APICULTURE

MOHANASABARI.N
I – M.Sc (indus biotech)
Dept of Microbial Biotechnology
Bharathiar University , Cbe - 46
 Introduction
• 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

 Queen bee (center)

Bee colonies
• 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 worker bees, 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.
Histoy of Bee keeping
• 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
 Origin
• 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
 Wild honey harvesting
• 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
 Evolution of hive design
• During the medieval period abbeys 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
Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth
 Cntd…..

• 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"),
 Cntd……
• 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.
 Traditional Beekeeping
• 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
 Modern Beekeeping
• 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.
 Maintenance of Bee keeping
• 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.
 Problem of bee diseases
• 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
yz
APPLICATIONS OF
CULTURE
 Honey
• Produced from plant nectar
• Primarily from flowers
• Also extra-floral nectaries
• Precursor of nectar is:
• Phloem sap
• Most often a dilute solution of sucrose
• Essentially bees do two things:
• Dehydrate
• Enzymatic “inversion” of sucrose to glucose & fructose
Cntd…..
• A saturated solution of carbohydrates
• ca. 17% water
• ca. 82.5% sugar:

• fructose 38%
• glucose 31%
• maltose 7%
• sucrose 1.5%
• et alia 6%
• ca. 0.5% protein, minerals, vitamins
 Bee wax
• 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)
 BEESWAX
• COSMETICS
• creams, lotions, lipstick
• CANDLES
• liturgical, Jewish, Greek Orthodox, but most of all the RCC.
• BEEKEEPING
• foundation beeswax
 Royal Jelly
• 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)
 Bee Venom
• 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.
 POLLEN
• 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}