AY Honors/Beekeeping/Answer Key

1. Know a brief history of keeping bees for honey.

Beekeeping is one of the oldest forms of food production. It was particularly well developed in Egypt and was discussed by the Roman writers Virgil, Gaius Julius Hyginus, Varro, and Columella. A pioneering beekeeping popularizer in the 19th century United States was Amos Root.

Traditionally, beekeeping was done for the bees' honey harvest, although nowadays crop pollination service can often provide a greater part of a commercial beekeeper's income.

Western honeybees are not native to the Americas. American, Australian, and New Zealand colonists imported honeybees from Europe, partly for honey and partly for their usefulness as pollinators. The first honeybee species imported were likely European dark bees. Later Italian bees, carniolan honeybees and caucasian bees were added.

2. List at least five uses of each of the following:

a. Honey

The main uses of honey are in cooking, baking, spreading on bread or toast, and as an addition to various beverages such as tea. Because honey is hygroscopic (drawing moisture from the air), a small quantity of honey added to a pastry recipe will retard staling. Raw honey also contains enzymes that help in its digestion, several vitamins and antioxidants.

Honey is used in traditional folk medicine and apitherapy, and is an excellent natural preservative.

In ancient history, the Ancient Egyptian and Middle-Eastern peoples also used honey for embalming the dead. However, only rich and powerful people had the luxury of this type of funeral.

b. Beeswax

Beeswax is used commercially to make fine candles, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals including bone wax (cosmetics and pharmaceuticals account for 60% of total consumption), in polishing materials (particularly shoe polish), as a component of modelling waxes, and in a variety of other products. It is also used as a coating for cheese, to protect the food as it ages. While some cheesemakers have replaced it with plastic, many still use beeswax in order to avoid any unpleasant flavours that may result from plastic. Beeswax is also an ingredient in moustache wax, as well as dreadlock wax, and was used in the manufacturing of the cylinders used by the earliest phonographs.

c. Propolis

Propolis is a wax-like resinous substance collected by honeybees from tree buds or other botanical sources and used as cement and to seal cracks or open spaces in the hive. Propolis is marketed by health food stores as a traditional medicine, and for its claimed beneficial effect on human health. Depending upon its precise composition it may show powerful local antibiotic and antifungal properties. Also it is generally efficient in treating skin burns. Claims have been made for its use in treating allergy; it may stimulate the immune system, but some warn that it should not be taken if the user is likely to have severe allergic reaction to bees.

Old beekeepers recommend a piece of propolis kept in the mouth as a remedy for a sore throat.

Propolis is used by music instrument makers to better show the wood grain. It is a component of Italian varnish and was reportedly used by Stradivari

3. Name ten foods that would be very difficult to grow if there were no honey bees.

• Almonds
• Apples
• Blackberries
• Blueberries
• Cantaloupe
• Cucumber
• Kiwi
• Peach
• Pumpkin
• Raspberry
• Squash
• Strawberries
• Watermelon

4. List the duties of the drone, the worker, and the queen bees.

Drones

Drones are male bees, and their only function is to mate with the queen. A healthy hive will have a few thousand drones (out of a population of 40,000 to 80,000 bees). Drones do no work in the hive and will beg food from the worker bees. If none supply him with food, he will eventually feed himself. The phrase "busy as a bee" certainly does not pertain to the drone! Once mature, drones leave the hive and congregate together, waiting for a queen with which to mate. Only one drone will mate with the queen, and shortly after that it will die. The worker bees do not allow the drones to overwinter in the hive, as they are a tremendous drain on resources and serve no function during the winter when the queen lays no eggs. They are sometimes ejected from the hive when food is scarce. Drones are hatched from unfertilzed eggs, so the lack of any drones in the hive will automatically result in the production of drones when the next brood is hatched.

Workers

Workers are sexually sterile female bees. Most bees are worker bees. For the first ten days of their lives, the female worker bees clean the hive and feed the larvae. After this, they begin building comb cells. On days 16 through 20, a worker receives nectar and pollen from older workers and stores it. After the 20th day, a worker leaves the hive and spends the remainder of its life as a forager. The foragers die usually when their wings are worn out after approximately 500 miles of flight.

Queen

The queen bee is the only female bee that lays eggs. The queen's eggs hatch in three days, and the larvae are fed with royal jelly produced by worker bees. After a few more days, the larvae are fed on honey and pollen. The exception is a larva fed solely on royal jelly, which will develop into a queen bee. When the queen dies, the worker bees produce several new queens, and when these mature, they fight to the death until only one queen is left.

6. What is meant by the following terms:

a. Movable-frame hive

b. Crossed comb

c. Bee space

d. Swarming

References

• Wikipedia articles
  • Beekeeping
  • Beeswax
  • Honeybee
  • Honey
  • Pollination
  • Propolis
• Wikibooks, Beekeeping