This document summarizes five important species of honey bees: the rock bee, Indian hive bee, little bee/dwarf bee, European/Italian bee, and Dammer/stingless bee. It provides details on the characteristics of each species such as size, honey production, and domesticability. Additional sections cover the anatomy of a bee hive, roles of queen/worker bees, bee diseases, history of beekeeping, and applications of honey and beeswax.

3. Five important species of honey bees are as follows.
 The rock bee, Apis dorsata (Apidae).
 The Indian hive bee, Apis cerana indica (Apidae).
 The little bee/dwarf bee, Apis florea (Apidae).
 The European or Italian bee, Apis mellifera (Apidae).
 Dammer bee or stingless bee, Melipona irridipennis (Meliporidae).

5. Characters:
 Commonly called ‘Rock bee’.
 Largest bee of about 20mm, called the GIANT HONEY BEE.
 A single comb makes 60 pounds of honey which Is maximum amount of
a comb.
 Workers pollinate 12,000 flowers daily.
 Workers are very small and active , and due to their ferocious nature
they are NON DOMESTICABLE.

7.  Commonly called as Indian bee or Asian bee.
 Slightly smaller than A.dorsata.
 Prefer to live in dark places by making parallel combs of one foot in
protected areas.
 This Is very gentle species so can be domesticated easily.
 Production of honey is 6 to 7 pounds per comb, which is much less
than the first one.

9.  Called as the little bee.
 Smaller than the both species.
 They are not gregarious i.e social. So make a single comb.
 Due to docile nature i.e obedient, and rare stinging habit, their
nest can be easily removed.

11.  It Is called as European bee.
 Although bee produces less honey but it is the BEST SPECIES for
COMMERCIAL point of view.
 Its ITALIAN variety is reared everywhere in Europe and America in
artificial hives.

13.  Their size are much smaller than true honey bees.
 They build irregular combs of wax and resinous substances in crevices
and hollow tree trunks.
 The comb of melipona iridipennis is made up of a dark material called
cermen which is mixture of wax and earth or resin.
 They do not secrete wax to build the combs.

14. "If the bee disappears from the surface
of the earth, man would have no more
than four years to live. No more bees,
no more pollination, no more plants,
no more animals, no more man."

15. • A colony of bees consists of three castes of bee:
 a queen bee, which is normally the only breeding
female in the colony;
 a large number of female workers bee, typically 30,000–50,000 in number;
 a number of male drones, ranging from thousands in a strong hive in spring to
very few during dearth or cold season
• The queen is the only sexually mature female in the hive and all of the female
worker bees and male drones are her offspring, The queen may live for up to
three years or more and may be capable of laying half a million eggs or more in
her lifetime.
Queen bee (center)

16. 1 queen
250 drones
20,000 female foragers
40,000 female house-bees
5,000 to 7,000 eggs
7,000 to 11,000 larvae being fed
16,000 to 24,000 larvae developing into adults in
sealed cells

17. Queens will lay almost 2,000 eggs
a day.
A rate of 5 or 6 a minute.
Between 175,000-200,000 eggs
are laid per year.
A single hive contains
approximately 40-45,000 bees!

19.  1-2 days Cleans cells and keeps the brood warm
 3-5 days Feeds older larvae
 6-11 days Feeds youngest larvae
 12-17 days Produces wax, builds comb, carries food,
undertaker duties
 18-21 days Guards the hive entrance
 22+ days Flying from hive begins, pollinates plants,
collects pollen, nectar and water.

20. Varroa
European Foul Brood
American Foul Brood
Nosema
Acarine
Sacbrood
Chalkbrood
Wax moth

21.  The impact of That Sac Brood disease was so pronounced that 90%
of the colonies were deserted
 The verrora mites is the ecto parasite of the western honey bees (Apilus
mellifera)
 Verrora mites life cycle in two stage (i) phoretic stage (ii) reproductive stage
 In phoretic stage feeding blood(hemolymph) from bees usually inter segment of
the abdomen
 When in reproductive stage mite increase their population,this occurs only
under the capped brood cells

24. HIVE:
 Two types of hives are used:
1. Indigenous method of bee keeping
a) wall or fixed hive
b) Movable hive.

25. Bee keeping (apiculture, forms from latin Apis - bees) is the
mainatance of the honey bee colonies, commonly in humans by
hive
A Apiartist (beekeepers) keeps bees in order to collect honey and
other products including bee wax, pollen(Plant male gametophyte),
royal jelly(the glandular secretions of young worker bees (4-10 days old),
produced by the hypopharyngeal in the head,)
A location of the bees are kept is called bee yard

26. At some point humans began attempt to domestic
wild bees in artificial hive made from hollow logs,
wooden boxes, pottery vessels and woven straw
baskets
Before B.C 2422 in Egypt Apiculture is started in
sun temple of Nyuserein
In Greece existed system of high status apiculture as
can be concluded

27. There are more than 20,000 species of wild bees may be are
solitary (e.g mason bees)
All of the Bee keepers mostly prepared western honey bees
(Apilus mellifera) this species have several sub species of
regional varieties such as Italian bees (Apis mellifera ingustia)
and carniolan honey been(Apis mellifera carniola)
All the species of Apis mellifera sub spiecies are cabaple of
inter breeding and hybrid

28. Collecting wild bees colonies is one of the most ancient
and is stl practiced by the aboriginal societies in the part
of Africa , Asia , Australia and South Africa
Gathering honey from wild bee colonies is usually done
by subduing the bees with smoke and breaking open the
tree or rocks where the colony is located, often resulting
in the physical destruction of the nest location

29. During the medieval period abbey and monasteries were centers of
beekeeping, since beeswax was highly prized for candles and fermented
honey was used to make alcoholic mead in areas of Europe
Thomas Wildman in 1768/1770, who described advances over the
destructive old skep-based beekeeping so that the bees no longer had to
be killed to harvest the honey
The 19th century saw this revolution in beekeeping practice completed
through the perfection of the movable comb hive by the American
Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth

31. Langstroth was the first person to make practical use of
Huber's earlier discovery that there was a specific
spatial measurement between the wax combs, later
called the bee space
which bees do not block with wax, but keep as a free
passage. Having determined this bee space (between 5
and 8 mm, or 1/4 to 3/8"),

32.  Langstroth then designed a series of wooden frames within a
rectangular hive box, carefully maintaining the correct space between
successive frames, and found that the bees would build parallel
honeycombs in the box without bonding them to each other or to the
hive walls
 This enables the beekeeper to slide any frame out of the hive for
inspection, without harming the bees or the comb, protecting the
eggs, larvae and pupae contained within the cells. It also meant that
combs containing honey could be gently removed and the honey
extracted without destroying the comb. The emptied honey combs
could then be returned to the bees intact for refilling.

33. A fixed comb hive is a hive in which the combs cannot be
removed or manipulated for management or harvesting without
permanently damaging the comb
Almost any hollow structure can be used for this purpose, such
as a log gum, skep or a clay pot
Beekeeping using fixed comb hives is an essential part of the
livelihoods of many communities in poor countries

34.  The Langstroth was the first successful top-opened hive with
movable frames, and other designs of hive have been based on
it.
 While knowledge of the bees is the first line of defense, most
beekeepers also wear some protective clothing. Novice
beekeepers usually wear gloves and a hooded suit or hat and
veil. Experienced beekeepers sometimes elect not to use
gloves because they inhibit delicate manipulations.

35.  Stock improvement
 As the productivity of the commercial bee species is low, attempts for the improvement of the bee stock through breeding
programmes are essential
 Promotion of migratory bee keeping
 The marginal beekeepers generally have tough time during dearth periods.
 If co-operative migration is undertaken, the bee colonies can be pooled together and migrated to areas, where abundant bee
forage is available.
 Promotion of mass planting of bee flora
 The problem of depleting floral resources has reduced the bee keeping potential
 But social forestry programme, which advocates growing of good bee forage trees, such bee plants should be identified and
their plantation be undertaken in wastelands of low agricultural value.

36. HOW TO MAKE HIVE

38. Stand
Alighting board
Brood chamber
Queen excluder
Honey supers
Roof

39. a) STAND: basal part of
hive.
It is adjusted to make a
slope so that rainwater
comes down quickly.

40. b)BOTTOM BOARD:
Situated above the
stand and forms the
proper base. It has two
gates one gate is for
entrance and other is
for exit.

41. c) BROOD CHAMBER:
Most important part
provided with5 to 10 frames.
In each frame a wax sheet
is held at vertical position
where bees start making
walls and cells.

43. d) SUPER: It is without cover
and the base.
 It is provided in many
frames containing comb
foundation to provide
adational space for
expansion of the hive.

45. e) INNER COVER:
Wooden piece used for
covering of the super, has
many holes for proper
ventilation.
f) TOP COVER: plain and
sloping zinc sheet fitted on it
protect the colony from rain.

47. APPLICATIONS OF
CULTURE

48. Produced from plant nectar
 Primarily from flowers
 Also extra-floral nectaries
Precursor of nectar is:
 Ploem sap
 Most often a dilute solution of sucrose
Essentially bees do two things:
 Dehydrate
 Enzymatic “inversion” of sucrose to glucose & fructose

49.  A saturated solution of carbohydrates
 ca. 17% water
 ca. 82.5% sugar:
fructose 38%
glucose31%
maltose 7%
sucrose 1.5%
et alia 6%
 ca. 0.5% protein, minerals, vitamins

50.  Produced from four pairs of sub-dermal glands on the
underside of the abdomen of a worker bee.
 When the bee is 10 to 18 days old
 Produced as small, translucent flakes
 Precursor is honey & nectar (carbohydrates)

51. COSMETICS
 creams, lotions, lipstick
CANDLES
 liturgical, Jewish, Greek Orthodox,
but most of all the RCC.
BEEKEEPING
 foundation beeswax

52. Definition
 the glandular secretions of young worker bees (4-10 days old),
produced by the hypopharyngeal in the head, used as food for
larval bees.
Composition
 66% water
 14% protein
 14% carbohydrate
 5% lipid (fats & sterols)

53.  Uses
As Pure Bee Venom for use in desensitization
As quackery for charlatans in treating a variety of neurological
disorders.
 Composition
a mixture of proteins & peptides
 melittin 50% dry wt
 phospholipase A 12% dry wt
 hyaluronidase <3% dry wt.
 acid phosphatase <1% dry wt.
 histamine <1% dry wt.

54.  Plant male gametophyte
 a reproductive structure that carries
sperm
 A primary food substance for bees
 directly as food to older larvae
 indirectly as the precursor for royal
jelly
{think of honey bees as specialized
herbivores}