If on a warm summer day you hear a businesslike buzz, then this means that a bee is flying nearby, having just got out of a flower where it drank nectar. She is easily recognizable by her hairy body, girded with black and yellow stripes. Habitats - gardens, meadows, fields, forest edges; Today, thanks to man, they are distributed throughout the world.
The bee belongs to the phylum Arthropoda, the class Insects, the order Hymenoptera and the family Bees. The body length of the queen bee is 22 mm, that of the drones is 20 mm, and that of the worker bees is 16 mm. A queen bee lives 7 years, drones 4-5 weeks, and worker bees 6-8 weeks.
Science knows more than 20,000 various kinds bees; they live in many parts of the world. Those bees that can be seen in the garden or in a clearing in the forest, as a rule, belong to the two most common species in the middle lane: the honey bee and the common bumblebee.
Bees are social insects: they live in a large colony called a swarm. A man finds a swarm in the forest and takes it to his estate, where the swarm acquires a new, man-made dwelling - a beehive. In such a hive, the bees construct a nest consisting of rows of perfectly hexagonal wax cells.
Today, quite a lot is known about the habits of bees and the structure of the bee community. Biologists, for example, found that bees see very well. And since they feed on pollen and nectar, it is important for them to be able to recognize the source of food. The language of bees was studied by the biologist Karl Frisch. He established that a bee that has discovered a source of food flies into the hive and performs a dance there, "informing" it with movements about the location, distance, abundance and type of food.
In a bee, the body may seem soft in appearance, but under the outer fluffy cover lies a hard shell that covers the entire body, consisting of three main parts.
The first of these parts is the head, on which the bee has a tubular tongue, in other words, a proboscis: with it the bee can suck out the nectar hidden at the very bottom of the deep flower calyx.
Three small eyes are located in front of the head, and two larger ones are located on the sides. In each of these two compound eyes, there are more than 6,000 facet lenses, thanks to which the bee can see not only what is directly in front of it, but also what is happening on the sides and even behind. This is not only an extremely useful, but also a necessary property: the bee needs to notice food sources from a distance and be on the alert in case of a possible attack by predators. The bee sees ultraviolet radiation (invisible to humans).
There is complete darkness inside the bee nest, so the bee navigates there with the help of two antennae-antennae located in front of the head. By crossing their antennae with their antennae, the bee can transmit soundless signals to its companions.
The second part of the bee's body is the chest (the scientific name is the thorax); six legs extend from this part of the body. The back pair of legs differs from the two front ones - it has wide flat segments overgrown with long hairs, which are called "baskets"; they are designed specifically for carrying pollen.
The third and largest part of the bee's body is the abdomen. In the abdomen of the female bee, there are glands that secrete wax, as well as the only defense tool - the sting. In a long tube located under its tip, there is poison. Be careful and stay calm when you hear a bee buzzing. If you do not pay attention to the bee, it will most likely not pay attention to you and will calmly fly about its business - to look for nectar.
Only female bees can sting, as this organ, called the ovipositor, was once used to lay eggs. A bee cannot be poisoned by its own sting, since the substances that form the poison are mixed only at the moment of the sting.
Bees have two pairs of wings - one main (front wings) and one pair of small ones (hind wings). It is their vibration that produces the buzzing sound that accompanies the flight of the bee.
Without insects such as bees, the reproduction of most of the earth's vegetation - flowering plants and trees - would be seriously hampered.
Bees are flowers' best friends. This may seem strange, because bees drink the nectar of flowers and carry away most of their pollen. However, these actions are precisely that part of the joint life of flora and fauna, on which the survival of flowering plants on Earth depends.
Like most living things, plants must constantly reproduce offspring to replace obsolete generations. For this to happen, the pollen must come into contact with the tiny germ cells produced by the pistil of the flower, then and only then can the seeds of the plant ripen. This process is called pollination.
The flower itself cannot do this - it is deprived of the ability to move. best view transport for carrying pollen and becomes a shaggy bee flying in search of nectar.
For nectar, the bee climbs into the very cup of the flower, and the shaggy hairs that cover its body collect pollen on themselves. Usually the flower is quite crowded, and when the bee gets out, most of the pollen from it crumbles. But now the pollen falls on exactly those parts of the flower that need to be pollinated in order for the seeds to ripen.
The bee renders the same vital service to the trees. For example, pollen from male apple flowers needs to be transferred to female flowers. The flowers bloom in spring and emit a sweet scent that attracts bees, who fly from tree to tree to collect as much nectar as possible.
Pollen from male trees sticks to the bee's hairy body and is partially shed when the bee lands on the flowers of another apple tree. So if it were not for the bees, there would be no apples, no apple trees themselves!
Inside any bee nest, a flurry of activity is constantly boiling - worker bees perform their vital tasks. important responsibilities.
The duties of bees in a swarm are strictly distributed. Several males (drones) fertilize the uterus. The queen bee lays eggs. Thousands of worker bees perform various tasks in the hive. Young workers clean up the hive and keep it ventilated. Having matured, these same bees provide food for the queen and larvae. As they get a little older, these bees get new task- to guard the entrance to the nest. Getting even older, the worker bees are engaged in the storage of honey. And finally, the oldest ones become foraging bees.
What kind of life does an ordinary worker bee lead? The role of these bees in the life of the colony is extremely important: in fact, without them, the bee colony could not exist. There would be no honey in the nest, no nest itself. But although all these bees are females, they, unlike the queen, cannot lay eggs.
In one bee colony, there can be up to 60,000 worker bees. Ultimately, they become miners, obliged to look for flowers and collect nectar and pollen from them. Having collected the maximum amount that is possible to carry, they return home, where they are released from the load, and then fly again in search of flowers; this is repeated many times a day, from sunrise until dark.
After sunset, the worker bees go to rest, and at dawn they wake up again, ready for a new one. labor day. To maintain the existence of a nest or hive, you need great amount these tireless workers.
The bees find the way from the nest to the place of nectar collection and back by the position of the sun in the sky. They can also tell each other the location of a large number of flowering plants, performing a kind of dance. If the bee is dancing in a circle, it means that the nectar is nearby. However, if she waves her belly, it means that she will have to fly far for nectar.
The buzzing that the bee emits at the same time reports the amount of nectar and its quality. If it buzzes loudly, it means that there is a lot of nectar. The dancing bee also brings a sample of this nectar so that other bees can identify it.
Male honey bees are larger than workers, but there are much fewer of them in the colony; they are called drones and do no work. Their only job is to mate with the queen so that she can lay eggs. Males usually die immediately after mating.
But even worker bees have a short lifespan—the honey bee, for example, lives on average for only six or seven weeks. However, all this short life is devoted to tireless work. It is not surprising that they say about a person who works hard: “Works like a bee!” Usually a honey bee colony lives for seven years, although sometimes a new queen may replace the old one during this period.

Queen of honey bees, lives in a hive. Without her, there would be no other bees. For only she can lay eggs; and therefore the rest of the bees fuss around her all day, licking and cleaning, making sure that the main bee is always full.
The queen bee is almost twice the size of any other bee in the hive. When she was little, she was fed a huge amount of nutrient mixture that the worker bees produced inside their bodies. This mixture is called royal jelly.
Fruitful queen-like queens live for four or five years, much longer than other bees. The queen secretes a special nutrient fluid called the uterine substance, which the worker bees share among themselves, passing on to each other. Only queens and drones can reproduce. Other bees are generally incapable of reproduction.
The queen queen rarely leaves the hive, only to mate with males. When she flies outside, her scent attracts drones. The queen mates in flight and then returns to the hive. She lays thousands of eggs and this takes up most of her time. Each egg must be laid in its cell, where it will ripen in complete safety. In her life, the queen mates only once, and mated with non-males die.
Worker bees build thousands of hexagonal cells from wax to form honeycombs. In each cell, the uterus lays one egg the size of a pinhead. Most of these eggs are fertilized; of which females will be born. Males hatch from unfertilized eggs.
Three days later, larvae, called children, emerge from the eggs. The newly hatched larvae feed on a mixture of honey and pollen. Five days later, the nurse bees seal the honeycomb with the larvae with wax caps. The larvae receive royal jelly in very small quantities and therefore do not become queens. There is only one queen in the hive!
After a few days, the larvae grow so large that they fill the entire cell, and then the nurse bees seal them with wax caps. Now each larva gradually turns into a chrysalis, similar to a white bee without wings, and after two weeks an adult bee emerges from the comb.
It takes twelve days before she is old enough to chew her way out of the wax chamber.
Soon, many young bees will appear in the hive. When there are too many bees in the hive, it is time for some of them to leave. Many worker bees gather around the main queen and they fly out to establish a new colony.
The queen queen will leave her colony when a new queen takes her place. She needs to be grown in the largest cell, because the new queen will very quickly grow twice the size of the worker bee.
When the queen is ready to fly out of the hive, a number of worker bees fly away with her so that they get her food. A few drones will fly away with the swarm, but the rest will remain in the hive and mate with the new queen.
Usually the swarm flies out on a fine sunny day, around noon. Meanwhile, the new queen remaining in the hive will kill with stings of all rival queens if they appear among the newborn bees.
The entire swarm leaves the hive at the same time, producing a loud buzz. Hundreds of bees gather in a dense buzzing ball that flies to the nearest tree to rest.
Before the swarm leaves the hive, several scout bees are sent out to find a new home. When they found a suitable place for a new nest, they announced this to all the bees in the swarm, performing a special dance - just like they announced the presence of food sources. Whether they found a tree with a hollow or a nest abandoned by a bird or a mouse, it doesn’t matter, the queen will soon settle there, and the worker bees will build new combs in which the queen queen will lay new eggs.
Wild bees live in the hollows of trees. Usually bees nest where there are many flowers and flowering trees nearby. A beekeeper (a person who keeps bees) builds special wooden houses for them - beehives. In English, the hive is called "apiary"; This word comes from the Latin name for the honey bee, Apis.
First, several scout bees fly out of the nest in search of sweet nectar and pollen. Once they find a suitable food source, they return to the nest to tell others about their find. This information is transmitted by a special dance, which contains all the necessary instructions. If the scout bee describes small circles, this means that the flowers are no further than 25 meters from the nest. This is great luck! However, if she writes out eights, then this means that she will have to fly a little further for nectar, perhaps even 100 meters from the nest.
When a worker bee reaches the flower, it crawls into its calyx and sucks out the nectar with its long proboscis. The nectar enters a special stomach called a goiter. When the crop is full, the bee flies back to the nest.
The nectar is processed by bees working in the nest. First they ventilate it to evaporate the water. Then, when the nectar becomes thick and sticky, it is transferred to specially prepared combs. A few days later, the beekeeper removes the honeycomb frames from the hive and selects honey with a special machine - an extractor. Of course, he has to put on a special hat with a net or a mesh mask on his head and dress in a protective suit to protect himself from bee stings. Bees don't really like it when someone, even a beekeeper, takes their honey from them!
People have been engaged in beekeeping since ancient times. Before people began to extract sugar from sugar beet and sugar cane, honey was the only sweet ingredient in food.
In addition to honey, bees produce wax, which is used to make candles and polishes. They also secrete a substance called propolis, a special kind of resin that bees use to strengthen their combs. Propolis has healing properties for humans.
In a bee hive, the air must always be fresh - usually the beekeeper monitors this. But if it gets too hot in the nest, then the bees themselves take care of the "air conditioning" - they ventilate the hive, sitting in the outlet and flapping their wings quickly, quickly.
One of the most terrible enemies of bees is the "dead head" hawk hawk. He constantly tries to climb into the hive and steal honey. Birds, dragonflies and some wasps also prey on bees.
In addition to social bees, there is a huge number of solitary bees, in which each female builds a nest herself and supplies provisions for the larvae developing there. The largest solitary bee in Europe is the xylocopa (carpenter bee), which nests in wood, gnawing long tunnels there.
In spring, on the sandy slopes, you can find huge colonies of hundreds of andren bee burrows. Many solitary bees make their nest cells out of clay. Few people know that some Egyptian pyramids are covered with a thick "plaster" of mason bee nests, possibly dating back thousands of years.
Honeybees are one of the few insects that man has been able to "tame". In apiaries, a person creates the most favorable conditions for the development of bee colonies, provides them with special houses - beehives, feeds them in winter, when there is no nectar and pollen, fights diseases and pests, and at the same time receives from bees such irreplaceable products as honey, wax, pollen , propolis, bee venom, royal jelly.

honey bee

Observations on the life of a bee

The honey bee is one of the most interesting and accessible objects for simple observations.

Starting observations of the honey bee, it is advisable to establish when it begins in the spring in a given area. summer and when it ends in autumn. What time does the honey bee's work day begin and how long does it last in May, June or July? What plants are most often visited by bees in May, June, July, August?

In spring, in a blooming garden, it is convenient to observe and follow the work of bees, especially on apple trees, pears, plums and other trees and shrubs.

Watch how the bee collects pollen. Examine the hind legs of the bee through a magnifying glass. Observe in the apiary what the bees do at the hive, at the notch after returning with a burden (nectar and pollen). Try to establish in which direction (during observations) the bees fly for the load. Write down your comments and illustrate them with drawings or photographs.

How do bees live

Human-bred and forest-dwelling honey bees live in families. Forest and "domestic" bees do not have any differences between themselves and can live and work in exactly the same way both in forests and in apiaries. Bees are social insects. When living together, they more easily endure adverse weather conditions, long and cold winters and have a greater opportunity to provide themselves with sufficient food supplies (honey, pollen). Each family of honey bees throughout the year consists of one queen, a large number of worker bees (underdeveloped female individuals), and summer period(when young queens appear) and drones (males). Bees of full-fledged families (with fetal queens) do not leave drones in the winter, but expel them from the hives after the end of the honey collection (the instinct to save food prepared by bees for wintering is manifested). As a result, drones die from cold and hunger.

Most of the worker bees are found in colonies in the middle of the summer season, when the main honey plants bloom, which provide insects with food. At this time, each strong family has 50-60 thousand or more worker bees (5-6 kg), and in early spring and late autumn - about 20 thousand (2 kg). In a family, there is a strict division of functions between its individuals: if the queen bee only lays eggs in the cells of the honeycombs to obtain new offspring, then the worker bees perform all the work necessary for the full life of the bee colony. Drones are necessary for families only for the fertilization of young queens (they do not perform any other functions).

The bee colony acts, as it were, on the principle of a single biological organism, the existence of which is possible only under the indispensable condition of the joint life of all its members. None of the individuals of the family can live and work separately from it, each individual, being outside the family, soon dies. At normal conditions a bee colony can live an unlimited amount of time, because instead of gradually dying bees, new ones are born that continue the uninterrupted existence of communities.

Each bee family has its own individual qualities and hereditary characteristics inherent only to it. Therefore, it is almost impossible to find exactly the same bee colonies in the apiary. Each family in one way or another differs from the other in terms of the intensity of the growth of bees for the honey flow, the pace and quality of building new combs and the accumulation of honey in the hive, the tendency to swarm, peacefulness, adaptability to wintering conditions, susceptibility to diseases, etc.

But these individual qualities of the family are preserved only during the time that this uterus remains in it. After the change of the queen and the appearance of a new offspring of worker bees, the colony acquires other qualities inherited from the new queen. In the nest of each hive, a specific smell is established, by which the bees easily distinguish the individuals of their own family from those of a stranger.

Bees reproduce in natural conditions as well as whole families by swarming. If bees did not have the ability to form new families as a result of swarming, they would have died out long ago from diseases, natural disasters and other causes, since new families could not appear instead of dead families.

The life of bee colonies is closely connected with their environment - climatic conditions and melliferous vegetation, which serves as a source of livelihood for them.

Bees live and benefit a person only where there are flowering plants that give them food - nectar and pollen. In turn, melliferous plants can exist only in the presence of pollinating insects that contribute to the formation of seeds and reproduction of these plants. For many millennia, in the process of evolutionary development, there has been natural selection, as a result of which the colonies of bees survived, the most adapted to the conditions of their environment.

In the future, as knowledge about the life and work of bees was accumulated, the beekeepers themselves learned to artificially create new colonies and began to pay attention to the selection of the best bee colonies for the tribe.

Reproduction and development of bees

Reproduction of bees. In honey bees, reproduction consists of separate processes, consisting in the reproduction of similar individuals in the bee colony and swarming.

The reproductive organs of all individuals of the bee colony are located in the abdomen. In queen bees, the reproductive organs (ovaries) are highly developed. Each of the two ovaries consists of 180-200 egg tubes: eggs are born and develop in them. Paired oviducts depart from the ovaries, connecting into one unpaired oviduct, with which the seminal receptacle is connected to a small vas deferens canal. In drones, the formation of spermatozoa (sex cells) occurs in paired testes (small bubbles) - the main part of the genital organs. Bees are females with underdeveloped reproductive organs. In each of the two ovaries there are only 3-5 sometimes up to 20-24 egg tubes. Bees cannot mate with drones (they don’t even have a seed receptacle to store spermatozoa), so only drones are born from unfertilized eggs laid by bees. Bees that lay eggs are called tinder bees.

Mating of queens with drones occurs during their flight in the air at a distance from the apiary at a distance of up to 5, sometimes up to 6-7 km or more. Usually, the queens and drones fly out to meet at the warmest time of the day at a temperature not lower than 25°C. Drones reach puberty on the 8-14th day of their life, sometimes later, and the uterus begins to fly out for mating ("nuptial flights") on the 7-10th day after it leaves the queen cell. The duration of its flight is approximately 15-20 minutes. Somewhat before these sorties, the young queen makes tentative overflights to get acquainted with the area and the location of the hive in which she lives. Unfavorable weather can delay the mating of queens with drones for several days.

The queen retains the ability to mate with drones for about a month. After this period, the uninseminated uterus becomes drone: from the unfertilized eggs laid by it, only drones develop. When mating queens with drones, the sperm of drones, containing a huge amount of spermatozoa (sex cells), enters the spermatheca of the uterus, where it is stored during its life (five or more years).

As was first established by V.V. Tryasko, in order to accumulate a sufficient supply of sperm to fertilize eggs laid over several years, the queen during one flight mates with not one, but several drones, and the queen can fly out to meet with drones more than one once. This was then confirmed by F. Ruttner (Austria, 1955), I. Woike (Poland, 1962) and others.

After mating with the uterus, the drone dies: part of its genital organ comes off and remains in the form of a “loop” in the genital tract of the uterus.

Since the queen receives sperm from several drones, among which there may be males of different populations, the composition of bees of one family by origin may be heterogeneous. Among the dark bees, for example, individuals with yellow rings may appear in the family, and vice versa.

The development of individuals of the bee colony. After 2 - 3 days after mating, the queen bees begin to lay eggs. At first, young queens lay a small number of eggs, but then their number increases rapidly.

The eggs laid by the uterus pass from the ovaries first through the paired oviducts, and then through the unpaired one. If at the same time the uterus lays eggs in bee cells, or bowls (the bases of future queen cells), then spermatozoa (8-12 pieces each) will penetrate into them from the seed receptacle and the eggs will be fertilized. When eggs are laid in drone cells, sperm is not released from the seed receptacle and such eggs remain unfertilized.

Consequently, the uterus lays both fertilized and unfertilized eggs. From unfertilized eggs, only males develop - drones. The latter, therefore, do not have a father and inherit only the properties of the mother (parthenogenesis or virgin reproduction).

The fertilized eggs develop into queen bees and worker bees. They inherit the properties of both the queens that have laid their eggs and the drones with which these queens have mated.

Why, then, from exactly the same fertilized eggs can both queens and worker bees develop? It depends only on the food and the nature of the nutrition of the larvae. When growing worker bees, the larvae receive milk from the nurse bees, secreted by the maxillary, pharyngeal and other glands, only during the first three days. For the next three days, until the sealing of the bee larvae, they are fed with a mixture of honey and bee bread. The larvae, from which the bees grow queens, are supplied in abundance during the entire period of their development with royal jelly, which differs in chemical composition from milk, which is fed to the larvae of worker bees. In addition, unlike worker bee larvae, queen larvae continue to consume food left at the bottom of queen cells even after they are sealed (during cocoon spinning).

According to the position of the eggs in the cell, you can determine the approximate time of their laying by the uterus. Eggs just laid by the uterus in cells or queen cells are glued with their lower end perpendicular to the bottom. As the embryo develops, the eggs gradually tilt: by the end of the third day, they already lie on the bottoms of the cells.

During this period, the nurse bees put a drop of milk secreted by their glands on the bottom of the cell. The shell of the egg softens and a small larva hatches from it.

In the future, the larva is abundantly supplied with food. She literally swims in milk and swallows it during a slow circular motion. The larval stage ends in queens after 5 1/2 - 6 days, in worker bees - after 6 days, in drones - after 6 1/2 - 7 days. At this time, the bees seal the cells with larvae with porous wax caps mixed with pollen. In a sealed cell, the larva spins a cocoon. It is formed from the secretions of the spinning gland, which harden in the form of threads, with which the larva surrounds itself. Before spinning the cocoon, the larva cleanses its intestines, depositing its contents in the corner of the cell.

Undergoing complex changes, the larva turns into a pupa; the organs of the larva disintegrate and new organs of the future adult insect develop. The protein substances necessary for the nutrition and growth of the cells of the organs of the pupa come from the fat body present in its body. Being white at first, the pupa then gradually darkens.

Queen bees are grown in large honeycomb cells specially built for this purpose - queen cells. Bees can also rebuild them on ordinary (bee) cells of the honeycomb, in which there are young bee larvae of 1-3 days of age. Such queen cells are laid by bees after the sudden death of the old queen in order to bring out the young one. Queen cells, rebuilt on bee cells with larvae, and the queens emerging from them are called fistulous. When preparing the bees for swarming (during which the queen flies away with the swarm), the old queen lays eggs for hatching young queens in bowls pre-built by bees - the foundations of future queen cells. Their bees usually build on the edges of the comb. Such queen cells and the queens that emerge from them are called swarm.

After three days, a larva hatches from the egg laid in the mother liquor, which, as already noted, the bees are abundantly fed with special royal jelly before sealing the mother liquor (the mother liquor contains 100-300 mg of milk). The larva grows rapidly and 8.5-9 days after the egg was laid, the bees seal the mother liquor. In it, the larva turns into a pupa, and then after 7.5-8 days (after sealing) - into an adult insect - a young uterus. Thus, the development of the uterus from an egg to an adult insect lasts 16-17 days.

Worker bees develop in the honeycomb cells. For the first three days, their larvae are supplied with milk, which in its composition differs from the milk received by the larvae of future queens.

In the following days, these larvae are fed with a mixture of honey and perga. After 6 days, the larvae grow so much that they occupy the entire volume of the cells. 12 days after the sealing of the cells, an adult young bee develops from the pupa. She gnaws through the lid of the cell and exits it to the comb.

The development of a worker bee from the time of laying an egg to the release of an adult insect lasts for 21 days, of which the stages are: eggs - 3 days, larvae in an open cell - 6 days, larvae and pupae in a sealed cell - 12 days.

Eggs and larvae in open cells are called open brood, while larvae and pupae in sealed cells are called printed brood.

With the sudden death of the queens and the absence of larvae in the nest, the food intended for them is consumed by the nurse bees themselves, which causes them to develop ovaries. Therefore, from the unfertilized eggs laid by such bees (in bee cells), only drones develop, and besides, small, abnormal ones. Bees with functioning ovaries are called tinder bees. A family with tinder bees is doomed to gradual extinction if the beekeeper does not provide it with the necessary assistance in time.

Drones, as already noted, develop from unfertilized eggs, which the queen lays in honeycomb cells, which have a slightly larger volume compared to ordinary bee cells. Egg larvae hatch after 3 days. For the first three days, nurse bees feed the larvae with milk (its composition differs from the milk that the larvae of queens and worker bees receive), and then with a mixture of honey and bee bread. The larva stage in an open drone cell lasts 6 days, and the larva and pupa stage in a sealed cell lasts 14 days. Therefore, the full development of the drone lasts for 24 days.

Food and digestion of bees

Bees feed on nectar and pollen collected from plant flowers. They contain proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and mineral salts. Consume bees and water. All these substances are required for bees to grow brood and their normal life. Nectar, which is a carbohydrate feed, contains up to 50% sugar, the rest is water. Bees extract nectar from plant flowers. The mouth appendages of the bees are arranged in such a way that they allow the spoon of the tongue to easily lick the smallest droplets of nectar in the flowers and extract it from the recessed corollas of the flowers with the help of a proboscis formed by the lower lip and lower jaws.

The nectar collected from the flowers, through the mouth organs and esophagus, enters the bee's honey goiter, in which it delivers the nectar to the hive, where it passes it on to the young bees-receivers. Depending on the strength of the honey collection, a bee can bring 35-45 mg of nectar at a time.

The nectar that enters the hive is processed by the bees into honey. This process is reduced mainly to the evaporation of excess water from the nectar (it remains in honey 18-20%) and the decomposition of cane sugar into simple sugars (glucose and fructose). Processing nectar into honey, the bees give it an acidic reaction. The pollen grains found in the nectar from the honey goiter are sent to the midgut for use as feed. A small amount of pollen remains in honey.

The protein food for bees is flower pollen. About 25% of flying bees collect it actively. These bees do not show much interest in nectaries, they are more attracted to the anthers of flowers. They fly out of the hives for pollen with a supply of food in their honey stomach, which they need during the flight.

When bees visit flowers, a large amount of pollen grains remain on their body. During the flight, the bees clean them with brushes of the legs and put them in baskets (recesses on the hind legs). During the collection of pollen, the bees moisten the nectar somewhat, due to which the pollen grains are held in the baskets in the form of dense balls, called pollen. The mass of two pollen is 20-24 mg, each of them contains up to 1-1.5 million pollen grains.

In the hive, the bees drop the pollen lumps they brought into the cells of the honeycombs (up to 18 pollen can fit in one bee cell). Young bees immediately compact the pollen with their heads, and when the cell is almost full, fill it with honey. As a result, bee pollen is obtained from pollen - a source of protein nutrition for the bee colony.

During honey collection, bees receive water in sufficient quantities from the nectar brought to the hive. But if nectar does not enter the hive, and the family at this time grows a lot of brood, the bees feel a lack of water and are forced to bring it to the hive.

The process of digestion in bees takes place mainly in the middle intestine (stomach). Food taken by the proboscis passes through the pharynx and esophagus into the honey goiter, and from there it enters the stomach. In it, it is digested, and nutrients enter the blood through its walls. The undigested part of the food moves into the large (hind) intestine, which is the last section of the intestine of the bee. The bees in the nest do not defecate, therefore, in bad weather (cold, bad weather) and in winter, when they do not fly out of the hives, significant masses of excrement accumulate in the hindgut. Outside, they stand out when the bees first fly out of the hive.

Products collected by bees from plants

Nectar is a sweet transparent juice secreted by special flower glands called nectaries. Some plants (for example, sweet cherry, common vetch, cotton plant) also have extrafloral nectaries located on leaves, stipules, leaf petiole, at the base of the flower calyx. In many plants, nectaries are located in different parts of the flower and have an unequal shape. The main elements of nectar are sugars, nitrogenous substances, mineral salts, essential oils, acids, etc. Moreover, there are plants in the nectar of which only cane sugar or only fruit, grape, and other sugars predominate. Presence in nectar essential oils promotes the fastest detection by insects of flowers with nectar of such smell.

The amount of sugar in nectar usually ranges from 5 to 70%. In most plants, nectar contains about 50% sugar. The presence of sugar is not constant and depends on weather conditions and the type of plant. Even during the day, sugar content can vary significantly. Observations have established that bees visit flowers more actively and take nectar if half of it is sugar, and do not take nectar at all if its sugar content is less than 5%. Very thick nectar is sucked into the honey stomach more slowly by the bees.

Nectar secretion by plants is affected by temperature and humidity. sunlight, soil conditions, agricultural practices of honey crops, time of day and more. A more intense release of nectar and its collection by insects occurs during a period when the weather is warm, sunny and calm with an air temperature in the shade (in the central zone) from 25 to 30 ° C and a humidity of 60-80%. Some types of plants (linden, buckwheat, and a number of others) produce nectar abundantly even at higher air humidity. However, the amount of sugar in the flowers in this case remains at the same level and the nectar becomes more liquid due to an increase in its water content. There are plants (melilot, motherwort, meadow cornflower) that produce nectar well even in drier weather. Most plants stop producing nectar at temperatures below 20°C.

Night cooling, shading of honey plants, strong wind, cloudy and rainy days have a negative impact on the activity of nectaries. Less nectar is released and its sugar content decreases in the last phase of flowering of the plant. A positive effect on nectar productivity is provided by advanced technology for the cultivation of agricultural honey crops and fertilizers. Plants secrete the main amount of nectar in the first half of flowering, so apiaries should be brought to them for honey collection before flowering begins.

In the hive, the nectar brought by the bees is turned into honey. Collecting bees, returning to the nest with nectar, pass it on to receiving bees, who process the nectar: ​​they evaporate excess water and enrich it with various substances.

Plant pollen is necessary for bees as a protein feed. They feed on them themselves and in in large numbers spend on feeding the larvae and for the formation of wax. Bees collect pollen mainly in the morning. The color and shape of pollen grains are very diverse and depend on the plant species from which they are collected. When bees visit different plants, pollen grains (lumps of pollen) contain grains that have an unequal color.

Pad. In the hottest dry time of the summer season, bees sometimes bring to the hives, in addition to nectar, a sweet thick liquid collected from the leaves of plants. Pad is emitted by aphids living on the leaves of trees (oak, linden, elm, hazel, ash, maple, aspen, willow, etc.) and feeding on their sap. The excrement of these insects contains a significant amount of sugar, which attracts bees. With a large accumulation of aphids on the leaves, drops of a sugary liquid are formed that fall down (hence the name - pad). In forest areas, bees often collect and bring a significant amount of honeydew to the hive and produce honeydew honey from it. According to researchers, up to 25 kg of this liquid can accumulate on the leaves of a large linden.

Honeydew is a sweet liquid of plant origin (effusion) that forms on leaves without the participation of insects. It appears during the period of sharp fluctuations in the daily air temperature, i.e., when hot days and cold nights are established.

Propolis bees are prepared from resinous substances collected from the buds and trunks of trees (poplar, birch, pine, etc.). These substances, as well as lumps of pollen (pollen), bees bring to the hive in baskets on their hind legs.

Pollen plants for bees

Starting from early spring and ending in late autumn, when young bees are grown in the hives and new combs are built, bee colonies constantly need pollen. Pollen is rich in proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals necessary for the life of the bee colony.

Usually, bees collect pollen from entomophilous plants, which produce nectar at the same time. But in certain periods of the season (especially in early spring), when honey plants do not bloom yet or there are very few of them, bees get this food from wind-pollinated plants. Of these, the most valuable for bees are hazel, alder, elm, oak, birch, Walnut, aspen, castor bean, lupine, corn, mullein, hemp, quinoa and many other plants. According to V.N. Andreev, even pollen grains of rye are found in bee pollen. Of the entomophilous plants, dandelion, sunflower, colza, willows, yellow acacia, and white clover are good pollen plants.

Pollination and fertilization by bees of flowering plants

In higher plants, the reproductive organ is the flower. It contains its main parts - the pistil (the female organ of the flower) and the stamens (male organs) located around the pistil. The pistil consists of an expanded hollow lower part, called the ovary, an elongated column, which ends in an extension - the stigma. In the depth of the ovary of the flower, the fruit develops. The stamen consists of a thin filament and an anther (pollen sac) at the top of the stamen. Pollen is produced in the anther. When mature, the anthers open and the pollen grains are transferred to the sticky surface of the stigma. This process is called pollination. The pollen that has fallen on the stigma of the pistil germinates to the ovary cavity, in which the male and female germ cells merge, as a result, fertilization and the birth of the fetus occur.

Depending on the method of pollen transfer, the plant is divided into wind-pollinated (anemophilic) and insect-pollinated (entomophilous). In the first case, pollen from one plant to another is carried by the wind, in the second case, by insects visiting flowers to collect nectar and pollen. Along with this, entomophilous plants also attract insects with the aroma of flowers, their bright color and the shape of the inflorescence. Approximately 20% are wind-pollinated, and about 80% are insect-pollinated.

Wind-pollinated plants (rye, corn, birch, poplar, oak, hazel, pine, etc.) have, as a rule, small nondescript flowers and emit a large amount of light pollen. During the flowering of these plants, one can observe a huge accumulation of pollen in the air, during the movement of which, with the air flow, it falls on the stigmas of flowers. For pollination, pollen grains are required many times less than the amount that is released by the stamens of plants, so the rest of the pollen dies.

The situation is different with the pollination of entomophilous plants. They emit pollen much less than wind-pollinated plants. Their pollen is sticky, heavy, and can only be carried from flower to flower by insects. This method of pollination is more reliable. Insects deliver pollen grains on their body from the male organs of some flowers directly to the female organs of other flowers.

Particularly good results are obtained when bees carry pollen from plants of the same species, but growing under different conditions of soil nutrition, microclimate and topography. In these cases, a mixture of different-quality pollen from a large number of plants gets on the stigmas of the pistils, and only that pollen germinates that meets the requirements of the plant to a greater extent, that is, selective fertilization occurs.

Plants grown from seeds obtained by repeated visits to flowers by bees in the first and second generations are distinguished by better development, greater power and increased growth. Such plants produce more viable seeds and produce fruits with better commercial qualities.

The advantages of cross-pollination of plants by insects and the positive effects of their repeated visits to the flowers of plants growing in different conditions were identified as early as the middle of the last century by Charles Darwin.

When pollen falls from the stamens to the stigma of the pistils of its own flower, self-pollination occurs. The transfer of pollen from the anthers of one plant to the stigmas of the flowers of another plant of the same species is called cross-pollination. Of the cultivated plants, they reproduce by self-pollination, for example, wheat, vetch, soybeans, peas, barley, etc. Plants such as buckwheat, red clover, sainfoin, apple trees of most varieties need only cross-pollination. It should be noted that cross-pollination contributes to the production of more powerful, prolific and viable plants. There is a group of plants that have retained the ability to self-pollinate (sunflower, alfalfa, cotton, raspberries, gooseberries and some others), but even they, when cross-pollinated by insects, give higher yields.

Many plants in the process of long evolutionary development have developed a number of adaptations that prevent self-pollination and promote cross-pollination. In a whole group of plants, self-pollination is impossible, because they have female flowers with pistils on one specimen, and male flowers with stamens on the other (unisexual). Such plants are called dioecious. This group includes willow, poplar, hemp, strawberry, etc. There are plants in which flowers, like dioecious plants, have either stamens or pistils, but they are on the same specimen. Such plants are called monoecious.

An obstacle to self-pollination is the non-simultaneous maturation of stamens and pistils located in the same flower (bisexual flower). So, in sunflower, gooseberry, fireweed, the anthers ripen earlier than the stigma, and in the apple tree, pear, plantain and others, the stigma ripens earlier. In these cases, pollination occurs by pollen from other flowers carried by insects. In a number of plants (buckwheat, lungwort, loosestrife), self-pollination is difficult due to the fact that the flowers have multi-columnar organs: some have long stamens and short pistils, while others, on the contrary, have long pistils and short stamens. Therefore, within the flower, pollination by its own pollen, as a rule, is not carried out.

In some plants (red clover, sainfoin) phenomena of self-fertility (self-sterility) are observed. In this case, the own pollen on the stigma of the flower does not germinate or germinates much more slowly than the pollen from another flower. Self-infertility occurs in apple, pear, cherry and a number of other fruit and berry crops, in which fertilization occurs only if pollen from flowers of another variety has got on the stigma of the pistils of one variety. In order to create conditions for the normal fruiting of these crops, it is necessary to have appropriate varieties of fruit trees in the gardens that provide intervarietal pollination.

Inventory used in the care of bees

The bee smoker is designed to pacify the bees with smoke during the inspection of their nests and to fumigate bee colonies with medicinal preparations for certain diseases. It consists of a cylindrical outer body, an inner glass with a slatted bottom, fur and a lid.

The smoker should be kept in a dry place protected from rain and the openings of the lid should be regularly cleaned from carbon deposits.

The bee chisel is used for separating the components of the hive, pushing apart the frames in it, cleaning the bottom, the walls of the hive, frame bars, folds, etc. It consists of a blade made of stainless steel and wooden plates attached to the middle part of the chisel on both sides.

Easter chisel.

Frame cleaner is used to clean beehive frames from wax structures and propolis. It consists of steel scrapers, shield parts and fasteners. Compared to a chisel, a frame cleaner is more convenient and productive. During the cleaning of the frames, it is firmly fixed in the workplace.

The uterine cell is intended for temporary separation of the uterus or queen cell from the bees. It is used when replanting queens and isolating mature queen cells when hatching queens. The cell is made of tinned metal mesh. A hole was made on top of the tin plate for hanging a sealed mother liquor. When kept in a cell of the uterus, this hole is closed with a valve. Feed for the uterus is placed in a recess made on the inside of the movable block.

Cells for queens.

The uterine cap is used to cover the uterus on the comb when it is planted in a bee colony. The cap consists of a rim made of tinplate, a metal mesh attached to the top of the rim, and three spikes to secure the cap to the honeycomb.

The dividing grid is used to separate part of the nest when it is required to limit the laying of eggs by the queen, as well as the manufacture of insulators used in the breeding of queens. The grate is made of tinplate with rows of oblong holes 28 mm long and 4.4 mm wide. For these purposes, a wire or plastic grate is more convenient.

A scraper-shovel is used to clean the bottoms in the hives. It consists of a stainless steel blade and a wooden handle connected to the blade.

Feeders are used to feed sugar syrup to bees when it replaces a part of fodder honey and in case of a lack of food in bee colonies. There are several types of feeders. Most comfortable wooden feeders box type, mounted on top of the nest. A wooden frame feeder (4 l) in the form of a nest frame has also become widespread. To prevent the bees from drowning in the syrup, the feeder is supplied with a light wooden raft.

The entrance fence is used to limit the size of the entrance and protect the nest from mice entering it through the entrance. When transporting bee colonies, the barrier closes the entrance gap in the hive. The barrier consists of a metal body and a valve freely moving in it with holes for the passage of bees.

Roevnya is used when natural swarming bee families for the collection and temporary maintenance of swarm bees. There are several types of swarms with different shapes and sizes. At present, swivels are produced, the frame of which consists of a strip of three-layer plywood. On both sides, the frame is covered with a wire mesh attached to it with a plywood rim. The lower extended part of the swarm on one side is made folding up to half the clearance of the frame. In the center of the upper part of the frame, a wire loop is attached for hanging the swarm. The length of the swarm is 490 mm, width 310, height 220 mm.

An apiary hole puncher is necessary in apiaries for piercing holes in the side rails of the beehive frames, through which the wire pulled into them is passed. They make holes in frames with permanent dividers, as well as in frames that do not have dividers. Enterprises that produce hives, frames are made with holes for the wire. In the manufacture of frames directly on the farms, they try to mechanize this laborious work, using four-wire machines that work with electricity.

Frame wire. Suitable for these purposes is steel light wire with a diameter of 0.4-0.5 mm. It is produced in metal coils of 250 and 500 g. With a 250-gram coil, approximately 65 nest frames (435x300 mm) can be equipped with wire, and 130 frames for a 500-gram coil.

A pattern is required when performing work on the waxing of frames. It consists of a board with a thickness of 18 mm (for frames without dividers - 12 mm). On the underside of the board, two transverse bars are nailed, which protrude 25-30 mm beyond its edges and serve as a support for the frames. The length and width of the pattern board should be slightly less than the internal clearance of the hive frames.

The combined roller is used for attaching honeycomb sheets to frames in apiaries that do not have devices for electric fusing. The roller consists of a corrugated roller, a metal toothed disk (spur) and a metal rod. To prevent the spur from jumping off the wire, an annular groove is made around its circumference.

Hive staples are used to fasten individual parts of the hive in apiaries that do not have containers. Enterprises produce braces of two types: belt and metal tape. More convenient are belt braces with a locking device - a hook. Tapes of these staples are cut 4-5 cm wide, their length is determined by the size of the hive to be fastened.

The container for transporting beehives is a welded metal structure consisting of an upper frame, a pallet and two tie-down devices. Each such device includes a special nut and a chain, to one end of which a bolt is attached. Containers are usually made for 3-4 hives. The carrying capacity of the container for 3 hives is 400 kg, for 4 hives 500 kg. The mass of the structure is 30 and 36 kg, respectively.

In the apiary, it is also necessary to have a blowtorch for disinfecting hives, a brush or goose feather for sweeping bees, a work box for inventory, a box for transferring frames, thermometers and psychrometers for measuring temperature and air humidity, etc.

bee care technique

Almost all the work performed by beekeepers to care for bees, one way or another, falls on inspections of bee colonies related to identifying their condition, eliminating the identified shortcomings and creating necessary conditions for normal development.

The beekeepers of household and small public apiaries, who have enough free time, usually adhere to such methods of keeping bees, which are based on the individual service of each bee colony. A significant part of the operations at the same time is associated with high labor costs, which do not have a positive impact on the life and productivity of bee colonies. It should be noted that in a number of cases, individual service of bee colonies harms them (causes severe anxiety of the bees and a break in their work). It is known that frequent long-term inspections of bee colonies in the spring with a complete breakdown of their nests lead to a reduction in brood rearing, and in the summer - to less efficient use honey collection.

Inspection of bee families, especially with the complete dismantling of their nests, should be done only in case of emergency. It has been established that colonies of bees, which were examined 4 times during the season (after the exhibition from the winter hut, during the formation of layering, before the start of the main honey collection and in the fall when assembling nests for wintering), surpassed colonies of similar strength, which were examined every 6 days, in terms of intensity oviposition of queens by 43.4% and by gross honey harvest by 43.8%. Since the dismantling of nests sharply disrupts the work of bees in collecting nectar, pollen, excreting wax and feeding larvae, bee colonies on the day of their inspection brought nectar to the hives by an average of 30.1% and pollen by 29.1% less than colonies, which were not examined.

Foreign and domestic experience of large bee farms (apiaries) indicates that an increase in labor productivity and an increase in the production of beekeeping products per average annual worker can be achieved by simplifying the care of bees, typifying apiary work, and reducing detailed inspections of nests to a minimum. Progressive technology provides for keeping only strong highly productive bee colonies in apiaries and culling all weak ones at the end of the season, providing bees with abundant food supplies, keeping young high-quality queens in colonies, placing apiaries in the best places for honey collection, etc.

Inspection of bee colonies should be done only when absolutely necessary. At the same time, during each inspection, it is important to complete all the current work, so that then as long as possible not to dismantle the nests of bee colonies and not interfere with their development and honey collection. Inspections of bee colonies industrial methods beekeeping is mainly associated with the following work: spring revision of colonies, the formation of new colonies, setting and removing extensions (housings), preparing bee colonies for winter.

With intensive methods of keeping bees, it is important to apply group care for bee families, which consists in the simultaneous performance of each regular work in all families of the apiary. However, this technique is effective only when all families have approximately equal strength. In order to equalize bee colonies in terms of strength, bees and brood from stronger ones are transferred to families that have weakened over the winter in spring. In the future, colonies are leveled during the formation of layering and in the preparation of bees for winter. Measures should also be taken to prevent the wandering of bees, their gatherings and raids. This can be achieved by painting the hives and arrival boards in different colors and arrangement of hives in relation to natural landmarks (trees, shrubs). In order to determine the time of the next work on caring for bees in the apiary, a selective check of several bee colonies is carried out and, depending on their condition, weather conditions and honey flow, an appropriate decision is made.

No buildings are built at the temporary parking lots of beehives with bees, and beekeepers take the necessary equipment with them on each trip to perform the next work, various materials, frames, top dressing, etc.

On apiary estates and temporary points, bee colonies are placed in groups of 3-4 hives with a distance between groups sufficient for the passage of a truck. With this arrangement of hives, the beekeeper and his assistants can work side by side with several families at the same time. It is important that the hives are of the same type, with standard interchangeable constituent parts. For the formation of new families (layers) and other needs, a sufficient number of spare hives should be kept in each apiary. Works not related to the direct care of the bees are performed on the central estate.

With progressive technology for caring for bees, well-equipped apiary farms and assigning cars to beekeepers, one beekeeper with two seasonal assistants (or two permanent beekeepers) can serve up to 300-400 families. This technology has been successfully used for a number of years in the apiaries of the Zavety Ilyich collective farm in the Lipetsk Region, a number of farms in Bashkiria, Primorsky, Altai Territories, etc. At the same time, the output per average annual worker is relatively high here. The experience of large foreign industrial beekeeping farms also testifies to the advantages of progressive technology for keeping bees and producing honey. In a number of countries, many beekeepers of industrial apiaries serve 500-600 bee colonies.

Inspection of bee colonies. Before each inspection, it is necessary to prepare the necessary equipment, combs for expanding nests, food supplies, frames with wax, spare clean hives, cases, magazine extensions, bottoms, etc. At the same time, you should clearly understand what work should be done during the inspection bee family.

When examining colonies, bees usually behave restlessly, penetrate under the clothes of beekeepers, making their work difficult. In order to avoid these inconveniences and in order to increase labor productivity, the beekeeper must work in the apiary in overalls (or robes) and always have a protective face net on his head.

face mesh

Overalls are sewn from light, light and smooth fabric (hairy and dark clothes irritate and embitter the bees), free, not restricting movement. Facial nets are usually made of light chintz and black tulle. It is more convenient to work in a mesh made entirely of black tulle, which ensures good air circulation in it. The bottom edge of the net should be in close contact with the neck with the help of braid so that the bees cannot penetrate under the net.

When working with bees, a smoker is required. To form smoke, first a small amount of flammable material (birch bark, shavings, etc.) is placed in it, then it is filled with material that gives little flame, but a lot of smoke (rotten, tree tinder mushrooms, mullein, etc.). The jet of smoke exits through the conical cover of the smoker, the internal holes of which should be cleaned more often from carbon deposits. The bees pacified by smoke sting less, because with the appearance of smoke in the nest, the bees collect honey in their goiters, and when the goiter is full, it is difficult for them to bend the abdomen to sting. It is necessary to smoke bees as little as possible, and when working with Caucasian and Carpathian families of bees, it is very limited.

The hangers of the frames of the bees are usually glued with propolis to the folds of the walls of the hive. Therefore, before removing the frame from the hive, it must be slightly moved. This is easy to do with a beekeeping chisel, which is also used to clean the slats of the frames and the walls of the hive.

To transfer combustible material and small equipment, a special work box is used, which is often made in the form of a stool. If during the work the beekeeper needs frames with honeycombs or foundation, then he places them in advance in a special portable box. Cases and store extensions are transported through the apiary on a trolley, scooter or car.

When handling bees, certain skills are required. Colonies should be inspected, if possible, on warm, calm days, when bees actively fly out of the hives (in the shade it is usually not lower than 15 ° C). Only in exceptional cases, when it is necessary to provide urgent assistance to the bees, is inspection allowed at a lower temperature. It is necessary to work with bees calmly, without sudden movements. Rapid movements, waving away from the bees, various pungent odors, especially crushed bees, greatly irritate and embitter the bees.

During the inspection of the colony, individual bees can sting the beekeeper. In such cases, you should calmly return the frame to the hive and pick off the sting with your fingernail. At permanent job with bees, beekeepers develop immunity to bee venom and do not feel severe pain from stings.

Inspect bee families as follows. Approaching the hive with bees and placing a working and portable box behind it, the beekeeper blows small jets (two or three) of smoke into the entrance. Then he stands on the side of the hive, removes its cover and insulation. Raising the edge of the canvas (or the extreme ceiling plate), they blow a small stream of smoke along (and not from top to bottom) the upper bars of the frames. Instead of the removed solid ceiling, a spare canvas is placed on the frames. The insert board and the first extreme frame (after its inspection) are temporarily moved to the free part of the hive so that it is convenient to remove the next frames. If the hive has a full set of frames, then the outermost frame is temporarily placed in a portable box. After that, the canvas (ceiling boards) is lifted further (if the bees go up, they blow some smoke along the frames again) and the next frame is pulled out for inspection. The frames should be taken with your fingers by the shoulders of the upper bar and removed from the hive smoothly, without sudden movements. It is necessary to inspect the honeycomb only above the nest. When examining the opposite side of the honeycomb, it is transferred to a vertical position and, holding the frame by the shoulders of the upper bar, the honeycomb is rotated 180 °. If you hold the honeycombs flat, then liquid honey can flow out of the cells and the bees that are not rammed by bees can fall out.

If it is necessary to free some of the frames from the bees, then they are shaken off with a sharp movement into the empty space of the hive. From frames filled with a significant amount of food (heavy) or fresh nectar, the bees are swept into the hive with a hair brush or goose feather. When examining bee families, pay attention Special attention to provide bees with food, the availability and quality of queen bees.

Accounting for the state of bee colonies. After each inspection of bee colonies, the basic information about them is recorded in the bee log, on a separate page for each colony. The numbers on the hives are made removable on tin plates, approximately 10X10 cm in size. They are hung at the top of the hives, usually in the right or left corner. Numbers are assigned not to beehives, but to bee families (wombs). If a family is moved to another hive, then its number is transferred at the same time. The family number is also preserved for the swarm that has emerged with an old queen and settled in another hive.

To take into account the age of the queens, the development of bee colonies, their provision with combs, food reserves, as well as the productivity of colonies, records are made in the colony card.

These data are used when carrying out breeding work in the apiary and determining the period for replacing queens. In large apiaries, where beekeepers serve a large number of bee colonies, you can restrict yourself to more simplified accounting.

In large beekeeping farms, as a rule, records are kept not separately for each family of bees, but as a whole by points. They record the time of their visit, the number of bee colonies at the point, what work has been done and what needs to be done, general information about the state of bee colonies, etc. In some large beekeeping farms, maps are drawn up on which the locations of apiaries are marked.

Stock and equipment for the care of bees

Caring for bees with maximum productivity is possible only if the nest is provided with a complete set of necessary beekeeping equipment and equipment. There are inventory and equipment used for: examining the nests of bee colonies, equipping hive frames with wire and foundation, feeding bees, breeding queens, swarming, sending bees and queens, pumping honey and processing wax, as well as general-purpose inventory.

Overalls. Honey is a food product, therefore, when receiving it from bees, the beekeeper must comply with the necessary sanitary and hygienic rules. When working with bees and pumping out honey, the beekeeper is required to wear a clean coat or overalls and a facial mesh. The working suit should protect the beekeeper from being stung by bees, not restrict his movements and be as light and well ventilated as possible.

The coat (overalls) of the beekeeper is sewn from light, light, but durable fabric. Elastic bands are threaded into the sleeves or laces are sewn to them, tightly covering the wrists.

The face net serves to protect the beekeeper's head and neck from stings. Make a mesh of light-colored cotton fabric. A piece of black tulle is sewn into its front part. An elastic band is inserted into the upper edge in front, which allows, if necessary, to fold back the tulle part and open the face without removing the mesh. It is better to pass air through the front mesh, sewn entirely from tulle. To prevent the fabric of the mesh from adhering to the face, the top of the mesh is made in the form of a wide-brimmed hat, in the edge of which a wire circle is inserted; the same circle is threaded into the lower part of the grid.

Facial Mesh:

A - tulle; B - metal

A strip of fabric is sewn to the very bottom of the front mesh, into which a cord is inserted, tightening around the beekeeper's neck. This prevents the bees from crawling under the net.

The main dimensions of the standard mesh, cm:

side margins 8

hat brim front 10

hat brim width at the back 6

height of the side part of the hat head 9

width of the bottom of the hat head 13

length of the bottom of the hat head 16

mesh back length 44

mesh front flap width 9

tulle insert width 30

braid length 110

In the United States, a folding metal mesh is recognized as the most convenient for inspecting bees. Nets of this design are stronger than tulle.

Equipment for the inspection of bees

Dymari - devices used to generate smoke that pacifies the bees during the inspection of their nests.

Smoker DP consists of a metal body and fur. The latter is attached to the body with the help of a bracket and is formed from two planks covered with leather from the sides; from the inside, between the planks, a metal spring is strengthened, which straightens the fur after it is compressed.

At the bottom of the board, facing the body, there is a hole for air. The same hole opposite the hole and the plate is also available in the metal case. From above, the body is closed with a lid hinged on it, consisting of a clip in, a grate and a branch pipe with an opening for the exit of smoke jets. The branch pipe extinguishes the sparks formed during the combustion of combustible material in the smoker. A metal cup is inserted inside the case, the slatted bottom of which does not come into contact with the base of the case, but rests with its edge on the protrusions of the lower rim of the case. The double wall of the case protects the hands of the beekeeper from burns during prolonged use of the smoker. Small shavings, dry peat or other material are placed at the bottom of the glass, which emit a lot of smoke during combustion. Special briquettes are convenient for this purpose. A jet of air coming from the fur, the smoke is driven through the upper part of the body and the lid pipe and exits. Do not use wood chocks, resinous shavings, dry branches and other material that gives a lot of heat during combustion, which quickly leads to damage to the smoker. In addition, the use of a smoker in such cases is unsafe in terms of fire protection.

Dymar DP:

A - general view; B - in the context

Smoker parameters, mm: smoker height 220, width 118, length 250, outer casing diameter 100; weight 980 g.

Apiary smokers DPR, DPS, unlike other designs of smokers, have fur shields made of aluminum sheet.

Main dimensions, mm: DPR DPS

length 245 235

width 120 120

height 240 232

Weight, kg 0.95 0.95

The volume of the glass filled with smoke-forming material, 780 and 884 cm 3 . These smokers are an improved design of the bee smoker, which provides for: an increase in durability (the warranty period is increased by / year), the capacity of smoke-producing materials by 20% without increasing the mass of the smoker, which helps to reduce the auxiliary work time of the beekeeper, improve safety during operation and trade dress of the product.

Elektrodymar I. A. Bilanich. It consists of a housing, a hinged cover, a smoke generator, a battery case and a fan designed to supply air. The fan is driven by a microelectric motor (rotational speed 1500 min), powered by a flashlight battery. To supply air at the moment the fuel is ignited in the smoker, the fan is turned on, but when the fuel starts to burn strongly, it is turned off. To do this, use a special button located in the smoker.

Instructions for the use of smokers.

1. During the operation of the smoker, smoke-forming materials are used in accordance with the recommendations for beekeeping.

2. When working with a smoker, in order to avoid burns, avoid touching the body and cover. Opening and closing the lid with a fired smoker is possible only by the hook.

3. To ensure the passage of smoke, periodically clean the grate of the cover from carbon deposits.

4. It is forbidden to kindle and work with a smoker near flammable materials and substances.

5. The smoker should be stored (freed from the remnants of smoldering materials) in a dry room.

Of the foreign smokers, the Vulkan apparatus attracts attention, in the bottom of which a clockwork mechanism with a fan is mounted. The mechanism is started with a key. In the lower part of the case there is a lever that regulates the operation of the winding mechanism and the air supply to the smoke generator. The device works in all positions.

A beekeeping chisel is a tool that a beekeeper cannot do without when working with bees. It is used to push the frames in the hive, cleaning them from wax and propolis. With a chisel, they scrape and clean the walls, bottom, folds of the hive, ceilings, dividing boards. Using a chisel as a lever, the beekeeper separates the upper body of the hive from the bottom or the magazine extension from the body. A chisel is made from tool steel.

The bee chisel with overlays SPM consists of a blade and wooden overlays fastened together with aluminum rivets.

The straight extended end of the chisel is sharpened on both sides; the other end is bent at an angle of 70-85° and sharpened from the outside.

The main parameters and dimensions of the chisel must correspond to the following data, mm: blade thickness - 2.5, cutting edge width 45, front part width 24, length 200, width 45, height 26; the angle of the bent part is 85°. Weight 0.16 kg.

The universal chisel has a file and a hole, which ensures its versatile use when examining bee colonies. The hole is necessary for hanging the chisel and removing nails.

The steel file is attached to the chisel with a rivet and folds on its blade in the non-working position. Chisel dimensions, mm: length with folded file 180, with unfolded 252, width over blades 55.

A spatula scraper is used for cleaning integral bottoms during inspections of nests of bee colonies. Its dimensions, mm: length 225, height 45, blade width 80, thickness 1.2. Weight 130 g.

Chisels:

A - with overlays SPm; B - ordinary; B - universal; G-scraper-shovel

Uterine cells:

A - standard; B - universal; B - caps for replanting queens

The queen cell is designed to separate the uterus or queen cell from the bees for some time. It is used for replanting queens and isolating mature queen cells when hatching queens. The standard uterine cell CT has become widespread (see figure). Its base is a metal frame 1, the walls consist of a tinned mesh 2. From above, the cell is limited by a plate of tin, in which two holes are made - one 3 for planting a queen or hanging a mature queen cell, the other 4 for the passage of bees. Both openings, if necessary, are closed with a metal valve 5. A wooden block with a recess for food is movably attached to the cage frame from below 6. The dimensions of the CT cage, mm: length 36, width 28, height 57. The dimensions of the mesh opening are 3X3 mm. Weight 15 g.

Cell universal for queen bees. Designed for isolation of queen bees and queen cells during transportation, postage and replanting in bee colonies.

Consists of body, cover and insert made of plastic (see picture).

There are three chambers in the hull, separated by partitions: one working 2 and two aft 3, 4. Ventilation slots are made in the middle part of the hull and cover. In the outer end wall of the working chamber there is a hole for the mother liquor /. Working chamber. communicates with stern openings 8X8 mm in size. The outer end walls of the stern chambers have holes 5, 7 for the sheladysh. The bottom of the case is provided with two round holes for the legs of the lid.

The insert consists of a cylindrical part 6, divided by a solid partition, and a bottom with a shaped protrusion 8. The protrusion of the bottom has an opening through which only worker bees can pass. Queens and drones do not pass through this hole.

In the end walls of the lid, two holes 9 for the mother liquor are cut, one of which is simultaneously used to exit the cells of bees and queens. The upper wall of the cover is equipped with legs for fastening the tiers of cells.

Use of a cell for mailing queen bees. There should be no cracks in the cell. The aft chamber is filled with sugar-honey dough. 0.05 g of cotton wool is placed in the liner cylinder, which is filled with drinking water, and the liner is placed in the aft chamber, inserting its cylinder to failure into the outer end hole of the chamber.

12-15 bees are placed in a cell and closed with a lid so that the holes for the queen cell in the body and the lid are blocked. Next, they let the uterus into the cell. At the same time, the cage is held with the thumb, index and middle fingers of one hand, closing the openings of the end walls. The body is pulled out with the second hand half the height of the walls, the cell is shaken so that the bees do not leave the cell, and the queen is let in through the hole closed by the index or middle finger. After the uterus enters the working chamber, the cell is completely closed.

Replanting queen bees in colonies. It is possible to plant a queen in a cage through foundation or sugar-honey dough with a preliminary retention of the queen in the cage, giving her the opportunity to enter the family without the intervention of a beekeeper. To do this, the insert should be rotated around the axis of the cylinder in the direction of the bottom of the cell, thus obtaining holes of the required size. The cage is placed in the hive between the combs, pressing it into the combs so that a few drops of honey moisten the ventilation holes.

Using cells to work with queen cells. The cage is supplied with food and water, but the liner is placed in the feed chamber. The cell body is closed so that a hole is formed in the end outer wall of the working chamber, in which the mother liquor is strengthened. Cells with queen cells are placed in a nursery frame until the emergence of young queens. To open the small hole in the bottom of the liner, the bottom protrusion is moved towards the cage lid to open the large hole, and the protrusion is moved in the opposite direction.

The cap is used for replanting the queens directly on the combs in the nest, as well as for their temporary isolation. The rim of the cap is made of tinplate, and the mesh embedded in its upper edge is tinned. From below, the rim is equipped with spikes for fixing the cap on the honeycomb. The diameter of the case of the cap produced and currently produced is 141 mm, the height of the rim is 16 mm, the spikes are -9 mm. The cap, fixed on the honeycomb, is placed between the frames of the nest, without violating the size of the street.

Dividing grids:

A - standard; S - section of wire mesh

Dividing grid. It is used to separate part of the nest when it is required to limit the laying of eggs by the uterus. From such a lattice, drone traps and insulators are used to remove queens. A 448XX250 mm grate is made of tinplate with oblong holes 28 mm long and 4.4 mm wide. Its mass is 0.21 kg. A dividing grid made of wire or plastic is more convenient for the passage of bees.

Separating grate RRP consists of holders of galvanized steel and galvanized or steel wire with anti-corrosion coating. The plastic grille is made from polystyrene. The main parameters and dimensions of the gratings are shown in Table.

The main dimensions of the gratings

Easter knives. Necessary for cutting honeycombs from frames, cutting off wax growths, printing honeycombs. The knife consists of a wooden handle and a stainless steel blade. The cutting edges of the knife are sharply sharpened along the entire length of the blade. The shank of the blade has a herringbone shape and is fitted tightly into the handle. Beekeeping equipment factories produce bee knives with regular and enlarged blades. When working with these knives, the blades are preheated in hot water.

Mesh ventilation SV. The ventilation mesh is designed to improve ventilation in the hive in summer.

Parameters of blades of apiary knives, mm

It consists of a tinned mesh, edged on four sides with aluminum clips. The clips have four holes through which the mesh is attached to the body of the hive. Mesh weight 0.5 kg, length 494 mm, width 494, thickness 6 mm.

Before use, the ventilation mesh should be washed in warm water and wiped with dry cotton napkins. The holes for attaching the mesh to the hive should not be clogged, and the corners of the clips should not be deformed or bent.

Device for catching queens PLM-177 (see figure above), It is intended for catching queens in families. Provides quick trapping of the queen and transplanting it into a transit cage, Removes from the body with a spring /, holes for the free exit of bees 2, caught in it when catching the queen, and two paws 3. Overall dimensions, mm: length 70, width 45, height 20 .Weight 0.02 kg.

Instructions for use. Before use, the device for catching queens must be depreserved from lubrication, washed, wiped and dried;

catch the uterus by hand;

at the end of the work, the device must be wiped.

The device for catching the queen bee by N. E. Potemina consists of branches spring-loaded relative to one another. Each branch has a front and back parts, also spring-loaded relative to one another. On the back of one of the branches there is a branch approach limiter made in the form of a ledge. Parts of the branches are interconnected by spring inserts made of flat steel with a cross section of 0.3X7 mm. The approach limiter can be made in the form of a screw. The length of the branches is 110-120 mm, the width of the front part is 8-10 mm. Elastic pads are attached to the front ends of the branches.

Queen catching devices:

A - a device for catching queens PLM-177; B - N.E. Potemina's device for trapping the uterus

The device for trapping the uterus works as follows. The branches are adjusted using spring inserts, then the device is directed to the uterus and captured by the breast with the front parts of the branches.

The presence of spring-loaded parts provides soft and reliable grabbing of the uterus and virtually eliminates its injury.

Brushes for sweeping bees from honeycombs and hive walls. Brushes with a narrow block are used, on which bundles of bristles or hair are placed in 2-3 rows. Brushes with thick and blond hair are easy to use: they irritate the bees less. You can use goose feathers to sweep away bees. If contagious diseases occur in the apiary, sour cream, bees with common brushes or feathers are not recommended.

Brushes for sweeping beehive bottoms are made somewhat differently - the handle to the block is strengthened vertically. The bristles on them are short and stiff. To remove litter when cleaning the beehive bottoms, a small iron scoop is used.

Portable boxes are needed in apiaries to transfer frames. The basis of the box is a frame made of wooden blocks, upholstered in plywood. It has a tight-fitting lid and handle. On the end walls of the box, from the inside, at the upper edge, there are nailed strips on which the frames are hung. Most often, portable boxes can hold six frames. Drawer length 450 mm, width 225 mm, height 350 mm. It is convenient in work with bees a box-stretcher for 20 frames. Unlike a conventional box, it is equipped with handles and legs made of wooden beams. Two people carry the box on the notch.

Working box-stool. They are used to carry small inventory, tools and materials needed when working with bees. It consists of three compartments, two of which are located on the sides and one in the middle part. In one of the compartments, chisels, a knife, uterine cells, caps, brushes, gates, a hammer, pliers, a hacksaw, nails are stored; the opposite section is intended for folding the wax raw materials collected by the beekeeper during the inspection of the bees.

In the inner compartment they store rotten things for filling the smoker. The latter is hung with a hook on the edge of one of the compartments of the box when it is being carried. The lid of the box has cutouts for gripping by hand. The box of such design is convenient in work. When working with bees, you can sit on it if necessary. A box is made of boards 12-15 mm thick. Its dimensions are determined by the beekeeper himself, taking into account the height of the stands or pegs under the hives and the hive system.

The letkovy barrier is attached to the tray slot of the hive to prevent mice from penetrating into it in the autumn. winter period. The standard barrier consists of two iron plates, one of which has cutouts for the passage of bees and closes the entire opening of the entrance. This plate is movable and slides into the grooves of another plate (box) nailed to the notch. The height of the entrance gap is 8 mm (mice cannot enter the hive through it). Other designs are also used.

Nest remover for beehives V. G. Shakhov - a device for transplanting bees.

It consists of a longitudinal bar with holders fixed on it and spring-loaded grips. The nuts are fixed on the grips and interact with the screw drive with left and right threads. The screw drive is driven by the handle. U-shaped holder on uprights restrictive paws are made. Spring-loaded grips have nests for installing nuts and elastic pads. The device works as follows; The nest remover is installed so that the restrictive tabs of the holders are located between the upper bars of the honeycomb nest frames, and the tabs lie on the upper bars. Then, by rotating the handle and thereby turning the screw drive, the spring-loaded grips are moved. The grips move until the gaps are selected and the top frame bar is clamped between the holder's tabs and the elastic grip pads. After that, the nest remover with fixed nest frames is removed from the hive.

The device allows to reduce unproductive time for fixing frames, and the cost of bringing it to its original position is minimal. In addition, the movement of the nest frames when they are fixed in the nest remover is insignificant, and therefore the nest is not disturbed. :

Frame holder RD-1. It is intended for extraction of a framework from beehives.

Devices for inspecting hive nests:

A-nesting hives V. G. Shakhov; B - frame holder RD-1; B - V. I. Saprykin's frame lifter (dimensions, mm)

It is a device consisting of two handles hinged to each other with rivets. The handles are unclenched by a spring. It is made of thin sheet steel, with a paint and varnish coating.

Main dimensions, mm: length 150, width 50, height 118. Weight no more than 0.5 kg.

Instructions for use. Opening the grips of the frame holder, insert them between the hive frames; by squeezing the handles, grab the upper bar of the frame and remove it from the hive.

The machine consists of a body with a handle and a rod for gripping frames. The body is made in the form of a frame formed by plates fastened by means of crossbars with slit-like grooves and spring rods moving horizontally and vertically in them, having handles in the upper part and needle-shaped grippers in the lower part.

The machine works as follows: the lid and insulation are removed from the hive, the lap is wrapped, the machine is placed on the frames, and the rods are installed with the help of guides between the upper slats of the frames (moving the rod in the grooves). When the handle is pressed and turned, the needle-shaped grippers descend between the upper bars and capture them. When the handle is released, the frames are firmly fixed. By the handle, the lift with fixed frames and bees sitting on the frames is taken out of the hive and transferred to another. By turning the handle, the grips are taken out from under the upper slats of the frames, the machine is removed and the hive is insulated. For the formation of layers (for half a summer), half of the frames are taken from the hive. After some time, having determined the presence of a queen in the hive, the queen is planted in a queenless hive.

The machine allows you to capture frames with bees spaced from each other at different distances. In this case, the frames do not move relative to each other. Loss of queens and bees is excluded;

capture and install frames close to the wall of the hive, which does not require additional costs for their rearrangement;

U-shaped crossbars allow you to capture any number of frames with food, canvas, wax growths located on the upper slats.

Tent for inspection of bees. Portable tents are used to prevent bees from other colonies from getting into the inspected family. Most often they are made 2 m high, 2 m long and 1.2 m wide. The basis of the tent is a wooden frame, which is covered with wire mesh or gauze. The tent is supplied with a curtain door. On the bottom, on one side, it may have wheels. In this case, it is easy to transport it around the apiary.

The Research Institute of Beekeeping has developed a folding tent made of lightweight aluminum pipes with a diameter of 20-25 mm.

The inspected family of bees is covered with a tent and all work is performed under the net. After inspection, the tent is turned over and the bees that were in it during the inspection are released.

Gangways for bees are needed in the apiary for planting swarms, driving bees from one hive to another. They are made of plywood, along the edges of which planks are stuffed to form the sides. The end of the gangway attached to the notch is narrowed and made without a side. Gangway length 1000 mm, width 500 mm.

Portable table. Facilitates work with the second body when keeping bees in two-body hives.

Feeding troughs are used when feeding sugar syrup or honey bees to replenish winter food supplies or replace honeydew honey, when giving incentive or therapeutic feeding to families. There are feeders of various designs. More often than others, wooden frame feeders (nesting) and over-frame (ceiling) box-type feeders are used. In this case, typical feeders are of the greatest interest. In height and length, they match the standard nesting frame. The width of the top, bottom and side bars is increased. Plywood is tightly nailed to the bottom and side rails on both sides. Between the top bar and plywood there is a passage for bees. A hole is made in the upper bar for a funnel through which the right amount of feed is poured into the feeder. To prevent the bees from drowning in liquid feed, a light raft is laid on top of it. In many apiaries, feeders are made without a top bar, limited only by the device of hangers, with which the feeder is hung on the folds of the hive. The capacity of the frame feeder is 4-5 liters.

Standard nesting feeder K-4. The design feature of the feeder is the presence of a well formed by a partition and a side bar. It is limited from above by a shoulder with a hole for pouring feed into the feeder. The partition does not reach the bottom by 3 mm. Therefore, the feed flows freely into the aft compartment, where the raft is located. The side walls of the feeder are plywood. Such a device of the feeder greatly facilitates the work of the beekeeper when feeding the bees.

Main dimensions, mm: length (with hangers) 470, width 60, height 220. Capacity 4 l, weight 0.9 kg.

Overframe (ceiling) feeders for bees. The most widely used are typical feeders. Their design allows you to feed sugar syrup to bees, regardless of weather conditions.

Feeding troughs K-1A and K-ZA are rectangular tinplate containers with a capacity of 1 and 3 liters, respectively. The dimensions of the feeders allow you to install them in the warmest place of the hive - above the frames, which does not cause excessive anxiety to the bees.

Two corridors for the passage of bees to the food and the presence of a grid create the convenience of moving the bees to the food and exclude the possibility of bees getting into the syrup. From above the case of a feeder is closed by a cover. The feeder is installed in the hive so that the gap is located across the frames and the bees have access to the feeder from several adjacent streets.

Feeder U-5.09 box type. It completely covers the nest of bees from above and excludes the exit of bees during the distribution of top dressing.

The walls of the frame of the feeder are made of softwood or hardwood, and the bottom, lid and valve are made of waterproof plywood. The corridor for the passage of bees is arranged on the side. Its inner wall is 8 mm lower than the walls of the feeder, which ensures free passage of bees to the feed. The partition does not reach the bottom of the feeder by 3 mm, forming a gap that prevents bees from entering the feed compartment. At the same time, liquid feed is uniformly fed through the slot into the feed intake.

Bee inspection tents:

A-folding gauze; B - from a metal mesh; B - portable table for working with two-case beehives (dimensions, mm)

Feeders (in section), dimensions, mm:

A - standard nesting feeder K.-4. Overframe feeders: B - metal; B - box type

The mating points of all parts, with the exception of the lid, are coated with casein glue and knocked down with nails. From the inside, the feeder is covered with paraffin or wax. The syrup is poured into the feeder through a special cutout in the lid, covered with a valve.

The main dimensions of the ceiling feeders are given in Table.

The main parameters and dimensions of the ceiling feeders

Instructions for use: rinse the feeders before use, check for leaks;

the temperature of the syrup poured into the feeders should not exceed 30.

The feeder for bees KPdP is a quadrangular body with a capacity of 1.5 liters of syrup.

The bell housing is closed with a cap. To prevent bees from falling on the surface of the syrup, the case is closed with a lid. Bees to feed pass from under the bottom of the body through the bell.

The feeder is made of transparent or white polystyrene.

The main dimensions of the feeder, mm: length 232, width 132, height 70. Weight 0.3 kg, capacity 1.5 liters.

Instructions for use: before use, the parts of the feeder are thoroughly washed with warm water and dried;

a cap is installed in the body of the feeder, then the syrup is poured. The body is closed with a lid;

a feeder with syrup is placed in the hive on top of the frames.

The aluminum alloy feeder is designed to distribute liquid feed to bees in order to replenish their food reserves. Feeder parts are made of aluminum alloys and aluminum sheet.

The main dimensions of the feeder, mm: length 450, width 210, height 74. Weight 2 kg, capacity not less than 4 liters.

Equipment used in swarming bees

Roevnya. Necessary for removal and temporary storage of swarm bees (swarms). Butlerov's swarm was widely used (see figure below). Its basis is a frame / made of thin plywood. At the top and bottom, hoops 2 are put on the frame, pressing the wire mesh 3 stretched in these places.

Half of the top of the swarm is made in the form of a hinged cover 4 tightly fitted to the body. A loop or hook 5 is arranged on the side of the swarm, with which it is hung on a branch, or branch of a tree, or in other places where bees are grafted.

Equipment used when swarming bees:

A - swarm; B - scoop; B - swarm picker; G-box for finding queens

Its main dimensions, mm: frame length 490, frame width 310, frame height 220, visor length 75, visor width 50, lower rim length 1300, rim width 3, loop length 30.

A scoop for raking swarm bees has the form of a bucket with a handle made of birch bark or thin plywood. It is more convenient to use plastic buckets.

Roesnimatel (see the figure above). A device used to remove swarms that have grown high in trees. The device resembles a net. A funnel-shaped bag 1 made of rare canvas, sewn to a wooden or wire hoop 2 with a diameter of 400 mm, is attached to a pole 3 at some distance from its end. To tie the bag after shaking the bees into it, you can use a strong cord 4, threaded in the form of a loop into the upper part of the fabric sewn to the hoop. The string is pulled through

the ring located at the end of the pole, and pass down the pole. It is enough to pull such a cord by the end after shaking off the swarm, as the loop will tighten, tying the bag. The swarm collector can be equipped with a cover 5. The pole at the upper end is equipped with an iron hook 6. By hooking it on a tree branch where the swarm has taken root, you can freely shake the bees into the net.

Box for finding queens. It is used when catching queens in dump swarms and examining ordinary colonies in which it is not possible to find young queens. It is a box made of plywood or thin boards, the bottom of which is a dividing grid. After shaking the bees into such a box, placed in a free hive above the nest frames, they quickly go into the hive. The queens remain on the grate or the walls of the box, and they are caught.

To remove swarms in apiaries, you need a smoker, a face net, a bathrobe and a garden ladder.

Inventory for sending bees and queens

Standard cage for sending queen bees. The cage used in the Russian Federation is basically similar in design to foreign ones and differs from them in size and capacity of the aft compartment. This is due to the fact that the duration of the stay of queens on the road is much longer in our country than in foreign countries. The cell is supplied with a transparent film for more convenient settlement of its bees. Through the same film, you can control the state of the uterus and the bees accompanying it. The cell consists of a wooden bar 1. A hole 2 is provided in the end part of the cell. closed with a cork or a wooden insert, necessary to facilitate the replanting of the queen from the cell into the bee colony. Between the working 3 and aft 4 chambers there is a partition 5 with a passage at the top for the bees. Cell cover 6 plywood. Cuts 7 are made in the sides of the cell for ventilation.

Cells and packages for sending queens and bees (dimensions, mm):

A-cell standard; B - cell on liquid feed: 1 - feed wells; 2 - compartment for bees and uterus; 3 - cover; B - four-frame package; G - cellless package

Main dimensions, mm: length 100, width 35, height 28. Chamber volume, cm 3: working 21.3, aft 9.8.

Operating instructions: before settling the cell, it is necessary to check the presence of a paraffin layer on the inner surface of the feed chamber;

fill the chamber with sugar-honey dough (kandi). Lay parchment circle 8 on the dough;

attach one end of the film to the cage from the side of the aft chamber with two nails 9;

bring the cell to the comb and, pressing the film, catch the queen and 10-12 accompanying bees in it;

put a lid on top of the film and attach it with two nails;

before transplanting into the family, the uterus must be transplanted into the uterine cell;

it is necessary to store cells with queens in a room with a temperature of 18-22 "C;

transplantation of the uterus into other cells is carried out indoors in front of a window so that the flying uterus can be caught on the glass.

A cage is also used to send queens on liquid feed.

Packages for sending bees in appearance resemble ordinary plywood boxes for carrying frames. Frame packages for four and six frames and cellless are used.

Four frame package. Widespread for sending bees. The basis of the package is a wooden frame, the wall and bottom of which are upholstered with plywood. On the end walls of the box there are wooden combs / with recesses for installing frames and ventilation holes in the form of cuts 2. They are tightened with a metal mesh with 3X3 mm cells and covered with plywood (dark ventilation). At the same time, ventilation holes are arranged on one side of the box in the upper part of the wall, on the other - in the lower part. In the lower part of the end wall, tap holes are made 3. The cover 4 is made of plywood on bars. There is a 60 mm high space between the lid and the surface of the bag frames, which provides the bees with additional ventilation along the way.

Six pack. It is similar in design, except for the dimensions in width.

The honeycombless package is becoming more and more common for shipping bees. Sending bees without combs is cheaper and significantly reduces their death on the way. When using mesh-free bags, the possibility of steaming bees on the way is excluded, the bees sit in a bunch in them and behave calmly. Within 2-3 days, bees can do without food. The dimensions of the mesh package are smaller than the frame package, which is very important when sending bees over long distances.

In a non-cellular package, two opposite longitudinal mesh walls with 2X3 mm cells, a feeder - a glass jar with a capacity of 1 liter with a nylon lid, in which two holes with a diameter of 0.8 mm are made. The feeder is mounted on a wooden stand.

To populate the packages with bees, they use a cone-shaped, rounded top, and at the base a rectangular funnel made of tinplate or thin plywood. The technical characteristics of the packages are given in Table.

Technical characteristics of packages

Equipment for combating varroatosis and other diseases of bees

Smoker apiary universal DPU. The universal bee smoker is a device designed both for fumigating bees when working in a hive, and for fumigating bee colonies affected by braulosis and varroatosis. The interchangeability of smoker socks and their fastening to the body provide the versatility of this smoker. The smoke in the appliance comes from smoldering smoke-forming materials. A phenothiazine tablet is placed in a glass and tightly closed with a lid with an elongated toe. When using a smoker to fumigate bees in a hive, the smoker is closed with a lid with a regular sock. With the help of fur, which is an integral part of the device, blowing occurs, which maintains the smoldering state of smoke-producing materials.

The main dimensions of the DPU with a medical sock, mm: height 400, width 118, length 390. Weight 1.450 kg; without a medical sock, respectively, 220, 118, 250 and 0.97.

Instructions for use: when operating the smoker, take smoke-producing materials in accordance with the recommendations for beekeeping;

when working in a hive with a smoker, do not touch the body and toe of the smoker in order to avoid burns. The smoker is carried only by the handle;

when fumigating bees with phenothiazine, the tablet is placed on smoke-forming substances that have been set on fire in advance. Smoker's sock

tightly pushed into the notch and fumigated. Persons working with phenothiazine thermal tablets must be instructed on the procedure and rules for using the drug.

A device for treating bees with IP Doseev's phenothiazine pairs consists of a blowtorch, to the nozzle of which a metal tube with a rubber pear and a metal cup is attached.

processing technique. A blowtorch is ignited, after the glass is heated to a temperature of 250-300 °, a portion of powdered phenothiazine (2-3 g) is poured into it, the glass is tightly closed and it continues to be heated. At a temperature of 37 ° C, phenothiazine turns into a liquid state and begins to boil, resulting in gray-white vapors.

With the help of a rubber pear, the vapors are injected into the hive through a notch for an average family of 26-30, for a weak one 15-20 impulses into one hive, then into another, etc. A single dose of phenothiazine for treating a family is 0.6 g. After treatment, 8- 10 families clean the tube from plaque with a ramrod, fill the glass with a new sample of phenothiazine and continue processing.

The advantage of the above device over a therapeutic smoker is that the treatment is carried out not with smoke, but with steam; as a result, harmful plaque on the honeycomb frames is excluded, and the productivity and efficiency of treatments are increased.

Anti-varroatous mesh SPVCH00, SPV-200 is designed to collect Varroa Jacobsoni mites directly in the hive when treating bee colonies with medicinal preparations. It is installed in the grooves of produced hives with an anti-varroatous bottom.

The main dimensions of SPV-100 and SPV-200, mm: width 385 and 460, length 460 and 460, thickness 7 and 7. Weight 0.375 and 0.477 kg.

Instructions for use: the anti-varroatic net is installed inside the hive in special grooves during the spring revision of the bees.

For the winter period, it is recommended to remove the anti-varroatic mesh from the hive.

Bracket for attaching drone honeycomb frames to the main frames in the fight against varroatosis.

Main dimensions, mm: length 20, width 7-10, height 19. Weight 0.0024-0.0035 kg.

The PS mesh stretcher is designed to combat varroatosis by collecting the tick when shedding to the bottom of the hive and isolating it from the bees, followed by periodic removal.

The stretcher consists of a metal baking sheet and a mesh cover.

The dimensions of the subframe must correspond to the internal dimensions of the hive body with a detachable bottom. With an integral bottom (in loungers), two stretchers are used, installed side by side, the total dimensions of which are equal to the internal dimensions of the hive body.

Subframes are available in three versions, differing in size.

The main dimensions of the subframes

Dimensions, mm: I II III

width 440 440 440

length 440 365 220

height 12 12 12

Weight, kg 1.41 1.25 0.83

Preparation for work. To prevent re-crawling and suction of mites to the bees to the bottom of the baking sheet, Vaseline (medical, veterinary, technical, cosmetic) is applied with a spatula or wooden spatula with a layer of 0.3-0.4 mm.

The mesh cover is inserted into the grooves of the baking sheet, eliminating the possibility of the passage of bees inside the baking sheet.

Operating procedure. Stretchers are installed at the bottom of the hive after the spring exhibition of bees and cleaning the bottoms from deadness;

stretchers are installed in the hives with a detachable bottom in the gap formed when the body is separated from the bottom, and in the hives with an integral bottom, the stretchers are brought in when the frames are shifted in one direction;

clean the stretchers from crumbling mites and apply a new layer of technical petroleum jelly every 20-30 days;

stretchers are removed from the hives during the last autumn inspection before placing the bees in the winter hut.

Device for heat treatment bees. The set of the device includes: camera, cassettes for bees, funnels.

The chamber has a removable double-walled cover, a double-walled body, windows for shaking cassettes, glazed viewing windows, a thermal contactor with a relay, 100° thermometers, a tick collection grid, ventilation openings, an electric fireplace or an electric stove.

The cassette has a metal karkav made of wire or a tube with a diameter of 5-6 mm, on the inside covered with a mesh with cells of 2.5x3.0 mm. The mesh is attached to the frame at the base of the upper and lower parts of the cassette. The cassette is closed with a lid made of the same mesh, which is connected to the base of the frame with rings. The ends and the front of the lid frame must extend beyond the upper base of the frame. The lid mesh is attached to the base of the frame in such a way that the recess enters the cassette by 20 mm. At the front corners of the lid, there are ends of rubber holders with a hook, which, when stretched, catches on the transverse wire of the frame, located at a distance of 25 cm from the lid (the holders can be replaced with two springs with a hook). The bottom also fits inside the cassette by 20 mm.

Cassette dimensions: height 554 mm; elliptical bottom with axes 400 and 250 mm long; the total surface of the cassette is 0.742 m 2 ; weight 2.5 kg. The cassette is designed for 1.5 kg of bees.

Funnel. To move the bees from the honeycomb frames to the cassette, a special tin funnel is used. The top of the funnel is made wide enough (250x550 mm) so that the honeycomb frame can freely enter the funnel, thus facilitating the shaking process. The bottom base is made as small as possible so that the bees do not fly out. The funnel should completely cover the top of the cassette. To do this, at a distance of 200 mm from the bottom of the funnel along the perimeter, a strip of tin 50 mm wide is welded, and on one side it is bent down by 20 mm, which makes it possible to clearly fix the position of the funnel. It is advisable to attach a layer of foam rubber to this strip of tin from below for a tighter fit of the funnel to the cassette.

Main dimensions, mm: length 500, width 400, height 490. Weight 2.9 kg.

As a heat source in the chambers, various electric heaters with a power of 1.5-2 kW can be used, and in the absence of electricity, for example, a mobile thermal unit such as MP-70, etc. Electric heating devices must be worked out in such a way that the temperature reaches the required level rises quickly enough (the temperature drop during the loading of the cassettes must be eliminated in 3-4 minutes) and at the same time the heat source must have a low inertia so that after switching off the temperature in the chamber does not increase by more than 2-3°.

A heat chamber for one cassette is made of wood or plywood 1200 mm high, 750 mm long and 750 mm wide. In the lower part of the chamber, at a height of 450 mm from the bottom, a retractable metal mesh tray (mesh cells 0.5x0.5 mm) is mounted, which ensures uniform heat supply to the upper part of the chamber. The tray also serves to collect ticks, since the ticks on such a grid remain on top. The cover of the heat chamber is hinged. It has five holes with a diameter of 12 mm - four in the corners and one in the middle. The holes serve to remove moist air, which is formed during the processing of bees. At a distance of 150 mm from the upper edge of the chamber, four rails are attached inside along the perimeter, which serve to fasten the wire supports of the cassette. The configuration of the supports repeats the shape of the ellipse of the side walls of the cassette. The cassette in the heat chamber should not be located closer than 150 mm from the grid of the pallet. Thermometers inside the chamber are installed at the level of the lower part of the cassette against the viewing window. Observation glazed windows measuring 450x450 mm are placed in the front and rear walls of the chamber. One window is made retractable for placing heating devices through it into the chamber. On the end sides of the chamber there are working hatches 100X100 mm, closed with shutters. Through these hatches periodically shake the bees in the cassette during operation. On the side walls of the heat chamber at a distance of 50 mm from the floor there are 10 holes with a diameter of 12 mm for air flow. To maintain the required temperature in the heat chamber, an electric contact thermometer is used, connected to the heating element through a relay. In the absence of a thermostat, the degree of heating of the heaters is regulated manually.

The beekeeper D. F. Tomakhin made a device for extracting bees from the hive and moving them into a cassette. The device allows you to collect all the bees from the hive in a cassette with minimal labor and time.

It consists of a chamber (see the figure below) / made of plywood, in the front part of which there is a fan VO-4 2. The fan is separated from the chamber by a grid 3 with a mesh size of 2x2 mm, the middle part of the chamber, in which the cassette 4 is installed, is on top it is closed with a plywood cover 5. In the back of the chamber, a hive body with a bee colony is installed on the frame 6. From the frame to the cassette there is a branch pipe 7, through which the bees move from the body to the cassette. The beekeeper covers each body of the hive of the bee family from above with a frame 8 made of a grid with 2x2 mm cells and puts it on frame 9 with a retractable metal bottom. In this form, the case is placed in the back of the camera on the frame. Insert the cassette into the pipe, pull out the metal shutter 10 and close it with a lid, then turn on the fan. When the fan is turned on, the bees are sucked out of the housing by a stream of air.

Devices for combating varroatosis:

A - device by D. F. Tomakhin (dimensions, mm); B - formic acid evaporator IMK-1

To speed up the removal of bees from the housing, a stream of air from a home vacuum cleaner is sent along the streets. Within 3-4 minutes, all the bees from the hive enter the cassette and are processed.

If the family is placed in several buildings, then the processing of the bees of each of them is carried out in the manner described above. So that the bees do not scatter when shaking them out of the cassette into the hive, they are returned to the hive in a darkened room.

Improved processing allows processing up to 30 bee colonies in 8 hours with less labor and better quality.

Formic acid evaporator type IMC-1 is designed for treating bee families in the hive with formic acid vapors in the treatment of bees from varroatosis.

It consists of a body and a cover, which is screwed onto the ledge of the body. Its capacity is 50 ml, weight 50 g.

Main dimensions, mm: height 30, diameter 120.

Instructions for use: place a hygroscopic material (cotton wool, gauze, cardboard) into the body and pour up to 50 ml of formic acid. Screw the cover tightly onto the ledge of the housing;

before placing the evaporator in the hive, the cover should be unscrewed by 1-2 turns, depending on the required vapor concentration (1 turn creates a gap of 1.5 mm along the perimeter between the body and the cover);

put the evaporator in the hive on a frame above the brood area, it should be covered with canvas or other material on top;

after processing, screw the lid tightly onto the body;

to fill the evaporator completely unscrew and remove the cap, add the required amount of acid, screw the cap tightly onto the body.

Main dimensions, mm: diameter 120, height 30.

The universal automatic thermal chamber "Nectar" is intended for the treatment of bee colonies weighing 1-1.5 kg from varroatosis.

The heat chamber has a number of advantages compared to other heat chambers produced by the domestic industry. The thermal chamber provides automatic temperature control. The beekeeper, at his own discretion, can choose any of the bee processing modes.

Main technical data: rated voltage 220±22 V, power consumption not more than 0.7 kW, time to enter the mode not more than 15 minutes, temperature control range from 40 to 48°. Temperature maintenance accuracy ±1.5°.

The main dimensions of the chamber do not exceed 700x420x460 mm. Weight no more than 17 kg.

The principle of operation, thermal chambers. Treatment of bees from varroatosis consists in processing them at a temperature of 45 to 48 ° in a rotating drum. At this temperature, after a certain period of time, the tick dies and, due to intensive shaking, is separated from the bees. The bees remain alive.

For the processing of bees it is necessary: ​​to set the temperature regime of the heat chamber;

remove the drum of the thermal chamber and use the loading device to load the cassette with bees;

install the cassette with bees into the drum, close the lid and insert the drum into the chamber. The processing of the bee family is carried out for 12-15 minutes, depending on the temperature and in accordance with the instruction manual;

after processing the bees, return to the hive. To return the bees to the hive, a removable bottom is provided in the cassette.

UTP-1 device for heat treatment of bee colonies with varroatosis. The device is a portable type, positional action, installed on the hive instead of its cover, powered by an AC voltage of 220 V.

The principle of operation is based on the method of heat treatment of bees by heating and circulating the air inside the hive.

Technical data: power consumption 2.2 kW, performance during the main technological process 2.3 hives / h, processing temperature 46-48 °, deviation of the temperature from the specified at different points of the hive no more than 2.0 °, the duration of the temperature setting mode up to 7 min, the duration of heat treatment at steady state is 15 min, the time relay 6RB-30 is mechanical with a clockwork, the maximum exposure is 30 min.

Main dimensions, mm; length 595, width 552, height 400. Weight 13 kg.

The UTP-1 device contains the following main components and mechanisms: a housing, a partition, an electric motor with a fan impeller, a heating element with a casing, a flow-leveling grid, sealing pads, clamps, a unit for automatic temperature control and exposure of the required treatment exposure with a thermal contactor and a time relay. It is also equipped with a carrying handle, a plug, an audible alarm (electric bell), a toggle switch and a thermometer for visual control of the air temperature inside the hive (not included in the delivery set).

Operating procedure. The technological process of anti-tick treatment of bee families with the UTP-1 device occurs in the following sequence.

By turning the relay knob, an electric motor with a fan is connected to the mains. Sucking air from the left compartment of the hive, the fan blows it through the casing into the right-hand cavity. In contact with the spirals of the heating element, the air heats up and, thanks to the inclined shape of the cover, is directed to the flow-leveling grid, then it reaches the bottom of the hive through the inter-cell space and rushes into the left cavity, from where it is again picked up by the fan. Thus, as a result of the operation of the fan inside the hive and in the cavity of the device, an active movement of intra-hive air occurs, the temperature of which gradually increases due to the continuous operation of the heating element. After 5-7 minutes (warm-up time), the air temperature inside the hive rises to 46-48 ° At this moment, in the heat contactor adjusted to 50 °, the contacts open, which through the elements of the automatic control unit for the temperature of the coolant acts on the heating element, which turns off. When the temperature of the inside air drops below 46, the thermal contactor turns on the heater again. Thanks to this alternate turning off and on of the heating element (at this time and during the entire treatment process, the fan continues to operate) in the cavity of the device and inside the hive, a steady-state thermal regime of anti-mite treatment is achieved.

Under the influence of a heated air flow, varroatosis mites, falling into a state of shock, crumble and are fixed on sticky paper.

At the end of processing in the steady state, the time relay is turned off, automatically connecting the power supply to the electric bell circuit, announcing the end of the process. This will automatically turn off the heating element motor. The operator disconnects the device from the network, loosens the latches and removes it from the hive, puts the cover back in place.

The installation of continuous action for the fight against varroatosis was developed and manufactured at the Research Institute of Beekeeping. It allows you to process 60 bee colonies per hour and provides shattering up to 90% of mites.

The installation is collapsible, it can be quickly mounted in the working area of ​​the heat chamber of a special vehicle. It consists of the following parts: two-tier ring conveyor, conveyor turning mechanism, shaker, column, ring conveyor turning lock, axle. To collect falling mites, a sheet steel tray is placed under the conveyor. The kit includes at least 12 cassettes and 3 funnels.

Installation work. With the help of heating and ventilation units OV-65, the operating temperature in the heat chamber is set (47C);

the operator places the cassette with bees into one of the tiers of the conveyor through the loading hatch;

Installation for disinfection of honeycombs and inventory

after one minute, the operator turns the conveyor by 1/14 of a turn using a lever and puts the second cassette with bees, but in another tier of the conveyor;

after another minute, the conveyor is again rotated by 1/14 of a turn and the next cassette is placed in that tier of the conveyor where the first cassette is already located, etc.; .

after a full turn of the conveyor, the first cassette with bees that have undergone heat treatment is taken out, and a new one is placed in its place, etc.;

every 1/8 turn the entire conveyor is shaken.

To ensure the continuous operation of the installation (60 bee colonies per hour), a team is created, consisting of 4-6 working groups of 3 people each.

Ventilation liners and verandas are needed in apiaries to isolate bees in order to protect them from poisoning with poisons during chemical protection of plants from pests. The letkovy and upper (vertical) ventilation inserts of E. A. Shishkina are common.

The letkovy liner is an elongated low rectangular box. The base of the insert is a frame made of wooden blocks, covered with a wire mesh that does not allow bees to pass through. The front of the liner is open; it is equipped with a rim with a welt made of tin, adjacent outside to the walls of the hive.

The vertical liner looks like a nest frame. Its frame is also made of wooden planks and covered with wire mesh. The upper part of the insert consists of an iron plate with a hole.

The veranda of A. G. Ansen is a combination of a veranda with a drinking bowl. Its base is a wooden frame, the front part of which is upholstered with wire mesh. On the lower rail of the veranda, a recess is hollowed out, which serves as a drinking bowl for the bees.

Installation for disinfection of honeycombs. The method of disinfection is the introduction of a mixture of gases of methyl bromide and ethylene oxide into a special chamber with honeycombs, which kill microbes and other pathogens of contagious diseases of bees, as well as wax moth at different stages of its development. The installation, designed by S. Ya. Godyatsky (Research Institute of Beekeeping), consists of a vacuum chamber (see the figure above) /, tubes 2 supplying gas to it, a cylinder 3 with liquefied gas on a scale 4, a vacuum pump 5 and a water bath 6, which houses the coil. The temperature of the water in the bath is 85-95°, due to which the gas passing through the coil has a constant temperature. The camera can be mobile and stationary. It is most convenient to make a mobile disinfection chamber with a volume of 0.5-1.5 m 3 for non-vacuum disinfection from 15-20 mm boards and cover the inside with sheet steel soldered at the joints. A stationary chamber of the same volume is made of metal and equipped with a vacuum pump, as well as a three-way fitting for introducing gas and air when the chamber is blown after the disinfection time has elapsed.

Blowtorch. It is used in apiaries to disinfect beehives and metal equipment.

Who are bees and what are their benefits, almost every student knows. These small furry insects make a delicious and healthy delicacy - honey loved by everyone. Collecting pollen and nectar in the fields, the bees pollinate the flowers of fruit and berry plants, which provide them with a good harvest. People use beeswax in many areas of their lives: from technical production to cosmetics and traditional medicine, as well as bee pollen, bee pollen, propolis, which are beneficial to the human body. And bee venom is curative for many diseases, such as rheumatism, bronchial asthma, keratitis and thyroid diseases. And also, bee venom can be successfully used in the treatment of cancer, as it can prevent the growth of cancerous tumors! The importance of bees in human life and in nature cannot be overestimated.

Video: How bees live

bee family

Usually the knowledge of the average person about the life of bees is very standard and meager. But the fact that honey bees do not live alone is known to everyone. And when the word "bee" is used in the plural, many people immediately imagine a buzzing and dangerous bee swarm. Or the hive where this swarm lives. Sadly, a bee, which by itself, has no reason to exist in nature. And she quickly dies, even despite the most favorable conditions for her existence.

The bee family is very close-knit and does not like strangers at all. The entrance to the hive is always guarded, at any moment the guards are able to fight back intruders. And this applies not only to extraneous honey lovers or bee hunters - not even one's own bee has any chance of penetrating into someone else's swarm. After all, each family has its own identifier or marker - a specific subtle smell of the hive, which the bees immediately pick up. If someone else's stray bee has a different smell, it will go home in a good way.

Very well, the bee family and the life span of bees were described by Maurice Maeterlinck in his book “The Life of Bees”, although it was written more than a hundred years ago.

The composition of the bee family

The bee family is large, but not diverse. Its composition is simple:

1. Worker bees;
2. Drones;
3. Queen bee.

Each type of bee is given a specific role in the hive. And all of them are important in their own way: if one of the parties fails, the whole family suffers.

Video: Interesting facts - bees

worker bees

A working, honey bee - it is she who is represented as a famous and ever-working insect by people. There are a lot of them in the family - up to several thousand. And each of them is constantly busy with their work, it is not for nothing that the bees are called eternally working! Maurice Maeterlinck described their attitude to their duty: "The bees are by no means sentimental, and if one of them returns to the hive so seriously injured that they consider her no longer able to be useful to the family, then they ruthlessly expel her."

The facts show that worker bees start working as soon as the time comes to leave their cell - they immediately begin to clean it. “Born? Take care of yourself!” From this stage, the development of the honey bee begins. But for a long time they do not fly out of the hive - in the first stages of life, they perform internal "housework" until they finally mature.

Gradually growing up, the bees are entrusted with more responsible difficulties, for example, the construction of honeycombs. Further, the bees are taken to even more difficult tasks - guarding the hive, raising young animals and, of course, flying out for nectar and pollen. And it's far from full list what bees have to do to ensure the existence of their family. And worker bees do a lot more than:

• They process nectar into honey, pollen into bee bread;
• They feed the larvae, feed and care for the uterus;
• Maintain the temperature and humidity of the hive;
• Regulate the swarming process;
• They produce propolis;
• Engaged in sterilization of the hive.

Maurice Maeterlinck clearly described the stages of maturation and interesting activities of bees in his book.

And each worker masters each of these professions, and which one and when determines the age of the bee. It is no wonder that they do not live very long - so much rests on their "shoulders". But about the life expectancy of bees a little later.

queen bee

The uterus, or as people like to call it - the "queen", in fact, is not at all like that. She does not control the hive, and does not give orders to other bees in any way. The entire hive is run by worker bees. This misconception is common even among some beekeepers who have managed to do beekeeping for a couple of years.

The worries of the uterus are simple and few. Immediately after the birth stage, she is carefully guarded, fed and cared for. After a while, about a week, she is already becoming sexually mature. And during this period, she flies out of the hive for a "date" with the drones.

But as Maurice Maeterlinck described interesting features: “In order to fulfill the task of the queen mother, which she performs, she needs to copulate with a male during the first twenty days of her life. If, for some reason, this period is missed, then the virginity of the queen will remain with her for many years. The queen, who remains unfertilized, lays testicles in both large and small cells, but only drones will come out of all of them.

After repeated fertilization, when the seminal receptacle is completely filled, she returns to the hive. In two or three days, her abdomen noticeably increases in size, becomes long and shiny, and her movements slow down. Soon she starts laying eggs, one per cell. Beforehand, the uterus checks whether the cell for laying is clean enough, and if this is not the case, then it skips the cell. In the summer, the uterus is able to lay up to two thousand eggs per day!

Interesting Facts: The queen bee lays two types of eggs: fertilized and unfertilized. Worker bees and queen bees hatch from fertilized eggs, and drones from unfertilized eggs. By its nature, there can and should be only one uterus in a family! If for some reason there are more of them, then they, being at any stage (even newborns), immediately begin to fight each other to the death, shortening one of their lives by several years. Survives and remains of course the strongest.

Maurice Maeterlinck writes about it this way: “... the queen never uses her sting either against a person or an animal, or against an ordinary bee; her weapon is not straightened, like that of a worker, but bent in the form of a saber, and she exposes it only when she fights with her equal, that is, with another queen.

Drones

Drones are the male population of the hive. And the meaning of their life is connected only with their gender - to find and fertilize the uterus. The fact is that otherwise they are full-fledged freeloaders, being fully provided for by their working neighbors. The people even use the word "drone" in relation to such lazy people. Yes, for the first time the life of a drone is simple and carefree: he ate in the hive, flew out, and if he did not find a uterus for himself, then he flew back to rest and eat hard. And they eat with appetite: three times more worker bees! And lives in a hive of such parasites from hundreds to thousands. Drones were beautifully described by Maurice Maeterlinck: “They are always drunk with honey, and the only essence of their existence is the commission of an act of love once in a lifetime.”

Interesting features: when the drone meets the uterus and fertilizes it, then after the process of copulation, its sexual organ remains in the uterus - and the insect at this time almost instantly dies and falls to the ground. When the uterus in their family flies out in search of sexual partners, the drones fly out with her, but do not fertilize her immediately, but fly with her, surrounding her in a dense ring. This is because bee-hive birds often live near the hive, and in the event of an attack, the birds will always get the drone, not the queen. Having flown away to a safe distance, the queen overtakes her drones, and they scatter in their search.

Well, if the drone did not fertilize anyone before the end of summer ... Then the worker bees simply see the freeloaders out of the hive, in fact moving the losers to the last days of their lives. Maurice Maeterlinck beautifully said about this: “The fat idlers, hanging in groups on the walls of the hive, sleep carefree, but a whole armada of angry bees rudely awakens them from sleep ... Instead of the former free access to the clogged pantries that opened the doors to sweet stocks, they meet in front of them a sharp forest of poisoned stings."

But there is of course an exception to this rule. If for some reason the uterus becomes infertile, then the last drones are allowed to stay in the family for the winter. It is allowed because the bees need to breed a new queen, and you need to have guarantees that it will be fertilized on time.

Video: How bees make honey

Lifespan of bee family members

So, after a brief introduction, the main question is: how long does a bee live? After the above information about bees, one way or another intuitively already knows the answer to this question.

Worker bees. The lifespan of bees, with their overactive lifestyle, is only a few weeks. And at first, for two or three weeks, the worker bee works in a hive, in a safe environment for her. But then she flies outside for pollen and nectar, and here all sorts of dangers can await her. If the bee dies natural death, then this happens on the 30-35th day of his life.

But this does not apply to bees that were born in the fall. Overwintering awaits such bees. They live 3-4 months, but in terrible conditions. The poor things huddle into a ball, put their uterus in the center. Those who remained outside are freezing, preventing heat from escaping. Inside, the bees actively produce this heat, occasionally touching food supplies. Over time, they change roles.

The uterus, in this regard, is the complete opposite. She herself does not work under any circumstances, she is intensively fed, taken care of. If she is strong, prolific, then she can live all 5-7 years! But these are rare features, usually in wild families they live a maximum of 3 to 4 years. Beekeepers in their hives often change queens every few years, sometimes every year. But no matter how old the queen is, she can be replaced at any time by the bees themselves if she does not cope with her task.

Drones, on average, live almost as long as worker bees. But they can die both on their first flight from the hive, and even after wintering. Or, after a period of a couple of months, they were expelled "on the street" in early autumn.

Municipal educational institution School No. 32, Cheremkhovo

RESEARCH

Subject: the world around

Subject: How do bees live?

Completed by: Matveev Nikita

Student, 1st grade

Head: Gorshkova Albina Vitalievna,

teacher primary school

February 2015

CONTENT

I.Introduction

II.Main part

2.2. The life of a bee family

conclusions

III.Conclusion

I .Introduction

The bee is without a doubt one of the most famous and most respected insects. Firstly, a bee is the only insect that gives a person healthy and tasty food - honey. And secondly, since ancient times, the bee has been a symbol of hard work. Bees have been known to man for a long time. An image of a Stone Age man extracting bee honey was found in Spain. Also, a lot of drawings and frescoes of similar content were found in South Africa and India. Honey was well known to the inhabitants of ancient Egypt. The image of bees can be found on the tombs of the pharaohs, obelisks. And on petitions to the pharaoh, his loyal subjects painted a bee, as a symbol of complete submission to the power of the pharaoh. Babylon and Palestine, Assyria and Ancient Rome, Scythian tribes and Kievan Rus - everywhere a bee was next to a person.

Research topic "How do bees live?" not chosen by chance. In the first grade, for the first time in the lessons, we learned that all animals are divided into types: insects, fish, birds, animals. In the textbook "The World Around" Grade 1, an insect is defined - this is a type of animal that has 6 legs. For me, this information was not enough, so I decided to get to know the bees in more detail, what kind of structure they have, how they live and tell my classmates. Working with primary sources, looking at photographs, drawings, diagrams about bees, I realized that zoologists, beekeepers (representatives of agriculture), young nature researchers (young naturalists) are studying bees.

Bees are a superfamily of flying insects of the stalked-bellied suborder of the Hymenoptera order, related to wasps and ants. The science of bees is called apiology. There are more than 20 thousand species of bees in the world. They can be found on every continent except Antarctica.

In our harsh Siberian region, you can observe the appearance of bees from May and September, when it is warm, the sun warms, there are many different flowers and herbs in gardens, vegetable gardens and meadows.

The topic seems interesting to me because I learned that the bee, like other insects (ants, termites, wasps), live in large communities - families. Their way of life is so amazing and perfect that scientists of past centuries considered such families to be a kind of states ruled by wise rulers. Modern zoologists are more struck by the clear division of responsibilities between insects living together.object my study study isbee community, subject research:bee life . How does a bee colony live? What is the body structure of a bee? How is a bee hive arranged?

Purpose of the study : reveal the basic rules of bee life.

Tasks:

consider the structural features of the body of a bee;

describe the features of the life of a bee colony;

prove that the bee is a social insect that benefits people.

Research hypothesis: the life of bees is possible only in a family community.

I will prove my hypothesis throughresearch methods: own observations, reading popular science literature, collecting information (adult stories), watching videos, comparing, etc.

II .Main part

2.1. Features of the structure of the body of a bee

Bees are a superfamily of flying insects of the stalked-bellied suborder of the Hymenoptera order, related to wasps and ants. Bees have adapted to feed on nectar and pollen, using nectar mainly as a source of energy and using pollen to obtain proteins and other nutrients. Bees have a long proboscis that they use to suck plant nectar. They also have antennae, each consisting of 13 segments in males and 12 segments in females. All bees have two pairs of wings, the back pair is smaller than the front; only a few species in the same sex or caste have very short wings, making it difficult or impossible for the bee to fly. Many species of bees are little studied. The size of the bees ranges from 2.1 mm in the pygmy bee (Trigona minima) to 3.9 mm in the Megachile pluto species found in Indonesia.

In Figure 1, you can get acquainted with the structural features of the bee in more detail.

Figure 1. Structure of a worker bee.

The body of a bee consists of its main parts: head, thoracic region, abdomen and wings. The head has simple eyes, a compound eye, an antenna, a proboscis, and antennae. The bee proboscis is flexible, able to dive into the flower and collect nectar. Transparent small wings (front, hind wings), six legs (front, middle, hind) are attached to the breast. The bee's abdomen contains the digestive system and the stinging apparatus. The body of the bee is covered with thick hairs. The abdomen is yellow-black in color. Thus, bees are an animal whose body has a complex structure.

2.2. The life of a bee family

People have always been surprised and continue to be surprised at the way of life of the bee colony. What laws are in force in this community, what is the basis for the strength and commonality of a bee family, in which there are more than 45 thousand individuals? Despite such an impressive size, this is a real single family - the offspring of a single female. The queen bee lays eggs. Worker bees are females whose ability to reproduce is suppressed, and they spend all their energy on caring for the queen, offspring and housing. Therefore, the bee family is divided into groups (castes) on a professional basis in accordance with the duties performed. There are three castes in honey bee families:females - uterus (Queens,), the whole meaning of their life is the continuous laying of testicles,male drones , which ensure the fertilization of the laid testicles, andworker bees , on whose shoulders all construction, economic concerns are entrusted: obtaining food, growing and educating the younger generation. If you look closely at the life of a bee hive, it immediately catches your eye that each worker bee has its own responsibilities. They are also divided into several subgroups: some bees work on the construction of honeycombs, others "nurse" the larvae, others scurry from flower to flower in the morning, collecting nectar and pollen. Figure 2 shows a small fantasy of the artist about the life of a bee colony. But, in reality, the caste distribution of responsibilities allows the bee colony to multiply, live and benefit people.

Figure 2. The social structure of the bee colony.

In the family of honey bees, the youngest worker bees (workers) are nannies, they put things in order in the old cells of the honeycombs, clean the "cradles" from which they themselves once hatched. On the 4th day of life, they are already entrusted with feeding adult larvae with perga. The so-called "bee bread", made from pollen. Then the bees become real nurses. On the 8th day of life, they develop glands that produce a special nutrient fluid - bee milk, which is fed to very young larvae and the uterus (female) itself. When the mammary glands cease their function, the bee becomes a storekeeper. Now she is on duty at the notch all day long, accepts the food delivered to the hive from the pickers-bees and carefully puts it into free cells. The bees are engaged in this work for about a week, and then they move into the sphere of economic maintenance of the bee hive. When the wax glands are fully developed in the worker bees, they become builders, participating in the erection of combs. Thus, the entire first period of their life (about 20 days) the worker bees are hopelessly in their native hive. Their sting does not yet have poison, so it is risky for them to leave their home. The most recent profession (nectar and pollen collector) for a worker bee will only last for 6 weeks.

Figure 3. Honeycombs

It is known that the well-coordinated life of any community is impossible without the communication of its members, without the coordination of their actions. Bees can talk to each other. They communicate with each other through smells, sounds and dances. The bee, having found a rich source of food, returns home and begins to dance - performs a series of movements. Other bees watch the “soloist” and begin to repeat her dance. The figures of the bee dance show where to fly and how far. The sun serves as a guide for the bees. Although it is dark in the hive and the bees do not see the “dancer”, but they feel her and smell her. Sniffing at the forager bee, the rest of the bees get an idea not only about the location, but also about the smell of the food resource. Having learned the dance, the bees receive all the information they need and fly according to the data received. And in order to make their task easier, the scout leaves a fragrant beacon over the place open to her - from a special gland she secretes a special odorous substance that attracts bees.

The dance movements of the bees are so precise that even a person with some experience can navigate them. For example, Nobel laureate Carl Frisch, who devoted his life to studying bees, was offered by his two daughters to find a saucer with honey hidden in the garden. After observing the behavior of the foraging bees, he accurately determined the direction and distance where the hidden saucer was located - “to the north-north-west, 310 meters from here.” They measured the required distance and ended up at the bush, under which the saucer was hidden. Hidden from humans, but not from bees. They were already here.

Everyone knows that bees live in wooden dwellings - beehives. But it was not always so. Wild bees settled in the hollows of trees, and people searched for their nests in the forest, Professional beekeepers on ancient Rus' called beekeepers - from the old Russian word "bort" - the hollow of a tree. To breed bees, beekeepers used natural hollows or hollowed them out in thick tree trunks. Other ancient peoples settled bees in wicker baskets or clay vessels.

Figure 4. Bee house-hive

Whatever the bee house is made of, the bees immediately begin to deal with its internal arrangement. “Furniture” for them are honeycombs. If the beekeeper installs special frames in the hive, the bees take them as a basis. If they don't exist, they build it themselves. Each honeycomb consists of several thousand, arranged in parallel rows, hexagonal cells. The building material of the cells is wax. It is formed in the folds of the bee's abdomen and is released outward in the form of thin plates. The bees pick them up with their paws, crush them with their jaws and stick the resulting lump of wax to the construction site. Building their cells, the bees solve a complex mathematical problem: to find such a shape of the vessel, so that at the lowest cost of building materials, it would have the largest capacity. Mathematicians, together with engineers, proved that such a vessel should only be hexagonal. And the bees, in full agreement with these calculations, mold their six-sided cells. They grow bee offspring and store food supplies.

Honey collection. Only in the second half of their lives do bees begin to lead a romantic life full of dangers and adventures as foragers. Bees collect and bring nectar and pollen from flowers to the hive, ensuring the well-being of their family and delighting the beekeeper. A flexible bee proboscis plunges into the nectary of a flower and sucks out a sweet liquid, which undergoes complex biochemical processing in the stomach of a bee. Here it is enriched with bactericidal substances, acids and enzymes. The next stage of the honey production process continues in the hive. Here, a drop of collected nectar is taken from the bee-collector by the bee-receiver. She swallows and excretes, and again swallows and excretes a drop of nectar, and so on up to one hundred and forty times. The composition of the drop is constantly changing. And finally, the receptionist lowers the received product into the cell. But is it honey? No, there is still a lot of water in the drop, about 70-80%. To remove this excess moisture, the bees carry the drop from one cell to another cell, dry it with the increased work of their wings. The drop gradually thickens and becomes honey, which contains more than a hundred different chemicals.

During the summer, one bee community harvests up to 150 kilograms of honey. To collect just one kilogram of honey, a bee must fly around over 10 million flowers and bring back about 150,000 servings of nectar. During this work, it overcomes a distance several times greater than the length of the earth's equator. And all this - for the sake of only 1 kilogram of honey! The efforts are colossal - that's why the worker bees live in the summer for no more than one month.

Perga. On the flowers, the bee gets dirty with pollen. Small yellow grains get stuck in thick hairs covering the bee's body. Plus, the bee-collector specially scrapes pollen from the flower. On the legs of the bee there are golden-yellow hairs-brushes with which she sweeps her entire body. From these brushes, pollen moves to special devices on the hind legs - baskets. In these baskets, a ball of pollen is gradually collected - pollen. A bee flying to the hive with two skirts seems to be dressed in colored “pants”. Their

Photo 1. Bee in pollen

the color depends on where the foraging bee has been, on what flowers. Pear and peach pollen is red, wild mallow is blue, apple and raspberry are white, rose hips and buckwheat are yellow. Sometimes the bees' bees are striped as a result of visiting various plants. In the hive, the pollen is dropped into a wax cell. The worker bees tamp it down. Pollen is poured with a layer of honey so that it does not deteriorate. After some time, a special product is formed here - bee bread. Bee pollen contains almost all known vitamins, more than thirty chemical elements and even some hormones. It has a very beneficial effect on our body.

Drones. There are bees in the hive that never work at all. Unlike their hard-working girlfriends, they serve as an example not of diligence, but of completely opposite qualities: idleness, laziness and parasitism. These human vices are attributed to several hundred male bees - drones. They are born from cells in late spring, where the uterus lays unfertilized eggs. We know that people tend to err when endowing animals with qualities that are not characteristic of them. But with regard to drones, everything is in perfect order - they are really real idlers. They do not build honeycombs, protect hives, clean the house, collect nectar and pollen. They don’t even have any data for this: neither a thick edge, nor baskets on their legs, their jaws are weak, their proboscis is short. The drones are so lazy that they don't even eat. They are fed by worker bees.Isolated from bees, drones die a little more than a day later. True, there is evidence that in exceptional cases drones can independently take food from honeycombs and even nectar on flowers. Conclusion: if the drones die, then the bee colony will die too. Therefore, worker bees, drones and queens, each caste in its own way provides life for the bee colony.

Drones spend most of their unburdened family life in a honeycomb hive. On hot sunny days, they fly out for walks, sometimes quite long ones. They orient themselves well, because they have very large eyes. Drones do not undermine the food base of the bee colony. They hatch only when the family is provided with plenty of food, and more pollen enters the hive than necessary. An ordinary bee colony itself controls the number of drones. And yet, why are they needed in such large numbers? The calculation shows that perhaps 30 males would be enough to fertilize the queens hatched in the family. When the time comes and the queen goes on her mating flight, the entire male population of the hive rushes after her. In the air, they surround the female with a very dense ball. In the stomachs of birds eating bees, at this time they find a huge number of swallowed drones and almost never queens. Maybe such a huge number of drones protects the successor of the family from enemies, giving their lives for her? And it is for this reason that the bee family brings up more of them, so that if necessary, there would be someone to sacrifice to continue the bee family? While it is difficult to answer this question - a lot of unclear. But their fate is well known. In the middle of summer, when food becomes scarce and scarce, the drones, still desired in the hive, become a burden. Worker bees begin to bite, pinch, grab their antennae, legs, wings and pull them to the exit. To the best of their ability, the drones resist and strive to return back to the cozy honeycombs, but all in vain. At the end of summer, the drones, driven out and starving, find their death at the entrance to the bee dwelling. Bees that have outlived their short age die in the hive only in winter, and in summer old bees, feeling the approach of death, leave the hive and die in the wild.

Photo 2. Swarm of bees

Swarming. A bee swarm is part of the life of a bee community.Let's go back to the very beginning of summer. It would seem that the bee family is flourishing - things are going great: the honeycombs are filled with honey and pollen, the queen bee regularly lays eggs, the family is growing, and everyone is busy building, collecting, guarding and removing garbage. However, such prosperity of the bee family is fragile. Any accident - worsening weather conditions, an epidemic of disease - can destroy a bee colony, no matter how big and friendly it is. The key to the preservation of the genus is reproduction. And the bee community is multiplying.

Conclusions. If the drones die, then the bee family will die too. Therefore, worker bees, drones and queens, each caste in its own way provides life for the bee colony. Bees are insects living in a socially arranged house - a hive, where the worker bee spends her childhood, where she takes care of the larvae that are born thanks to females and males. All three castes of bees cannot exist without interaction and care for each other. Instinct is the only and undivided "master" of the bee colony. The most important and highly perfect cycle of procurement of raw materials and the finished production of various products of the entire "bee association" consisting of 40-60 thousand worker bees are subordinated to it. The highest honey yields of nectar are obtained in the Far East and Siberia. There are cases when, during the flowering period of linden in the Far East, the weight gain of the control hive reached 30-33 kg per day. Separate bee colonies in Siberia collect 420, and in the Far East - 330-340 kg of honey per season.

III .Conclusion

According to the evolution of its development, a bee is older than a person by 50-60 thousand years. But her life is practically similar in its social origin to the life of a person. As in human society, in a bee family there is a distribution of social responsibilities. Queen females lay eggs, which are fertilized by drone bees, so that in the spring small larvae of future bees are born. Worker bees provide for their lives, the lives of females, males, larvae - they build a hive, bring nectar and pollen to build it, protect their home. Research topic "How do bees live?" exhausted, its purpose and tasks are solved, the hypothesis is proved - the life of bees is possible only in a family community.

The bee helps man with its end product of its social life - honey.

About the benefits of bees, bee honey, beeswax, bee venom.

Already primitive man was familiar with honey and loved it. And scientists and doctors of antiquity noticed that the use of this product prolongs life. According to the oldest Chinese medical book, “continuous use of honey strengthens the will, gives lightness to the body, preserves youth, and increases life expectancy.” More than four thousand years ago they began to treat with honey in India. However, honey has long ceased to be a means of only traditional medicine: having stepped through the threshold of a modern clinic, it is successfully used for treatment today. Honey retains all the vitamins that nutritionists consider essential for health, even when stored for a long time. Honey is also valued for its healing properties. Where else can you find such an effective sedative that has a beneficial effect on the nervous system of excitable people and does not harm the body. Doctors recommend eating 30 grams of honey in the morning and at lunchtime, and 40 grams of honey in the evening. And it is difficult to think of a better sleeping pill than natural honey. It has long been known that a glass of honey water (3 teaspoons of honey per glass of water), drunk in the evening half an hour before bedtime, will ensure a restful sleep. Honey relieves a harsh, irritating cough. By chewing honeycombs, you will increase immunity to diseases respiratory tract. In diseases of the kidneys, honey is recommended as a therapeutic and prophylactic agent. Some doctors advise taking 80-100 grams of honey per day with lemon juice or rosehip broth. Honey contains a lot of easily digestible sugars, but despite this, you should not consume it in large quantities. An excess of easily digestible sugars in the body leads to their conversion into fats, and can also contribute to the development of diabetes. In a word, do not forget: "Honey is good, but not a handful in your mouth." By the way, not only honey is healing, but also such a beekeeping product as bee venom. It is obtained without causing any harm to the bees. Preparations from bee venom are used for polyarthritis, sciatica, inflammation of the sciatic nerve, intercostal neuralgia, bronchial asthma, migraine, when drug treatment fails. They recommend bee venom for skin rubbing and for injections, for electrophoresis, if the patient tolerates it well.

Thus, beekeepers help bees to exist in a civilized way (they build the foundations of hives, help pump out honey, winter bees). Beekeepers with their work help people enrich their body with the necessary nutrients that make up the content of bee honey, and also take part in the health preservation and healing of human society.

List of used literature

Sergeev B.F. From amoeba to gorilla, or how the brain learned to think: Non-fiction literature. - Leningrad, Children's Literature, 1988. - 206 p.

Method of projects in primary school: implementation system / ed.-stat. N.V. Zasorkin. - Volgograd, Uchitel, 2013. -135 p.

Bunny Know-It-All. Learning system. Elementary School.CD-R.

Internet resources

bees and honey

bees and honeycombs

How long does a bee live in summer and winter? This question is usually of interest to young beekeepers and just curious people. And since in different sources you can see different numbers, the question attracts even more attention. The article will describe how long a bee can live, depending on the scope of its activities and other factors.

What determines the lifespan of bees?

The lifespan of a bee depends on many factors.

How long do honey bees and other bees live?

Check also these articles

Since a huge role in how long a bee lives is played by its scope and purpose, it is necessary to analyze in detail how long drones, queens and working insects live.

If we consider in more detail how long a bee lives, we can see that life expectancy largely depends on the time when it was bred.

It is believed that the age limit of a worker honey bee cannot exceed 1 year, even in very good conditions.

How long do wild bees live?

How long do wild bees live? Wild bees have a slightly different lifespan. They are much more tenacious, because they work less, and they also breed less. So the uterus of a wild bee can easily live 5 years, and sometimes its life span reaches 6-8 years.

The same goes for worker bees. Their life is also increased by about 20-30% of the number of days of a bee in the apiary. But the drones live in the wild for about the same time as in the apiary, because after fertilization they die, and if there are too many of them, the worker bees simply kick them out to starve to death.

Unlike most insects, honey bees do not freeze for the winter, but actively produce the level of heat necessary for life. The warmth of one bee is absolutely not enough to fight the winter cold. But many thousands of bees, gathering in a dense mass, sum up their energy, and the special structure of the club ensures the preservation of heat, as a result of which the family of bees can endure even severe frosts. Consequently, the social way of life of bees has developed for them a very special way of wintering, in which they remain active.

Starts from summer. By processing the nectar and turning it into honey, the bees prepare a highly nutritious, concentrated food. They put honey reserves in the upper part of the nest so that they can be conveniently used in winter conditions. The bees seal their honey reserves with impermeable wax caps, which prevent both the liquefaction of honey in humid air and its thickening and crystallization in dry air. acquired the ability not to excrete excrement, despite the systematic feeding. They assimilate the sugars of honey very fully, and the folded structure of the large hind intestine makes it possible to significantly increase its volume and retain the contents until the spring flight.

The bee family in the process of historical development has acquired many instincts aimed at the economical use of honey in the autumn-winter period. These include the expulsion of drones after honey collection. First, they drive them from the honeycomb to the walls and bottom of the hive. Here the drones are exhausted from hunger, the bees pull them out, where they die.

Preparing for the winter, the bees, which, mixed with wax, carefully close up the gaps in the hive and often reduce the notch. In it, they leave only a few round holes.

Swarms always settle in the hollows of living trees. ceiling, leaving the walls free. Through them, moisture penetrates into the tree in winter, which is carried away by currents of the liquid. This largely protects the housing of bees from the accumulation of excess moisture formed during the metabolism of bees in the winter.

It also has physiological differences from spring and summer. In the body of a bee, reserve nitrogenous substances, fat and glycogen are deposited, the type of metabolism changes. If in summer bees the main processes of heat generation are carried out under the influence of oxidase enzymes that decompose sugars using atmospheric oxygen, then in winter bees metabolic processes increase under the influence of a group of dehydrogenase enzymes that use oxygen associated with fat accumulated in the bee's body since autumn. In winter bees, it is formed under the outer cover and between internal organs a thick layer of fat body, which in summer bees does not develop to such an extent.

The content of free water in the cells of the body decreases; water changes from a free state to a bound state. This process is especially active in insects that freeze in winter, due to which they return to active life again in the spring. Free water, freezing, destroys the cell structure, and the insect dies; in a bound state, it does not freeze, the cells of the body are preserved, they continue a very slow metabolism due to the accumulation of fat and other substances by winter.

The bees are in “warm” conditions in winter, their body temperature even on the periphery of the club does not fall below 6°C.

For a long time, beekeepers were attracted by the idea - is it possible to keep bees in a state of suspended animation in winter, placing them in large refrigerators with a temperature slightly below 0 ° C. However, studies have shown that it is impossible to carry out the wintering of bees without spending honey.

In the fall, they decrease, and then stop laying eggs and rearing brood. Families with old queens stop raising offspring earlier, with young queens - later. As the weather gets colder, the bees gradually gather in the middle of the nest. The decrease in temperature is felt first of all by insects on the outer combs, and then they rush towards the warmth, that is, to the middle combs, where the bulk of the bees is concentrated and the queen is located. That's how it starts. Initially, it is loose and unstable - it forms at night and breaks up during the day with an increase in air temperature.

If the temperature rises to 12-15 ° C, then the bees fly around and are released from excrement. However, with the onset of a steady cooling, a permanent club is formed, which persists throughout the entire cold period.

In the hollows of trees, the winter club of bees is always located on the border between honeycombs (above) and empty ones (below). The bulk of the bees are placed on empty combs, forming the "bed" of the club. The upper part of the comb always covers the combs with honey, which allows the bees to have food within the heated part of the club. Such placement of the club guarantees the possibility of feeding in conditions when a bee that has broken away from the club inevitably dies in cold weather.

As the food is consumed, the club slowly moves up to the honey. This movement is quite natural. On which cells the club gathered in the fall, on the same cells it will be in the spring, only higher. During the winter, the family spends 8-10 kg of honey, and if the club is located on 6-8 combs, then on each comb the bees will spend about 1.5 kg of honey. Therefore, there is a rule: in each comb left in the nest for the winter, there must be at least 2 kg of honey.

The winter club has a distinct structure - an outer crust and an inner core. The bees that make up the crust sit motionless, tightly pressed against one another. Here they are placed not only in the streets, but also in empty cells. As a result, most of the crust is made up of a mass of bees in the form of a dense, continuous shell, separated only by thin cell walls. The crust reliably retains the heat generated by the bees in the middle of the club.

The thickness of the crust depends on the external temperature, at which the club becomes denser: more bees enter the cells, the crust becomes thicker and denser.

The thickness of the crust is not the same everywhere: it becomes thinner near the notch - the bees are placed more loosely here, as a result of which air can penetrate into the club. The same loosened place exists in the upper part of the club. The degree of loosening is regulated by bees, which ensures the necessary level of ventilation inside the club. Especially a lot of bees in the cells are located on the sides and in the lower part. The bark is dominated by bees of older ages.

The bee is in the composition of the crust as long as there is a supply of honey in its goiter. When the honey supply is exhausted, the bee "dives" into the thickness of the crust, leaves it and rises along the comb to the honey reserves, where it fills the goiter. In the conditions of the winter club, the bees do not transfer honey to each other - each bee takes it from the cell herself. Honey within the crust of the bee is pre-opened, and, having hygroscopicity, it is somewhat diluted due to the moist air that collects in the upper part of the club. The drier the air, the more cells the bees keep open. Having filled the goiter with honey, the bee adjoins the inner layer of the crust, in which it remains for a long time. Bees in cells sit quietly, characterized by a low level of metabolism.

The core of the club consists mainly of physiologically young bees. They are placed relatively freely and can move around the cells. The heat comes mainly from the bees housed in the core of the club. It is formed due to the honey they eat and is released during mechanical movements (wing twitching). In cold weather, a peculiar noise is usually heard from the hive - this is the result of the warming movements of many thousands of bees in the core of the club. Inside the club, the bees maintain a relatively high temperature: in a small area in the middle, it reaches 28 ... 32 ° C (thermal center). From the thermal center in the upward direction, the temperature decreases gradually, downward - more sharply (the effect of the influx of fresh cold air affects). In the thickness of the crust is 6...10°C.

The volume of the club changes during the winter, following changes in outside temperature. During cold snaps, it contracts, during relative warming it expands and at the same time moves after the cells freed from honey. Thanks to this pulsation, the heat inside the club is maintained not so much by an increase in heat generation, but by a decrease in heat losses. So, with a decrease in external temperature by 5 ° C, the diameter of the club decreases by 12%. This is sufficient to maintain the initial heat transfer. Due to this reaction to low temperatures, the bees can endure the cold without a significant increase in feed consumption.

Printed honey combs soften the extreme temperature fluctuations in the hive. When cooled, warmer cells slowly radiate heat, and when warmed, on the contrary, by absorbing heat, they contribute to a slow increase in temperature. Therefore, with a sharp change in external conditions, the bee colony is able to gradually adapt to new conditions.

The temperature in the center of the club during the winter changes little - usually no more than 1 ... 2 ° C per day. However, in general, it grows by spring. By the end of February, the temperature in the center of the club reaches 32...33°C, which encourages the queen to lay eggs. A bee family of average strength spends 20-25 gmed per day in the first half of winter. When brood appears in colonies, feed consumption approximately doubles.

Honey and bee bread, without excreting feces. It concentrates in their hindgut, which greatly increases by spring. When wintering indoors, the mass of the hindgut with feces increases in December to 18 mg, in January to 20, in February to 24, in March to 32, and in April, before flying, to 34-36 mg. Bees behave normally, holding up to 40 mg of feces. If something bothers them in winter (for example, mice) or they feed on poor-quality honey (crystallized or mixed with honeydew), then the normal filling of the hindgut is disturbed, and the bees can get diarrhea, causing weakening and death of colonies.

Bees fly around in the spring very early. In the forest at a height of 6-8 m, the air temperature in the sun reaches 12 ° C much faster than below, on the ground, where the heat is absorbed by melting snow for a long time. Interestingly, in the old days, beekeepers-hunters searched for hollows with bees in the forests by the many spots of their feces on the snow under a hollow tree. Only freed from winter feces, the bees begin, having reserves of honey and perga in their nests for this.

G.F.TARANOV,
Professor
j-l "Beekeeping" No. 10, 2013