GROUP NO- 3 A PARTIAL FULLFILLMENT OF ELP 455

A PROJECT ON “COMMERCIAL BEEKEEPING”

BSc. (Hons.) Agriculture 8th Semester
COURSE TITLE- COMMERCIAL BEEKEEPING (ELP-455)
Year of submission - 2024

Submitted by
1. Souvik Pal - AG 41
2. Pranidhi Das - AG 17
3. Subhadip Adak – AG 40
4. Akolina Paul- AG 19
5. Soumava Sarkar-AG 24

1
 INDEX
SL NO. TOPIC PAGE NUMBER
1 INTRODUCTION SCOPE 1-4
OF BEEKEEPING
2 TYPES OF HONEY BEE 5-6
AND THEIR LIFE CYCLE

3 COLONIZATION OF 7-9
HONEY BEE
4 SEASONAL 10
MANAGEMENT AND
BEHAVIOUR OF BEE
5 COMMERCIAL HONEY 11-12
BEE REARING
6 BEE KEEPING 13-14
EQUIPMENT
7 PEST &DISEASE OF 15
HONEY BEE
8 CONCLUTION 16
 What is honey bee and Bee- keeping

❑ Honey bee is a social & beneficial insect. They lives in hive.They are flying insect&
close relatives of wasp.
❑ Kingdom - Animalia
❑ Phylum – Arthropoda
❑ class – Insecta
❑ Order – Hymenoptera
❑ Family – Apidae
❑ Genus – Apis

Beekeeping
✓ The science that aims to study the life, behavior & activity of honey bee
in order to obtain bee products and crop pollination.
✓ Maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans.
 ❖ What is Apiculture?
The science of rearing honey bees and maintaining their
colonies by humans to get products like honey, bee wax,
bee venom, propolis etc. is called Apiculture.
❖OBJECTIVES OF THE ELP ON COMMERCIAL
BEEKEEPING

❖ To get a first-hand idea about the beekeeping apiary unit.

❖ knowledge to analyze the economics of beekeeping.

❖ acquainted with Experiential learning about bee keeping.
❖ acquainted with the resources required in the apiary.

❖ To get a first-hand idea about honey processing.

❖ To achieve Basic
knowledge about floral calendar.
 Importance of Bee keeping in Agriculture
✓Honeybee pollinates more than 110 commercially grown crops
including 33% of agricultural groups.

➢ Almond (100%) ❖ Lucerne (110%)

➢ Apple (90%) ❖ Sunflower (45%)

➢ Broccoli (90%) ❖ Mustard (40%)

❖ Cardamom (35%)
➢ Cherry(80%)
❖ Cotton (20%)
➢ Onion(65% )
✓Globally, 33% of the human diet comes from insect pollinated plants and
the honey bee is responsible for 80% of that pollination.
 World scenario of Beekeeping

➢ About 50 million bee colonies, mostly, Apis mellifera, maintained all over the world.

➢ World production of honey estimated 13.88 lakh M.T.

➢ 15 countries in world account for 90% of world honey production.

➢ Major honey producing countries are China, USA(85000MTs), Mexico, Argentina, Ukraine,
Turkey, Russia & India.

➢ China is only Asian country producing nearly 1.6 lakh M. T. of honey, 12800 M.T. of beeswax
against 43400 M. T. of world production.

➢ China also produces 1000 M. T. of pollen and 800 M.T. of royal jelly and biggest exporter of
honey, beeswax and other bee products.

➢ 70 lakh A.mellifera bee colonies and 30 lakh A.cerana bee colonies in China and they have a
plan to increase this number to 5 times in next few decades.
 Status of bee keeping in India
✓ About 14 lakh colonies by 2.5 lakh beekeepers
✓ Employment to 1.5 lakh persons
✓ Annual honey production 70,000 tonnes
(54.15% from domesticated and 45.85 from wild)
✓ Apis cerena and mallifera both are practice
✓ Avg. yield of honey is 21kg./hive
✓ Values of export of honey approx. 250 Crores
✓ Major market Germany, USA,Japan, France,
Italy and Spain
Important species of Honey-bee in Bee keeping
 Apis dorsata
❖ Open nesting. Builds single large comb
❖ attached to branches of trees or rocks etc.
❖ Found in plains as well as hills up to 1600 meters
❖ above sea level. Highly migratory.
❖ Biggest honey bee (16-18mm)
❖ Swarming/ Absconding tendency Strong
❖ Furious in Temperament
❖ 40 kg Honey
❖ wild bees, cannot be domesticated
 Apis cerena indica
✓Cavity nesting. Builds many parallel combs
in cavities of tree trunks, hollows of rocks,
poles and other Covered places.
✓Found throughout India
✓Medium size (14-15mm)
✓Strong tendency of Swarming
✓Furious in temperament
✓5 kg (Hive bees;can be domesticated)
 Apis mellifera
✓ Cavity nesting and similar in
habits to Apis cerana.
✓ builds parallel combs.
✓ Exotic bee to India, Introduced
successfully in 1962
✓ Medium size (14-16mm)
✓ Swarming only in African sub
species
✓ Gentle in temperament
✓ 15 kg honey
 Apis florae
✓Open nesting, Builds single small comb fixed to
ranches of bushes
✓Found in plains up to 300 mtr above sea level.
Highly migratory.
✓Smallest Apis bee (9- 10mm)
✓Swarming/ Absconding tendency Strong
✓Temperament Mild
✓500 g Average honey yield per colony/year
✓wild bees; cannot be domesticated
 QUEEN BEE DRONES WORKER BEE
Queen bee is the only fertile Drones are the male member of They perform different duties depending upon
female in colony She is largest in colony. Drones can live up to their age which are as follows: Day 1-14:
size. No wax glands. Live for about 60 days. Sting and wax Activity inside the hive such as cleaning the
about 3-4 years. May lay eggs at gland absent. Develops from hive, feeding the larvae, etc. Day 14-20 : Guard
unfertilized egg. the entrance of the hive. Day 21- 35: Foraging,
the rate of 1500- 2000 per day.
The sole duty of drone is to .

fertilized the virgin queen

.

Castes of Honey Bees

 The Queen Profile
✓ The queen is a mature, fertile female. She lays thousands of eggs during her life
time.
✓ A queen has the longest live span in the colony living for years versus months.

✓ She is normally larger than the other bees in the hive and has a slim torpedo
shape. She does have a stinger, but uses it to kill other queens.

✓ Only actively reproducing female

✓ Can produce 1,500 eggs per day or more at the height of the brood season

✓ She develops from a fertilized egg.

✓ She mates with many drones to produce fertilized eggs.

✓ She is the mother of all the bees in the hive.

✓ Her role in the hive is to produce eggs and to release pheromone signals within
the hive
 Worker Profile
✓ Female but typically not able to reproduce
✓ A colony will have 20,000 - 60,000
✓ Live for 4-6 weeks in summer, 4-5 months in winter
✓ Develops from a fertilized egg

✓ Worker bees are sexually underdeveloped females.

✓ They may number as many as 60,000 in a colony.

✓ They are called workers because that is what they do

✓ Female worker bees under certain conditions can lay eggs

but because they are not mated, they produce eggs that
only develop into drones.

✓ A worker bee spends its first 20 days in the hive

performing various task – cleaning cells, feeding young
larva, building wax comb, etc.
The Drone bee
✓ The head is large and the eyes predominate the head.

✓ The rear-end of the drone is rounded --they have no stinger and can not sting.

✓ Although they are usually considered worthless, they contribute to the

continuation of one generation to the next generation.

✓ They emerge in 24 days, larger than the female workers. The drone is the male
bee in the hive.

✓ He develops from an unfertilized egg. Meaning he is passing on genetic

material from his mother only.

✓ He provides ½ of the genetic material in worker bees. His life span depends on
the health of the colony. During poor honey flows and honey shortages, drones
may be driven from the hive. This happens at the onset of winter as well.
 Copulation Female
Male
(drone) (queen)

Unfertilized egg Fertilized egg

3 DAYS 3 DAYS
Larva
Larva
6 DAYS 6 DAYS
Pupa
Pupa 12 DAYS

Adult
Adult Female(worker)
Male (Drone) ROYAL JELLY FOR 3 DAYS

Other workers One female

NORMAL FOOD ROYAL JELLY
Sterile female workers QUEEN
Size of Cast in Hive
❑ Swarming,
❑ Supersedure,
❑ Absconding
❑ Nuptial marriage
Swarming and Colony Reproduction:
Swarming is a method of reproduction. A part of the colony migrates to a new site
to
reproduce a new colony. When food is available in plenty, the worker bees take up
activities that
result in colony reproduction. They build drone cells in which the queen lays
unfertilized eggs. These
hatch into drones. After this, the bees construct queen cells and fertilized eggs are
laid in these cells.
The worker bees feed the larvae in the queen cells with royal jelly, larvae develop
into fertile females,
viz. queen bee. Before a virgin queen emerges from the sealed queen cells, the
mother queen leaves
the hive with a part of the worker bees as a prime swarm. Then the virgin queen
emerges and after a
while rushes out of the hive with another batch of worker bees to form after swarm
that establishes
itself into a colony at a new nesting site. The swarm settles in a selected nesting
site. Worker bees
begin to construct combs, forage and gather food, and to rear the brood. As the
new worker bees
emerge, the hive develops into a full-fledged colony.
Supersedure and Emergency queen:
Supersedure is queen replacement without colony division. A failing queen who is unable to
lay as many eggs as required, or who begins to run out of spermatozoa and lay a high proportion of
male eggs will need to be superseded by supersedure queen. The worker bees are induced to build
supersedure cells which are 2 or 3 large queen cells in the middle of the nest, unlike a dozen of
comparatively small queen cells build at edges of nest during the swarming period. In absence of
queen substance due to death of queen, the workers are stimulated to get set for producing an
emergency queen. The eggs or larvae less than two and half day old in worker cells, which are still
being fed on abundance of brood food, are selected. Their cells are enlarged and extended
downward and the larvae are fed in the same way as in queen cells to develop into emergency
queen.
Absconding
Migration of the complete colony from one place to another due to some unfavorable conditions.
 Communication

Round dance
Waggle dance When food
When food source is source is > 50 meters away
< 50 m from hive ✓Waggle dance used during swarming
to communicate possible nest sites
 Seasonal management
of
Honey bee and bee hive
 Spring season Management
✓Cleaning
✓Avoid Starvation
✓Timely disease inspection
✓Re- queening
✓Removal of honey crop
✓Creating space for expansion within the hive swarm
control
Summer season Management
✓ Provide shade to hives

✓ Provide clean water

✓ Provide sugar syrup to honey bees

✓ Sprinkle cold water over hive

✓ Re-queening
Winter season Management
✓ Place the colony under sun rays

✓ Plug all openings

✓ Unite weaker colony with stronger colony

✓ Keep the entrance gate opposite to wind

 Off season Management
✓ Enough honey may left in the hive to keep colony alive

✓ Protect from rain and wind

✓ Protect from enemies

✓ Take care of unhygienic condition

✓ When nectar is not available , colony should be given

300 to 500 ml warm sugar syrup in evening
Commercial
methods of
Bee rearing
❖ Commercial methods of bee rearing
1.Fixed Hive
A.Indigenous
method 2.Movable
hive
Methods
1.Typical movable
hive(Modern
Langstroth Hive)
B.Modern
Methods
2.Newton’s Hive
➢ A. Indigenous Method
❖ 1) Fixed Hive:- It is Purely
Natural type of comb because bees
Prepare the hive themselves on the
wall or trees.
❖2) Movable Hive:-
o It Comprises of hollow wood logs
empty boxes and earthen pots
etc. placed in verandas of houses.
o There are exists two holes one is
for entrance and the other is for
exit of bees.
o The swarmed bees usually come to
box on their own accord to Some
bees keepers use to take the
clusters of the swarms from a tree
and keep them in hive.
 2.Modern Method
✓An advanced method based on scientific facts
✓Use of Scientifically made artificial Bee hive
✓First artificial comb was introduced by
R. L. L. Langstroth in 1851 in America
There are 3 type of artificial Bee hive used in
INDIA..

1. Jeolikot model
2. Newton model
3. Langstroth model
THE HIVE
Roof

Honey supers

Queen excluder

Brood chamber

Alighting board

Stand
Parts of typical moveable hive

1. STAND: basal part of hive.

It is adjusted to make a
slope so that rainwater
comes down quickly.
b)BOTTOM BOARD:
 Situated above the
stand and forms the
proper base. It has two
gates one gate is for
entrance and other is
for exit.
c) BROOD CHAMBER:
Most important part
provided with5 to 10 frames.
 In each frame a wax sheet
is held at vertical position
where bees start making
walls and cells.
d) SUPER: It is without cover
and the base. It is provided in
many frames containing comb
foundation to provide
adational space for expansion
of the hive.
e) INNER COVER:
Wooden piece used for covering of
the super, has many holes for
proper ventilation.

f) TOP COVER: plain and sloping

zinc sheet fitted on it protect the
colony from rain.
APPLICATIONS OF CULTURE
 Honey
 Produced from plant nectar
 Primarily from flowers
 Also extra-floral nectaries
 Precursor of nectar is:
 Ploem sap
 Most often a dilute solution of sucrose
 Essentially bees do two things:
 Dehydrate
 Enzymatic “inversion” of sucrose to glucose &
fructose
 Composition of honey .

✓ A saturated solution of
carbohydrates
✓ 17% water
82.5% sugar:
✓ fructose 38%
✓ glucose 31%
✓ maltose 7%
✓ sucrose 1.5%
✓ 0.5% protein,
minerals, vitamins
 Bee wax
❖ Produced from four pairs of sub-
dermal glands on the underside of
the abdomen of a worker bee.
❖ When the bee is 10 to 18 days old
❖ Produced as small, translucent
flakes
Precursor is honey & nectar
(carbohydrates)
 USE -COSMETICS
 creams, lotions, lipstick
 CANDLES
 liturgical, Jewish, Greek Orthodox, but most
of all the RCC.
 Royal Jelly
 Definition
 the glandular secretions of young worker bees (4-10 days
old), produced by the hypopharyngeal in the head, used as
food for larval bees.

Composition
 66% water
 14% protein
 14% carbohydrate
 5% lipid (fats & sterols)
 Bee Venom
❑ Uses
❑ As Pure Bee Venom for use in desensitization
❑ As quackery for charlatans in treating a variety of
neurological disorders.
❑ Composition
❑a mixture of proteins & peptides
❑melittin 50% dry wt
❑phospholipase A 12% dry wt
❑hyaluronidase <3% dry wt.
❑acid phosphatase <1% dry wt.
❑histamine <1% dry wt.
 POLLEN
 Plant male gametophyte
a reproductive structure that carries
sperm
 A primary food substance for bees
 directly as food to older larvae
 indirectly as the precursor for royal
jelly
❖ What is an apiary?
Apiary is the place where the bee colonies are kept
Selection of good apiary site:-
✓ The apiary site should be rich in bee flora which may
provide forage for most parts of the year and in addition
there should be good density of honey flow sources near
the apiary site. For collecting 20 kg of honey, one colony
needs 100 blooming trees or 2-4 acres of blooming crop
✓ The apiary site should be easily accessible by road
✓ There should be availability of fresh running water near
the apiary
✓ The apiary site should have natural or artificial wind
breaks to protect the bees from strong/chilly winds
✓ The site should receive morning and afternoon sunshine.
During summer provision of shade (either using
artificial structures or using shade of the trees) should be
made
✓ Bee colonies in an apiary kept under trees which provide
shade during summer
✓ An Apiary dhould be located where there is abundance of necter and pollen yielding
plants within in the radius about 1 to 1.5 km
✓ A good barbed wire fences or a live hedge may be provided to keep out intruders
✓ Site Should Free be free from termites and black ant infestations
Bee k e eping
Equipments
BEEKEEPING EQUIPMENTS
▪ Protective Equipments

A) Bee suit
B) Use:-Bee suits protect the body
area from stings

A) Bee Veils
B) Use:-Bee veils protect
the head and neck area
from stings.

A) Gloves
B) Use:-Bee gloves protect
the hand and forearm
area.
 A) Queen Excluder
B) Use:- Perforated zinc sheets or
round wire assembled in such
away that workers can pass
through them & queen Cannot.

A) Bee Escape
B) Use:- To provide one way
passage to bees

A) Feeders
B) Use:- It is used for feeding
sugar syrup to the bee
colonies.
 A) Bee Brush
B) Use:- To brush the bees from frames

A) Smoker
B) Use:-Used to calm
down the bees while
opening the hive

A) Honey Extractor
B) Use:- It is a machine to
centrifuge out the honey
from uncapped frames
 A) Hive tool
B) Use:- An iron strip used for opening
of hive and its opening

A) Wax Melter
B) Use:- Double walled
chamber for melting of
bees wax for making
comb foundation
sheets
A) Pollen Trap
B) Use:-For trapping corbicular pollen
of returning bee foragers. For A.
mellifera pollen trapping screen
has holes of 4.7 to 5mm & for
A.cerena 3.5 to 3.7mm
 A) Uncapping Knife
B) Use:Large Sized knife used to uncap the
frames before honey extraction.

A) Observation Hive
B) Use:- Small hives with
glass slides so as to
observe movements and
behaviour of bees.

A) Queen Cage
B) Use:- Used to introduce new colony and
also to transport the queen.
 A) Queen Cell Protector
B) Use:-A Spring like structure for protecting
queen cells.

A) Beekeeper honey refractometer

B) Use:-To measure the sugar content in
honey.
Some Rich Nectar Plants:-

Sunflower Goldenrod Coarinder

Alfalfa Honey bee on acid lime flower Cosmos

 ACARINE AMERICAN FOULBROOD NOSEMA
Caused by - Acarapis woodi Caused by - Bacillus larvae Caused by - Nosema apis

Acarine disease is caused by the mite American foulbrood (AFB) is a bacterial Nosema is a serious disease of adult
Acarapis woodi that gets into the brood disease that results from the European honey bees including queen
tracheae of the bee through its breathing infection of honey bee larvae with bees. In some years, nosema may cause
holes or spiracles in its thorax or Paenibacillus larvae. While it only attacks serious losses of adult bees and colonies
midsection. Bees affected by this mite larvae, AFB weakens the colony and can in autumn and spring. Spores of this
are unable to fly, have disjointed wings quickly lead to its death in only three organism can only be seen using a light
and distended abdomens. weeks microscope.
.

DISEASES OF HONEYBEE
 Wax Moth
Predatory Wasps Ectoparasitic Mites Ectoparasitic Mites
Vespa sp. Galleria Tropilaelaps clareae Varroa destructor

mellonella
Larvae tunnel through midrib of
Catch the bees at hive entrance the comb, brood rearing Cavity nesting and similar in
Feeds on brood, may leads to
and kill them. They can even habits to Apis cerana and builds
hampered.More prevalent in absconding situation.
perish a whole colony if it’s weak. monsoon. parallel combs.

Reduce cracks in hive and

reduce entrances.
Killing by flapping. Burn the Remove the empty combs. Sulphur dusting on top bars
nests. Insecticidal solution Sulphur fumigation in empty Medium size (14-16
@200mg/frame
application. storage hive. mm)

ENEMIES OF HONEY BEES

 Benefits of Beekeeping
➢ Bees help in cross pollination thus they increase the productivity of crops.

➢ Proper utilization of natural resources.

➢ Unemployed youth can start this business with minimal funds.

➢ 73,000 man-days to manufacture appliances / equipments.

➢ Net income from 100 Bee colonies is around Rs. 1.70 lakhs/annum

➢ It helps in rural development and promotes small village industry.

 Constraints in Beekeeping

▪ Infrastructure for producing genetically superior queen bees for supply to

beekeepers;
▪ technical knowledge for efficient management of bee colonies for higher
honey yield;
▪ financial institutional support
▪ consumer awareness about honey and its products;
 Production of honey has been the major aim of the
industry.

 About 10,000 tons of forest honey are produced

annually.

 Trends towards industrial bee keeping

 More sustainable option.

THANK YOU