Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping, Revised Edition
$55.00
Authors: Dewey M. Caron with Lawrence John Connor
Publisher: Wicwas Press
Ideal For: All serious beekeeping students, Master beekeepers and professional apiculturalists.
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 8 3/4″ x 10 3/8″
ISBN: 9781878075291
Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping is also available as an eBook!
Click here to purchase a digital copy of Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping on Apple iBooks.
Fully revised and in full color, this very comprehensive Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping is a must have for teachers and beekeepers both. With updated material covering over a decade of changes in the world of apiculture and hundreds of full color photos and diagrams, this book offers insights into bee behavior, current management techniques, and updated threat analysis, all in a context that will elucidate and educate. Features many new full-color photos by Caron and Connor as well as new color drawings by Jon Zawislak.
Table of Contents
Click on each chapter to see the subtopics in each chapter.
1. Introduction
What is beekeeping?
Beekeeping – both science and art?
The real key
Human association with bees
Wasps, bees and warfare
Honey as a weapon
Apiculture beginnings
Bee gums and skeps
Bees on the move
A new hive
The bee world
Superorganism
Honey bee culture
Learning beekeeping
Notes
Discussions questions and Exercises
2. What's in a Name?
The classification system
Phylum Arthropoda
Class Insecta
Order Hymenoptera
Superfamily Apoidea
Families of bees
Family Apidae
Genus Apis
Races of honey bees
Hybrid bees
Selected strains/lines
Discussion questions and Exercises
3. Sociality
Insect societies 37
Sociality in the Hymenoptera 39
Box 4: Evolution of sociality
Eusocial
Bees
Wasps
Ants
Why is sociality so common in Hymenoptera?
Box 5: Control of stinging wasps and bees
Discussion questions and Exercises
4. What is a Honey Bee?
Hive bees
Field bees
Immature bees or brood
Differentiation of queen and worker
Box 6: Seeing is believing
Dead bees
Seasonality of brood and adult populations
Notes
Discussion questions and Exercises
5. Honey Bee Anatomy
Head
Thorax
Abdomen
Box 7: Bee sense of touch
Digestive and excretory systems
Nervous system
Circulation
Reproduction
Respiration
Gland systems
Box 8: Honey bee nutrition
Box 9: Glands and development
Queen and drone
Larval stage
Discussion questions and Exercises
6. The Bee Nest
Important nest features
Beeswax comb
Box 10: How do bees tell the difference?
Box 11: Stimulatory effect of comb and brood
Nest organization
Man-made hives
The modern beehive
Box 12: Observation beehives
Discussion questions and Exercises
7. Dance Language Communication
The round dance
The wagtail dance
The sickle dance
Taste and smell
Dialects
Additional recruitment dances
Accuracy of the dance information
Box 13: Marking bees
Dance language controversy
Discussion questions and Exercises
8. Pheromone Communication
Queen pheromones
Queen substance functions
Box 14: Obtaining queen substance
Food transmission
Alarm communication
Nasonov scent gland
Box 15: Colony defense
Colony odor
Box 16: Bee smell and removal of the dead
Trail pheromone
Brood and comb pheromones
Pheromones in dance language
Other pheromones
Discussion questions and Exercises
9. Queens, Queens, Queens
Queen replacement
Queen supersedure
Efficient versus inefficient queen supersedure
Box 17: Bee sounds
Swarming
Absconding
Emergency queen rearing
Mating of queens
Drone congregation areas
Box 18: Maeterlinck’s The Massacre of the Males
Queenless colonies
Discussion questions and Exercises
10. Foraging and Bee Botany
Types of foragers
How bees discover flowers
Scout bees
Box 19: Flower constancy
Foraging area
Foraging statistics
Nectar collection
Box 20: Nectar secretion
Box 21: Pollen collection
Pollen foraging
Water and propolis collection
Optimum foraging strategy
Robbing behavior
The season through a bee’s eye
Early season pollen sources
Mid to late spring
Fruit bloom
Early honey plants
Other late spring plants
Honey plants of June & July
Clovers, vetch & alfalfa
Summer
Cultivated crops
Around the home
Honeydew
Fall
Notes
Discussion questions and Exercises
11. Getting Started
When and how to start
What to expect
Personal equipment
The hive
Types of supers
Hive stands
The bees
Box 22: Transferring bees
The apiary
Box 23: Bait hive basics
Renting an apiary location
Drifting of bees
Considerations in apiary locations
Box 24: Ten tips for suburban beekeepers
More information
Discussion questions and Exercises
12. Basics of Management
What to wear
What to use
When to manipulate bees
Box 25: Do you need to see the queen?
How long to keep a hive open
Box 26: Is it okay to inspect?
Bee stings
Types of reactions following stings
Avoiding stings
How to manipulate colonies
Hive inspection and frame handling
Reading the frames
Box 27: Tips for inspecting colonies
Handling difficult colonies
Robbing
Feeding bees
Discussion questions and Exercises
13. Fall and Winter in the Beehive
Fall August—September—October
Fall requeening
Winter protection & insulation
Late fall-winter November to February
Box 28: The winter cluster
Why colonies die overwinter
Managing the overwintering colony
The real key
Discussion questions and Exercises
14. Spring Management
Spring March—April—May
Early spring
Watching the entrance
Box 29: Water for bees
The spring inspection
Stimulating weak colonies
Box 30: The swarming instinct
Management for spring nectar flow
Mid-spring
Box 31: Manage for success
What about swarming?
Swarm control
What about swarming?
Swarm control
Making divides and nuclei hives
Late spring
Discussion questions and Exercises
15. The Honey Harvest
Nectar or honey flow
The presence of nectar-secreting plants
Weather suitable for nectar secretion and gathering
Peak populations of bees in time for the main nectar flow
Physical ability of the bees and the ‘morale’ of the colony
The work of honey production Pre-flow management
Nectar flow management Supering
Queen excluders
Looking into supered colonies
The honey harvest
Box 32: Drawing foundation Extracting
Destruct harvest
Honey in the comb
Settling and packaging
Handling beeswax
Cleaning up
Non-flow (summer) management
Discussion questions and Exercises
16. Honey and Other Bee Products
What is honey?
What can go wrong?
Kinds of honey
Box 33: Finely crystallized or granulated honey
Other sources of honey
Uses of honey
Beeswax
Uses of beeswax
Box 34: Comb honey
Pollen
Uses of pollen
Royal jelly
Bee brood
Propolis
Venom
Live bees
Mead (honey wine)
Other ways to make money with bees
Box 35: Insects in the human diet
Discussion questions and Exercises
17. Queen Mating & Rearing
Raising queen bees
Small scale queen production
Mating queens
Box 36: Cloake board used to raise queens
Mating control
Queen introduction
Nucleus colony basics
Discussion questions and Exercises
18. Pollination
Pollinating agents
Insect pollination
Pollinating bees
Honey bee pollination
Managing bee colonies for pollination
Box 37: Conditioning/artificially attracting bees to crops
Box 38: Moving bee colonies
Box 39: One colony per acre
Improving pollination results
Pollination of specific crops
Small fruit pollination
Discussion questions and Exercises
19. Bee Mites
Honey bee tracheal mite
Varroa mite
Box 40: Parasitic Mite Syndrome (PMS)
Box 41: Colony collapse disorder
Box 42: Pesticide succession for varroa mite control
Integrated pest management
Discussion questions and Exercises
20. Diseases and Pests
Brood diseases
Box 43: Is there a brood problem?
Box 44: Beekeeping going to the dogs
Adult diseases
Pests
Pesticides
Box 45: Pesticide poisoning symptoms
Plant poisoning
Disease, pest and pesticide mimics
Discussion questions and Exercises
Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping Print
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