Master Two Key Points of Beekeeping Technology: Luring Bees into an Empty Hive and Preventing Them from Absconding

Everyone is familiar with bees. As wild honey becomes more and more expensive, many people have begun to domesticate the Chinese honey bee (Apis cerana), which has become a source of pure honey in China and also brings income to farmers. So how do you lure bees into an empty hive? How do you keep bees from absconding? The key points of beekeeping technology are summarized as follows:

1. How do you lure bees into an empty hive?

1. Honey scent: Smear some honey inside an old hive and place it where wild bees are often active. Check each evening to see whether bees have entered. If they have, move the hive away, and the distance moved must exceed three thousand meters, otherwise the bees will return to the original site.

2. Old honeycomb: In the evening, burn some fragments of old honeycomb near the hive. After wild bees smell the aroma, they will come near the hive, and if the hive also carries the scent of bees that have lived in it, they will enter the hive.

3. Using scout bees: Use honey to lure scout bees into the hive, but do not close the entrance; let them leave on their own. After repeating this several times, the scout bees will bring a large swarm. Once the swarm arrives, find the queen and keep her under control so she does not fly away.

2. How do you find wild bee nests?

1. Habitat: A bee colony's habitat must be suitable both for living through cold winters and for living through hot summers, and must be difficult for enemies to invade. Therefore they often build nests in tree holes, rock caves and soil caves on north-facing slopes and mid-slopes of mountains, and rarely build nests in windy places or on mountain tops.

2. Defecation state: Bee droppings are mostly yellow, yellowish brown and black. When you see bee droppings on plant leaves or stones, you can conclude that their nest is nearby, and the droppings generally point with the larger end toward the nest and the smaller end toward the direction of flight.

3. Foraging behavior: If worker bees fly back to the nest at a low height of about 3 meters above the ground after collecting nectar and pollen, it means the nest is not too far away. If they fly at more than six or seven meters above the ground, it means the nest is more than 1,000 meters away. You can also carefully observe water-gathering bees (most of them are old bees that do not fly far).

4. Tracking worker bees: Choose the peak nectar-collecting time from 9 to 11 in the morning and carefully observe the flight lines of worker bees on their return trip. If the worker bees' flight sound is shrill and fades quickly, it means the nest is far away or they are bees leaving the hive; if the worker bees' flight sound is slightly longer and fades slowly, it means the nest is not far away.

5. Burning old comb: When searching for wild bees, you can bring some old discarded comb. Burning this old comb gives off a beeswax smell. If a bee colony is nearby, it will smell this odor and leave the nest, and nests within a radius of about 100 to 150 meters can all be found.

6. Honey test: Place honey or syrup on flowers for bees to collect. If many bees come to collect it within a short time, it means the nest is very close to this place, and as long as you search carefully you will certainly find it; if it takes a longer time, it means the bees are relatively far from this place.

2. How do you keep bees from absconding?

1. Keep the hive environment clean and hygienic, and deal with wax moths promptly if they appear.

2. Chinese honey bees like new comb, so find a suitable time to clear out old comb that has been used for too long.

3. When greater wax moths are found, they should be dealt with immediately so that the bees' life is not affected.

4. When the hive lacks feed or the bees are reproducing in large numbers, an appropriate amount of feed should be supplemented.

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