Scientific Beekeeping Techniques for the Chinese Honeybee and Selection of Superior Breeds

We all know that the Chinese honeybee, commonly known as the native bee, lives in tree hollows, under cliffs, in rock crevices and earthen cavities. The harsh living conditions have forged the Chinese honeybee's tenacious and unyielding character. When faced with danger, the Chinese honeybee can promptly evade enemies and it flies very fast. Because the Chinese honeybee's living conditions over many years mean that even when kept domestically it is very hard to change. So if you want to raise Chinese honeybees, which breed is the best?

Scientific Beekeeping Techniques for the Chinese Honeybee

1. Raising Chinese honeybees in movable-frame hives, that is, keeping native bees the foreign way, means using the methods for raising Italian bees to raise Chinese honeybees. Referring to Italian bee hives, choose hives, frames, combs and other equipment suitable for keeping Chinese honeybees, transfer the Chinese honeybees into the new hive, and carry out the transfer on a windless sunny evening when the outdoor temperature is not lower than 20°C. This method lays the foundation for standardized, large-scale beekeeping such as migratory beekeeping, extracting honey with machinery, taking honey several times a year, opening hives for inspection, and bee disease prevention and control.

2. The traditional method of keeping Chinese honeybees is stationary keeping in one place. When the colony scale grows large, stationary keeping means fewer nectar sources, so more honey cannot be collected. Based on the regional characteristics of the Chinese honeybee, the distribution of nectar plants in different areas, and the fact that the same plant has several different honey flow periods in different regions, small-scale migratory beekeeping techniques for Chinese honeybees can be adopted to increase yields.

3. Migration survey. Before migrating, conduct a detailed investigation and confirmation of the nectar sources and the placement of the colonies at the new site, and choose the means of transport and transport time according to the length of the journey.

Which Breed of Chinese Honeybee Is Best

1. Dark brown is better than black. There are no more than 2 types of Chinese honeybee queens: one is the black queen, and the other is the queen with a jujube-red abdomen. The black queen is entirely black and small in body. The worker bees in her colony are also slightly smaller, fly swiftly and have strong resistance, but reproduction is slow, colony strength develops slowly, honey output is slightly lower, and swarming tendency is strong; the jujube-red queen is large in body, gentle in temperament and strong in egg-laying ability, the colony she leads can be developed into a strong colony, and bee product output is stable, but resistance is poor, the worker bees have obvious yellow bands on the abdomen and are gentle in temperament. Under artificial rearing, the number of jujube-red queens will not be very large, and their traits are very unstable.

2. In terms of body shape, queens with a slender abdomen, no fear of light, and the tail close to the cell openings, laying eggs in order, are the good ones; conversely, those with a short small abdomen, a slightly blunt tail end and fear of light are inferior. In an apiary, when inspecting, we generally select based on the level of the queen's egg-laying ability and the size of the egg-laying circle. Any that do not meet the conditions should be dealt with promptly.

How to Prevent and Control Diseases and Pests of the Chinese Honeybee

1. Chinese honeybee sacbrood disease: the method is to disperse pollen with water, add sugar, and it is also fine to ferment it overnight. For one small bowl of pollen with a mouth about 13 cm in diameter, add 3 vials of ribavirin injection and 3 cephalosporin capsules. This can feed 10-15 combs of bees at one time; after they finish it, add a second round, placing it on the top bars, the same as feeding pollen during spring build-up. Because sacbrood often breaks out together with European foulbrood, or other bacterial rotting of brood, the drugs for treating viruses and the drugs for treating bacteria need to be used together.

2. European foulbrood: in Western honeybees, European foulbrood is generally not very serious and usually needs no treatment; most colonies can recover on their own. But in Chinese honeybees, European foulbrood is often very serious, severely affecting spring and autumn build-up, and diseased colonies almost recur every year, making it hard to cure completely.

Where Is the Chinese Honeybee Native To

1. The Chinese honeybee, also called the Chinese bee, Chinese honeybee or native bee, is a subspecies of the Eastern honeybee and is a bee breed unique to China. It is the main pollinating insect of forest communities dominated by miscellaneous hardwood trees and of traditional agriculture.

2. It has advantages that the Italian bee cannot match, such as making use of scattered nectar plants, strong collecting ability, a relatively high utilization rate, a long honey-collecting period, strong adaptability and resistance to mites and diseases, and low feed consumption. It is very suitable for fixed-location beekeeping in China's mountainous areas. The Chinese honeybee has a relatively small body, a black head and thorax, a yellow-black abdomen, and is covered all over with yellow-brown down. In 2003, Beijing established the Chinese Honeybee Nature Reserve in Fangshan District. In 2006, the Chinese honeybee was listed by the Ministry of Agriculture as a national-level livestock and poultry genetic resource protection breed.

I believe that friends who want to raise Chinese honeybees have already noted down in their little notebooks the experience we shared, and are already prepared to go all out. The Chinese honeybee works diligently, goes out early and returns late, has relatively strong cold resistance, and its colony grows quickly, so it is very suitable for keeping.