Practical beekeeping – good beekeeping practice

Good beekeeping practice - knowledge in a nutshell

Wolfgang Ritter, CVUA-Freiburg, Am Moos Weihez, D 79108, Freiburg, Germany

Keywords: bee escape, honey contamination, hygiene, residues in honey, robbing, smoker

A new series in which world expert Dr Wolfang Ritter offers advice for beekeeping in a bee-appropriate way and harvesting highest quality products. This series is relevant for beginners and more advanced beekeepers and will consider what Good Beekeeping Practice means for the management of bee colonies and honey processing. The relevant aspects are summarised and are detailed for practical application. A checklist will help you to recognise the strengths and weaknesses of your own management methods. Finally you should be in a position to assess whether Good Beekeeping Practice is respected in your own apiary and where changes are necessary.

As for all food producers, beekeepers are legally liable for the products they sell or give away. It is not surprising therefore that the issue of Good Beekeeping Practice becomes increasingly important. You may rightly ask what is behind this expression? Literature and online searches reveal many different comments and explanations, but no clear description or even a precise definition. However, you often find the term Good Agricultural Practice (GAP). Further research takes you to FAO, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations who give this definition: “Good Agricultural Practice, economy, environmental compatibility, and social acceptance should be respected in production and processing of food items and other agricultural products in order to guarantee secure and healthy food”.

This definition still sounds quite abstract. However it becomes more concrete if you transform the most important contents into Good Beekeeping Practice and summarise them as follows:

• balanced and species-appropriate beekeeping

• avoidance of residues in bee products

• quality management of bee products

• documentation (for example concerning application of medicines, health certificate, traceability of products)

• protection of the environment

• compliance with all relevant regulations for example pharmaceutical products concerning honey and food law.

Placing a comb near a colony in times of low nectar flow should be avoided: it immediately attracts bees and robbing takes place quickly

Photos © J Schwenkel

Bee colony hygiene

Quality products can be produced only under proper hygienic conditions and therefore hygiene is of utmost importance in beekeeping. Harvesting honey and filling receptacles is not the whole story: residues and contaminants in bee products may be caused by management methods. Good Beekeeping Practice allows only the application of bee-appropriate methods.

Extraction of honey combs

Honey hygiene requires care over several points. Bees are sitting on the combs and they should be removed. To sweep them away with a clean brush is good. Unsuitable are repellents - substances to drive the bees away - for example ethereal oils or synthetic substances: their ingredients are mostly inappropriate for food items and can lead to illegal residues in bee products. In industrial style beekeeping, bees are often driven away from the combs using a ‘blower’: this leads to stress for the bees, and too strong an airstream can lead to the death of bees.

For frame hive beekeepers ‘bee escapes’ are the best solution. Without any brood or drones in it, the honey chamber (super) is free of bees the next day. As the bees move to the brood chamber where the queen is situated, they calmly pass through the one-way bee escape. Afterwards the honey supers can be removed without any risk of robbing.

Avoiding robbing

When searching for food, bees are attracted to anything containing sugar or with a smell reminiscent of a bee hive. This may cause robbing especially at times outside the honey flow. An apiary with hives open for too long for management purposes becomes an easy victim. Also a weak colony cannot defend itself properly. Colonies in neighbouring apiaries can be affected because robbing takes place mostly within a radius of one kilometre.

Remains of honey or other sweet substances can also be targeted by bees: the close proximity of honey waste containers or dumping sites carries a high risk for bee health as a large part of the honey available commercially contains spores of American Foulbrood. Also residues, for example of pharmaceutical products, can enter the bee colony in this way: therefore, you should always keep a watchful eye on apiary surroundings.

Robbing can be avoided if weak colonies are not tolerated and if everything smelling of bees is stored away from them. The best time for treating colonies is in the evening shortly before dusk and smoking them gently avoids too much stress.

Soothing with smoke

For bees, smoke means wood fire and initiates them to take on food (honey) for an eventual escape: therefore they are busy and more inert with full honey sacs. In case of any disturbance the smoke will overwhelm the alert substances released by the bees.

When the hive is opened, the bees moving towards the light are soothed by a few puffs of smoke. In order to avoid crushing them during comb removal, the bees are driven back into the beeways with a few additional, small puffs of smoke. The rule is to use only an amount of smoke so that the bees are calmed but not scared. (Too much smoke also means many sooty particles and if these get into open honey cells, it could lead to rejection of the honey during inspection.)

However, not everything that burns easily and smokes a lot is a suitable smoking material. Chemical processes induced by heat can produce highly toxic substances if materials containing adhesive paint or glue, or treated with timber preservatives are used: not even the smallest trace should penetrate the honey which is a future food item! Defence sprays are not suitable also because their ingredients are unknown or not certified. Most suitable and non-hazardous are dried parts of plants. Rotten rootstocks, hay flowers, special dried plants or dried peel may be preferred, and wood shavings may be added for better burning, according to the beekeeper’s choice and/or ease of access.

With gentle puffs of cool smoke you can immediately start inspecting an apiary without a lot of buzzing

How to do

Escapes in frame hives

• Insert the intermediate board with the escape between honey and brood chamber

• Bees cannot return to the honey chamber after leaving it

• After 24 hours maximum, the honey chamber and the combs will be free of bees

Advantages

• Time-consuming sweeping away or removing bees is not necessary

• The risk of robbing is reduced by working swiftly

Disadvantages

• Apiaries have to be visited the day before honey harvesting

• Honey in the cooler combs may crystallize after a few days and may have to be warmed up again before honey extraction

Avoiding robbing

• Work swiftly at the apiary

• Stow away from bees: combs (especially honey combs), substances containing sugar, tools or equipment covered with wax or propolis

What to do in the case of robbing

• Stop treating

• Reduce the size of entrance holes

• Flour the bees at the flight board to identify the robbing colony

• Do not keep weak colonies in the vicinity of strong ones

• Place robbed colonies or colonies at risk 1-2 km away from the robber colony

Smoking material

• Must not impair the taste and the quality (residues) of the bee products

• Must not affect the beekeeper by giving off acrid fumes or odours

• Must alert the bees

Unsuitable pipe tobacco (contains nicotine residues), wood chips (acrid fumes), jute bags dyed or treated with mineral oil (residues), wood treated with timber preservatives or covered with other substances (residues)

Suitable: dried peel (apple, pear, etc), dried plants (hay flowers, tansy, yarrow), rotten, untreated wood, fir/spruce needles, jute bags (treated with vegetable oil only)

Insert the bee escape and put the full honey chamber back on top

Checklist for Good Beekeeping Practice

Bee products are not contaminated by repellents at honey harvest YES/NO

The extraction of combs is carried out in a bee-friendly way YES/NO

Weak bee colonies are not tolerated in the vicinity of strong ones YES/NO

Sugar water and other sugar-containing substances or tools and equipment smelling of bees are stored away from bees YES/NO

No honey dump sites in the vicinity and waste containers are verified and closed to bees YES/NO

The material used in the smoker leaves only a little dust and a few sooty particles and does not cause any residues YES/NO

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BfDJ acknowledges www.diebiene.de as the source of this article

Using a rhombus bee escape in a frame hive

For many years Dr Wolfgang Ritter has been Head of the OIE (World Organisation for Animal Health) Reference Laboratory for Bee Diseases, and also President of the Scientific Commission for Bee Health of Apimondia, the International Federation of Beekeepers’ Associations. In the Veterinary Institute Freiburg (CVUA-Freiburg) Germany, Dr Ritter’s Division is engaged in laboratory diagnosis and disease control, both theoretical and in practice. Dr Ritter is well known as a trainer of beekeepers and veterinarians in bee health and for over 30 years he has worked scientifically and in practice in the field of bee health, especially in connection with the Varroa mite and honey bee viruses.

The next edition of Good Beekeeping Practice will be About comb and equipment hygiene