How to Raise Chinese Honeybees for High Yield? Detailed Explanation of Key Breeding Techniques

From the current situation, many beekeepers still use traditional Chinese honeybee breeding techniques, and this phenomenon also hinders high honey yields. Below is a detailed explanation of the key techniques for high-yield Chinese honeybee breeding.

1. Current Status of Chinese Honeybee Breeding

The Chinese honeybee is also called the Chinese bee, Zhongfeng and Dulong bee, and is a breed unique to China. It has strong foraging ability, and the honey it brings back has a very high utilization rate. It also has good adaptability, can gather nectar for a relatively long time, and has good resistance to mites and diseases. It is an excellent bee species.

However, at present, the number of people raising Chinese honeybees on a large scale is still small, and there is a certain gap in the market, making it a good breeding project choice.

2. Key Techniques for Chinese Honeybee Breeding

1. Cultivate Excellent Queen Bees

Selecting and breeding excellent queen bees plays a very important role in rejuvenating the colony, improving the production performance of the colony, and increasing honey yield. Choose colonies with strong egg-laying ability of the queen, strong colonies, and strong foraging ability as breeding colonies to raise queen bees. Because Chinese bees have the habit of swarming, new queens with weak swarming tendency should be selected. It is best to raise new queens in late autumn to replace old queens, so as to control swarming of the colony in the following spring and keep all colonies using new queens throughout the year.

2. Capture and Supplement Wild Chinese Bees

Place beehives in front of eaves, under large trees, or under rock ledges and other places with higher terrain. Check regularly whether a bee colony has entered the box. If they have entered, wait until evening after the bees return to the nest, then close the entrance and move it back. After transferring the colony, leave the bee lure box.

3. Reasonable Honey Harvesting

When entering the nectar flow period, determine the honey harvesting time according to the nectar intake. Generally, harvest honey in the morning on sunny days. When the honey cells on the comb are already full, some honey cells are capped, or most honey cells protrude in a fish-eye shape, honey can be harvested.

4. Management of Chinese Bees

(1) Prevent robbing bees

Bee colonies should be placed in places with abundant nectar sources, maintain strong colonies year-round, and leave enough feed to prevent robbing incidents among Chinese bee colonies.

(2) Prevention and control of bee diseases and pests

On the one hand, new disease-resistant queens should be selected, sufficient feed should be ensured, and strong colonies should be fed; do a good job in hygiene and disinfection, and burn diseased colonies. On the other hand, it is also necessary to control natural enemies of Chinese bees such as locust borers, wasps, ants, toads, and spiders.

Warm reminder: If conditions permit, seasonal single-queen and double-queen breeding techniques can also be used. During the honey-gathering season, use one box with two queens to bring the colony to a strong state, that is, worker bees reaching 40,000 to 50,000 per box, which can increase honey yield. In the non-honey-gathering season, raise a single queen and reduce the number of worker bees in the colony to 10,000 to 20,000 per box, which can reduce breeding costs.