What are the operation methods and breeding techniques for keeping Chinese honeybees in movable-frame hives?
The Chinese honeybee is an excellent bee species native to our country, with advantages such as disease resistance, mite resistance, and ease of stationary keeping. In particular, it has strong adaptability to mountainous climate conditions and possesses advantages that Western honeybees cannot match in utilizing major and scattered nectar sources in mountainous areas. So how should Chinese honeybees be kept in movable-frame hives? What breeding techniques are there?
I. Preparation of Chinese honeybee hives
The author has used 10-frame, 14-frame, tall-narrow, and Conghua-style hives to keep Chinese honeybees, and felt that the tall-narrow style is not very convenient to use and does not produce high honey yields; the 10-frame and 14-frame hives are suitable for keeping strong colonies and produce higher honey yields; the Conghua-style hive is also good and is especially suitable for the reproduction of small and medium colonies. The currently promoted 10-frame Chinese honeybee hive (national standard hive) has made some improvements in dimensions, which I think tends to be more reasonable, as it both increases honey extraction and conforms to the Chinese honeybee's tendency to cluster; beekeepers who keep Chinese honeybees might as well try this kind of hive.
The making of Chinese honeybee hives should emphasize sealing; do not open bottom windows; for migratory hives, a wire saw can be used to cut front and rear windows, and the cut-out boards should be put back in place and connected with hinges. The entrance should be opened at about 5mm, and it is best to make a movable entrance that can be adjusted in size at any time to prevent mice, cockroaches, and wax moths (the adults of the wax moth). The Chinese honeybee has relatively weak resistance to wax worms (the larvae of the wax moth), so the bottom and surrounding gaps of the hive should be firmly patched with cow dung, lime, and tung oil, so as to facilitate cleaning and prevent the breeding of wax worms, and wooden strips should be nailed around the hive body.
II. Selecting and breeding excellent varieties
To keep Chinese honeybees well, one must first work hard on selecting and breeding bee species. The Chinese honeybee has complex species characteristics, so bee species with strong collecting ability and disease and pest resistance should be selected for breeding. Eliminate poor varieties as quickly as possible and carry out optimization. Based on my years of observation, Chinese honeybees can be roughly divided into 4 major types based on the body color of the queen and worker bees:
(1) Red type: The queen has obvious dark red rings or orange-red rings on the abdominal segments, commonly known as the "horsewhip queen." The worker bees are yellow in body color, and young bees are light yellow and appear pale. Red-type queens have an extremely strong egg-laying rate and can maintain large colonies; they have weak swarming tendency and a gentle temperament; the disadvantage is that their disease and mite resistance is relatively poor, and they can be selected as excellent material for parental crossbreeding.
(2) Brown type: The queen and worker bees are brown or brownish-yellow. The queen has a high egg-laying rate, and the colony has very strong collecting ability and disease and pest resistance. An excellent brown-type queen has clearly layered abdominal segments and calm behavior, and the worker bees have strong comb-tending ability and can quickly calm down after slight vibration, making this the preferred breeding material for Chinese honeybees.
(3) Hemp-colored type: The queen and worker bees are relatively large in body size, and the abdominal segments have obvious wide black rings contrasting with light areas to form a hemp color. The queen has a high egg-laying rate, and the worker bees have relatively strong collecting ability.
(4) Black type: Both the queen and worker bees are relatively black, with dark spots on the abdomen. Black populations are mostly photophobic, prone to swarming, and react strongly to the outside world, belonging to the variety with the strongest wild habits, so I eliminated it from use. Breeding improved varieties of Chinese honeybees is a meticulous and long-term task, and one can select multiple options, focus on cultivation, and continuously screen and optimize. If particularly outstanding colonies are found, the old queen should be retained. By means of crossbreeding, obtain a large number of high-quality queens as quickly as possible. At the same time, one can also cultivate supersedure queens during non-swarming seasons to weaken the colony's swarming tendency, thereby cultivating colonies with larger colony strength.
III. Selection and placement of Chinese honeybee apiaries
The Chinese honeybee apiary should be chosen in a quiet, wind-sheltered, sunny, and dry place, and should be near clean water sources; wooden stakes should be driven under the hives for support, with a height of no less than 0.5m, and the tops of the hives should be covered year-round with materials such as China fir bark for sun protection, trying to avoid the influence of external temperature on the nest; in summer, sun protection should be done even better, placing the hives in shady places or setting up sheds for shade.
IV. Management of colonies
The management of Chinese honeybees should be adjusted accordingly according to colony strength, nectar sources, climate, and other conditions. As long as the key points are grasped, relaxed and pleasant management results can be achieved. I summarize Chinese honeybee management in 6 characters: two tight, two loose, two few. "Two tight" means from late autumn to early spring, tighten the nest to make bees more numerous than combs, strengthening the colony's ability to keep warm and protect brood; during the summering period, draw out extra combs so that bees are slightly more numerous than combs, so that the colony can better protect the combs and prevent wax worm damage. "Two loose" means from the rapeseed to chestnut flowering periods, build combs and expand the nest at the right time, so that bees and combs are proportionate, and cultivate new queens and divide colonies at the right time.
During the Chinese tallow tree flowering period, take advantage of the characteristics of long flowering and abundant nectar flow, seize the time in the early stage to build combs, speed up reproduction, and cultivate supersedure queens, replacing old queens and old inferior combs, to prepare for the apiary to safely pass the summer and welcome the autumn mountain osmanthus nectar source. "Two few" means do not open the hive when there is nothing to do, and also open the hive as little as possible during summering and overwintering periods, only making external observations and listening against the hive to judge whether the colony is normal. I once tried horizontal-style, tall-narrow-style hives and standard hives with supers for keeping strong colonies and extracting honey during nectar flow periods, but the yield per comb was not as high as that of 5-6 comb colonies. Maintaining a colony strength of about 6 combs in Chinese honeybees makes it easier to control swarming fever, achieves good collection results, and is also easy to manage.
V. Techniques for extracting honey from Chinese honeybees
Honey extraction from Chinese honeybees should consider 3 aspects: first, ensuring the safety of the queen and the colony; second, trying not to affect the colony's collecting work; third, maintaining the colony's development momentum. Never kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
When extracting honey, under normal circumstances, I absolutely do not extract from combs with the queen or with larvae. The time for honey extraction should also be determined according to the nectar flow time of the nectar source within 1d (day) and other conditions. For nectar sources such as rapeseed, Chinese milk vetch, and autumn osmanthus, I try to choose evening for honey extraction, which not only affects the colony's collecting work less, but also gives the colony sufficient time at night to tidy the nest, so that they will be even more active in foraging the next day.
VI. Prevention and control of diseases and pests of Chinese honeybees
The most common diseases of Chinese honeybees include European foulbrood, sacbrood disease, and crawling bee disease.
European foulbrood has a great deal to do with temperature, so to prevent and control European foulbrood, the influence of the outside world on the nest should be reduced as much as possible, so that the nest has a relatively constant temperature and humidity. Normally, keep bees and combs proportionate or bees slightly more numerous than combs. In early spring, penicillin syrup can be used to feed bees 1-2 times, 200,000 units per colony, to prevent the occurrence of this disease. Once European foulbrood is found, combine tightening the combs and feeding streptomycin syrup, with a dosage of 20,000-40,000 units per comb. Generally, 3 times is enough for recovery.
Chinese honeybee sacbrood disease once dealt a devastating blow to Chinese honeybee keeping in 1974. At that time, although I kept more than 50 colonies of Chinese honeybees and used a variety of drugs for treatment, most colonies suffered severe declines in colony strength, and heavily diseased colonies often absconded; however, some colonies showed extremely strong resistance to sacbrood disease. Among them, one brown population only occasionally showed chronic disease symptoms, and after tightening the combs the symptoms disappeared naturally. During the chestnut flowering period, it still retained a colony strength of 5-6 combs (standard frames). After 1975, Chinese honeybee sacbrood disease showed a trend of weakening year by year, which shows that disease-resistant populations can survive and develop through survival of the fittest, so breeding disease-resistant improved varieties is the main means of reducing the harm of sacbrood disease. For drug treatment, Hainan jinbuhuan and narrow-leaf skullcap can be selected. Narrow-leaf skullcap is relatively easy to obtain. Fresh herb 250 grams can be boiled in water, strained, and boiled with sugar to feed bees (10-frame colony).
The main insect pests of Chinese honeybees are wax worms and small mites. Chinese honeybees have relatively weak resistance to wax worms. On the premise of sealing the bee equipment well, attention should be paid to keeping bees and combs proportionate or bees slightly more numerous than combs, maintaining new combs year-round, and eliminating old and inferior combs. Clean the bottom of the hive on time and destroy the habitat of wax worms; hive frames that have been used for many years and damaged by wax worms should also be eliminated. The harm of small mites to Chinese honeybees is often overlooked by fellow beekeepers raising Chinese honeybees. In fact, the harm of small mites to colonies is very great; when I first started keeping Chinese honeybees, I discovered that Chinese honeybees had small mites. The nymphs of Chinese honeybee small mites are white, and the adults are yellow-pink, with flesh appearing more delicate than the small mites on Italian bees. Every year during the chestnut flowering period is the peak period of small mite damage. Opening 1 severely damaged brood cell, several nymphs can be seen wriggling inside, with adults crawling in and out. At that time, no bees with missing wings were found crawling out, but due to small mite parasitism, adult bees were weak in constitution, often causing crawling bees. To prevent the harm of small mites, the following tasks can be done in combination with colony management:
(1) Hives should be regularly washed with quicklime water, and after washing, the inner walls should be burned with lit rice straw, at least 2 times per year.
(2) If brood combs damaged by small mites are found, they can be removed together with bees in combination with organizing mating nuclei, to prevent the spread of small mites. During summering and overwintering periods, let them stop brood rearing and rest and recuperate. Doing so is also beneficial to the colony's reproduction in the next flowering period.
(3) Drive wooden stakes to support the hives, preventing other hosts of small mites from sneaking into the hives and causing infection.
(4) Drug treatment: Previously I used the methods of scattering wild lime powder at the hive entrance and spraying combs with boiled water of Baibu to treat mites. Now there are quite a lot of mite treatment drugs, and "mite pounce" can be hung in at dusk.
The common adult bee disease of Chinese honeybees is crawling bee disease. The cause should be specifically analyzed, the right medicine should be prescribed, and prevention and health care work should be done solidly.
(1) Strengthen moisture-proof work for hives in spring and late autumn, clean the nest and change boxes in time, and do not disturb the colony when a cold wave arrives.
(2) Ensure that the colony has high-quality feed. In spring, when pollen accumulates excessively, draw out extra pollen combs or remove pollen, to prevent pathological changes caused by deterioration from long storage of pollen; the extracted pollen combs and removed pollen should be properly stored.
(3) Overwintering feed must not contain honeydew or use inferior granulated sugar. Feed should be replenished before November 20. Rhubarb, akebia, and ginger can be boiled with sugar water according to human dosage to feed bees (5-comb colony), to prevent the occurrence of bee big-belly disease and dysentery lesions.
(4) For crawling bee disease caused by Nosema, metronidazole and moroxydine syrup can be used to feed bees, and combined with rice vinegar and sugar water sprayed on combs, the effect is better.