What are the natural enemies of honeybees? How to prevent and control them in beekeeping

In our lives, everything has its natural predator and is mutually generating and restraining, and nothing exists without a natural enemy. Honeybees are no exception, and they too have natural enemies. How can we avoid harm from natural enemies during ordinary beekeeping?

How beekeeping deals with the natural enemies of honeybees

Ants often crawl near the beehive, enter the hive through gaps or the entrance, feed on honey and pollen, attack the bees, and disrupt the bees' normal activities. The control methods are:

1. Destroy the ant nest: after finding the ant nest, use a wooden stake or bamboo pole to make 3-4 holes about 60 cm deep, pour in kerosene, and then fill them with soil; you can also dig open the ant nest, spread quicklime, and then water it or spray a 5%-10% sodium sulfite solution for control.

2. Raise the beehive: drive 1 wooden stake at each of the four corners of the beehive, and coat the stakes with asphalt or tung oil, which has a repellent effect on ants.

3. Mieyiling control: this pesticide has a special effect on ants and is harmless to bees. When ants are found harming the bees, spray 3-5 grams of Mieyiling on the ant trails and on the ants' bodies, so that they return to the nest and poison the entire colony of ants.

Robber flies. Also known as the fly dog, the body is yellow to black, mixed with white spots, and the body length is 30 mm. Robber flies are widely distributed in fields or open country, and also often linger near bee yards, waiting for a chance to catch bees. When they catch up with a bee, they pounce on it, hold the bee, pierce their mouthparts into the membrane between the bee's neck sections, suck out the hemolymph, and kill the bee. Robber flies can be controlled by manual swatting.

Hawk moths. Adults hide in dark places during the day and fly out at night to seek nectar or honey for food. Once they smell the fragrance of honey in the bee colony, they sneak into the beehive through the entrance to steal honey. When the entrance is too small to enter, they rub the abdominal segments around the beehive to make sounds, in order to alarm the colony or disturb it at the gaps outside the hive. Hawk moths have little impact on Western honeybees. Once a hawk moth intrudes into a Chinese bee colony, it will cause the Chinese bees to abandon the nest and abscond. The control methods are: add a 1000-fold solution of 3% dipterex crystal to syrup and pour it into a sponge carrier, place it around the bee yard at night, and retrieve it in the early morning of the next day; you can also put honey plus liquor into a container, then cover it with an iron gauze cage with a funnel-shaped opening on top, so that when the hawk moth enters the cage to feed on the honey liquor, it drowns.

The prospects of beekeeping  

1. Honey: it is a natural nourishing food rich in nutrients, and also one of the most commonly used tonics. According to analysis, it contains various inorganic salts and vitamins close to the concentration of human blood serum, iron, calcium, copper, manganese, potassium, phosphorus and other organic acids, and trace elements beneficial to human health. It is a tonic commonly used by people, and has the reputation of “milk for the elderly.” Royal jelly is even more of a premium nutritional product; it can not only strengthen the constitution and prolong life, but also treat chronic diseases such as neurasthenia, anemia, and gastric ulcers. Bee pollen is praised by people as a “miniature nutrition bank”; after drying, its color varies from light to dark, and it can be eaten directly or soaked in cold water as a beverage.  

2. Beeswax and propolis: both are raw materials for light industry. Propolis is also called “purple gold”; its global output is even less than that of gold.  

3. Bee venom: it has therapeutic effects on rheumatism, neuritis, and so on. Use tweezers to hold a worker bee and use its tail stinger to prick the patient's acupoints, letting the bee venom enter the body to achieve a certain therapeutic effect.

Beekeeping equipment  

1. Beehive: the beehive is what we often call the hive, and it is the place where bees live, reproduce, and store food. The beehive consists of several parts, including the outer cover, straw curtain, cover cloth, inner cover, comb, partition board, and queen excluder. Both sides of the comb have thousands of neatly arranged, interconnected hexagonal cells.  

2. Bee comb: a comb fixed on a wooden frame is called one frame of comb. According to the amount of honey, pollen, and larvae on the comb, they are respectively called honey comb, pollen comb, and brood comb. According to the age size, brood combs are further divided into: egg comb, larval comb, capped brood comb, and empty comb. A beehive containing 10 frames of comb is the most widely used standard beehive. By adding supers, the hive can be expanded in time.  

3. Bee space: the distance between each comb is called the bee space.  

4. Queen excluder: the queen excluder is used to separate the brood-rearing area from the honey-storage area, which is beneficial to the maturation of honey and honey collection, and improves production efficiency.

How to keep bees so they do not abscond  

1. Keep the beehive environment clean and hygienic, and if wax moths are found, deal with them promptly.  

2. Chinese bees like new combs; find a suitable time to clear out old combs that have been used for too long.  

3. When wax moths are found, they should be dealt with immediately, thereby ensuring that the bees' lives are not affected.  

4. When the beehive lacks feed or the bees are reproducing in large numbers, some feed should be supplemented appropriately.  

5. When there are multiple queens in the beehive, you can keep the strongest queen and remove all the others.

Honeybees, I think many people do not dare to go near them. On television we can often see those beekeepers, their whole bodies covered with bees, which looks very frightening. In fact, bees are not that frightening. As long as there is a certain amount of skill and method, bees can live in harmony with people.