, the queen cells must be removed and the hive enlarged. The specialized gear of the beekeeper consists of a veiled helmet, a hive tool for cutting comb, and a smoker for tranquillizing the bees. This device blows smoke into the hive before it is opened. The bees, anticipating fire, instinctively gorge themselves with honey in preparation for rebuilding. Thus engorged, they are easier to handle and less likely to sting. In modern beekeeping, honey is removed from the completed super by means of an extractor, in which centrifugal force evacuates the cells without damaging them, so that the bees do not have to build new cells before resuming honey production. After extraction, the honey must be slightly heated so that extraneous wax may be removed by skimming. The wax from the comb itself may be rendered by placing the comb in water heated to just over 145 F (63 C); the melted wax rises to the surface and is easily collected. In addition to maintenance of the hive, beekeeping also requires protection of the colony against disease and predators. Honeybees are susceptible to a number of parasites, mites, and fungus infections. Other natural enemies include raccoons, lizards, birds, and mice. Centres for the study of bees and beekeeping have been established throughout the United States and in many other countries. Specific apicultural techniques, such as hive configuration and extraction, may vary according to tradition and scale of operation. See also honeybee. care and management of colonies of honeybees. They are kept for their honey and other products or their services as pollinators of fruit and vegetable blossoms or as a hobby. The practice is widespread: honeybees are kept in large cities and villages, on farms and rangelands, in forests and deserts, from the Arctic and Antarctic to the Equator. Honeybees are not domesticated. Those living in a man-made domicile called a beehive or hive are no different from those living in a colony in a tree. In antiquity people knew that bees produce delicious honey, that they sting, and that they increase their numbers by swarming. By the 17th century they had learned the value of smoke in controlling them and had developed the screen veil as protection against stings. From the 17th to the 19th century, the key discoveries upon which modern beekeeping is founded were made. These included the mystery of the queen bee as the mother of nearly all the occupants of the hive, her curious mating technique, parthenogenetic development, the movable frame hives, and the fact that bees rear a new queen if the old one disappears. Given this knowledge people were able to divide a colony instead of relying on natural swarming. Then the development of the wax-comb foundation, the starter comb on which bees build straight, easily-handled combs, and the discovery that honey can be centrifuged or extracted from them and the combs reused, paved the way for large-scale honey production and modern commercial beekeeping. The identification of bee diseases and their control with drugs, the value of pollen and pollen substitutes in producing strong colonies, and the artificial insemination of queens have increased the honey-production efficiency of colonies. Additional reading Books that concern the life history of the individual bee and the colony, honey and wax production, diseases of bees, flora that provide nectar and pollen, and economics of beekeeping include John E. Eckert and Frank R. Shaw, Beekeeping (1960); Dadant & Sons (eds.), The Hive and the Honey Bee, extensively rev. (1975); and Eva Crane, Bees and Beekeeping: Science, Practice, and World Resources (1990). A.I. Root, The ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture: An Encyclopedia Pertaining to the Scientific and Practical Culture of Honey Bees, 40th ed. edited by Roger A. Morse and Kim Flottum (1990); and Roger A. Morse and Ted Hooper (eds.), The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Beekeeping (1985), are useful reference works. Samuel Emmett McGregor The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica