I have been reading a lot about beekeeping and talking to the fine folks at Burgh Bees who have offered some mentoring.
Some Bee basics
Biology
- The honey bee, Apis Mellifera, is not a wasp, hornet or a yellowjacket
- Honey bees, with other species of the Order Hymenoptera, are among the most socially cooperative of all creatures, living in colonies of up 40-60,000 individuals.
- The vast majority of a colony are infertile females called workers. They meet the colony's needs: foraging for nectar, poolen and water, building and maintaining the cleanliness, structure and temperature of the hive.
- Drones are males, whose only apparent purpose is to fertilise a queen.
- A colony should have only a single queen, a fertile female who lays the eggs that become the next generation of workers, drones and even queens.
- The queen's primary function is to lay eggs. The workers, not the queen, take care of the developing brood.
- Workers get fed Royal Jelly for 3 days and then a mixture of nectar, pollen and honey until they are sealed into their cell to pupate, emerging about a week later as an adult.
- Larvae that are destined to become queens are fed Royal Jelly exclusively.
The importance of bees
- Although beekeeping has been practiced for thousands of years, bees are not considered domesticated animals because they are free to leave. The beekeeper might provide housing, food, water, medicine, but the bees are always free to roam as far as they will or to leave entirely.
- As one of the most important pollinators of plants in the human food chain, they are of critical importance to humanity, biologically and economically.
- In 2006, The National Research Council, part of the National Academy of Sciences had a committee on the 'Status of Pollinators in North America' and reported to the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture that:
- Nearly 100 crop species, making about 1/3 of the US diet, rely upon honey bees for pollination.
- Although economists vary significantly in their estimates of the value of honey bees to US agriculture, almost all agree that it is of the order of billions of dollars.
Threats/Problems
- The number of colonies in the US fell by more than 40% between 1947 and 2005.
Urban Campus Beekeeping
I have convinced the local Student Organization, Sustainable Earth, to accept my beekeeping plans as one of their projects and have obtained "in principle" permission from the campus Environmental Health & Safety folks.