I had the opportunity to witness a small process involved in bee cultivation the other day.
A bee cultivator earns profit in 2 ways.
1st way of profit is straight forward. Harvest the honey in the right season and sell the honey.
2nd way is by selling bee-hive which contains a single queen bee and an army of worker bees. The hive is a man made wooden box which the bees have accepted as home.
The uncle who was cultivating these bees was increasing his hives by making new child hives from existing ones.
For that he had moved the queen bees in existing hives to new hives. The queen bees which are all alone in new hives without any workers starts laying eggs to produce its worker bees and the new hives becomes active that way.
Meanwhile the worker bees which are without a queen bee in the parent hive picks some of the queen bee's larvae and move them to a special queen cell where they are fed differently. The uncle opened those hives and removed those cells leaving just one queen bee cell per hive. I asked him for the reason and his answer was interesting.
More the queen bees in a single hive, the more loss for him since a hive can't hold more than a single queen. The second and other queens fly away with a set of workers to a new place. Hence removing those extra cells allows him to hold on to his bees. The relationship between worker bees and queen bee amuses me.
Also since it is rainy season now, it would not be possible for the bees to feed those larvae. Hence he had put sugar mixed water as food for bees and larvae.
Here are the pics.
Last week there was a flood due to heavy rains in his farm and these bees were washed away. I feel very sorry for him, this is a risk which every farmer faces.
A bee cultivator earns profit in 2 ways.
1st way of profit is straight forward. Harvest the honey in the right season and sell the honey.
2nd way is by selling bee-hive which contains a single queen bee and an army of worker bees. The hive is a man made wooden box which the bees have accepted as home.
The uncle who was cultivating these bees was increasing his hives by making new child hives from existing ones.
For that he had moved the queen bees in existing hives to new hives. The queen bees which are all alone in new hives without any workers starts laying eggs to produce its worker bees and the new hives becomes active that way.
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| Removed queen bee cells |
More the queen bees in a single hive, the more loss for him since a hive can't hold more than a single queen. The second and other queens fly away with a set of workers to a new place. Hence removing those extra cells allows him to hold on to his bees. The relationship between worker bees and queen bee amuses me.
Also since it is rainy season now, it would not be possible for the bees to feed those larvae. Hence he had put sugar mixed water as food for bees and larvae.
Here are the pics.
Last week there was a flood due to heavy rains in his farm and these bees were washed away. I feel very sorry for him, this is a risk which every farmer faces.
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