How to make a hive suited to local, native honeybees

by T Karlsson

In 1989 Thord Karlsson studied natural nests of the Asian hive bee in Bangladesh. Here he describes his work and hopes that ft will inspire others to do similar studies.

Honeybees are not domesticated: the behaviour of bees in a hive is the same as the behaviour of bees living in the wild. Beekeeping consists of providing more or less suitable nesting places for wild honeybees and harvesting their honey. Honeybees’ natural behaviour determines the limits of hive design and management.

We must not speak about the natural nest of honeybees and the natural behaviour of honeybees as if these are invariable. Honeybees kept by man in hives are found in a wide range of habitats, from deserts to rainforest and from the tropics to temperate latitudes with several months of winter and snow. Every variety of honeybee species is adapted to its own climate and natural surroundings, arid hive and management principles must be adapted accordingly. Practices evaluated for European bees and conditions have often been uncritically used in completely different situations, resulting in failure. Instead the natural nesting behaviour of the local honeybee should be studied, and then with careful testing, appropriate hives and management methods should be developed.

A hive must be well suited to the bees, and must also be suitable for the environment, withstanding stresses from weather and other factors such as termites. Most importantly, the hive must be favoured by the people who will be using it. The hive must fit their economic resources, their capabilities, and the social context they are living in.

Data on natural nesting places must be considered carefully. For example in Bangladesh some nests are found in ground cavities, although these nests will obviously be unsuitable in the rainy season. This indicates a scarcity of good nesting places. If there is a scarcity, then collected data will show which places bees could use, rather than what they prefer.

The nest entrance is important because nearly all communication with the surroundings passes through it. The size of nest entrance is a compromise between different factors: usually it varies widely, but a study will indicate the average area. It is usually simple to measure, but if the entrance is irregularly shaped you may have to take several measurements.

The direction the entrance faces will probably affect nest temperature. Even if data on nest entrance show a strong tendency towards one direction, it cannot be assumed that this is a preference of the bees, unless you know the entrance directions of all potential nests. However, if most of the wild nests have a given entrance direction, then at least the bees do not avoid this direction and will probably thrive in a hive facing this direction. Nest volumes are dependent on available cavity volume, but some tropical honeybees seem to swarm when they reach a certain stage in their development regardless of space available. However, they may still be good honey producers.

If a wild colony is nesting inside a tree then one (not necessarily advisable) way to determine the cavity volume is to cut the tree down and, after measurement and removal of the wax combs, to fill the cavity with sand. However this method cannot often be used. In densely populated areas remaining trees are valuable and it is impossible to cut them. In drier areas it is unwise to cut any tree, since it will take a long time to replace, if ever.

In these cases we have to make the best of the situation. The entrance can sometimes be enlarged, without damaging the tree too much, to make it possible to study the nest. The volume may be roughly estimated by measuring the height of the cavity and then its width and depth. It is also helpful to keep a drawing or a photo of the nest.

If the nest occupies the whole cavity, the nest volume will be the same as the cavity volume. If not, it is usually easier to get the volume of the nest than of the cavity because the nest is usually more regular in shape.

Having determined nest and cavity volumes, these will give an indication of how large a hive should be. Remember that a “domesticated” colony with the right management could grow much bigger than a wild colony where swarming is not prevented.

Comb area is another guide to colony size. The areas of individual combs give an idea of how large a suitable frame should be. Equally interesting is how the combs are fixed. If the honeybees fix the combs only to the roof, then it should be possible to use a hive with top-bars. If the combs are fixed tightly to the walls too, it may be harder to find a top-bar system to suit the bees. Framed combs or fixed-comb hives are better for these bees.

There are several methods to measure the comb area and different parts of the combs. I used a simple wood frame with a grid of 2 cm-sided squares. It was easy to count how many squares covered the comb. This number multiplied by four gives the area in cm².

A very interesting measurement is the “comb centrecomb centre’ distance, that is the distance between the mid-ribs of two combs hanging side by side (see Newsletter 12). This measurement determines the width for topbars. The difference between the comb centre distance and comb thickness will give the bee-space. Using these measurements an appropriate frame width and corresponding bee-space can be calculated. Bearing in mind that propolis and odd scraps of wax tend to increase the distance between frames, it is better to make the bee-space a little narrower, say 1 mm, than in the natural nest.

Honeycombs are usually thicker than brood combs. Usually brood combs are in the middle of the nest while the outermost combs may be solely honey combs. Remember this when measuring “comb centre-comb centre” distance.

I measured the comb thickness with vernier callipers. To calculate the comb centre distance the measurement between the two most distance combs was recorded. This measurement was divided by the number of combs minus one. For example; if the distance form the mid-rib of comb 1 to the mid-rib of comb 7 was measured, the distance was divided by six.

Cell diameter should be measured between two parallel cell walls. I used vernier callipers to measure 10 to 20 cells, to arrive at a mean value for each wax comb. If you are interested in the worker brood cell diameter, take care not to measure drone brood cells or honey storing cells, both of which are usually larger.

Constraints

Seasonal variations will affect the results of such a study. In some parts of the world honeybees are migratory. Sometimes you can find hardly any bees and those you can find are living in very good nesting places. In another season there are colonies everywhere, nesting in every more or less suitable place. The study season will also affect the amount of brood and storage that the bees have.

If the main goal is to gather general information about the honeybees for example in one region, all kinds of existing environments have to be surveyed. This is important to prevent inappropriate beekeeping practices being recommended.

Be careful that colonies studied are really representative of colonies in the area. It is always easier to find and examine colonies near the ground than those nesting higher in the tree canopy. It is also easier to examine a weak and calm colony than a strong and furious one, but this will lead to false results!

It is impossible to examine every colony. In Hindu areas old banyan trees (Ficus bengalensis) are considered to be holy and colonies in such trees are thus out of reach. Snakes are another problem to consider: these have twice disturbed my work by being very near my hands. So do be careful!

Where I worked, and I think in most parts of the world, every tree has an owner and the tree could represent a large amount of wealth for the owner. I discovered that it was very important to ask for help from locally well-known assistants to get permission to cut into a tree.

In spite of all the difficulties I involved, hope that people will start studying the natural nesting sites of their local bees to arrive at a better understanding of how hives should be designed to best suit the bees. However please do not cut trees down, unless it is absolutely necessary, and do not kill the bees. Place them in a hive instead.