What common equipment is needed to prepare for beekeeping?

1. Beehives
1. Structure of the beehive
A beehive with movable frames (movable-frame hive) is an important production tool for scientific beekeeping. When bees are kept in movable-frame hives, the hive can be opened at any time, the comb can be taken out for inspection, the condition of the colony can be understood, and the life activities of the bees can be observed. Various bee products can be produced according to need and possibility, and it is also convenient for migratory beekeeping.
Beehives are placed in the open air for long periods, exposed to wind, rain, and sunlight, and the bees live and raise brood inside the hive and store feed, so the structure of the hive must suit the living habits of bees, with unified standard dimensions, and be sturdy and durable. Making a beehive requires wood that is solid, light, and not easily deformed, and it must be fully dried. In the north, white pine, linden wood, and paulownia are mostly used for manufacture, while in the south, Chinese fir is better.
At present, the beehive commonly used in China for keeping European bees is the 10-frame standard beehive and the horizontal hive, while the standard hive for Chinese bees is used for keeping Chinese bees.
(1) 10-frame standard beehive: The 10-frame standard beehive is the most common hive in the world for keeping European bees, also called the Langstroth hive. It consists of 10 combs, the hive body, the hive bottom, the entrance board, the inner cover (or screen cover), the hive cover, and the division board. When needed, supers can be stacked on the hive body. The supers and the hive body of the movable-bottom hive are interchangeable. When the colony develops to 8-10 frames of bees, stacking a super upward can expand the nest in time, fully give play to the queen's egg-laying ability, and cultivate strong colonies. Using a queen excluder can separate the brood-rearing area of the brood chamber from the honey-storage area of the super, which helps improve the quality of honey and speed up its maturation. To facilitate transportation and migratory beekeeping, fixed-bottom hives are mostly used, and openable and closable screen windows can also be installed on the front and rear walls of the hive and super.
(2) 12-frame square beehive: The 12-frame square beehive was introduced from the former Soviet Union and is mainly used in Northeast China and northern **. This kind of hive has a large volume, equal to 1.5 times that of the 10-frame standard beehive. The wooden boards used to make the hive are especially thick, usually 25 mm or more, and use in cold regions is beneficial for heat preservation, keeping strong colonies, and overwintering strong colonies. The inner dimensions of the 12-frame square beehive are 455 mm × 455 mm × 330 mm, and 450 mm × 450 mm × 330 mm is also used; each hive holds 12 combs of 435 mm × 300 mm, and the height of the super is 310 mm.
(3) 16-frame horizontal beehive: The 16-frame horizontal beehive is a horizontal hive containing 16 standard combs. When expanding the hive volume, the nest can be expanded horizontally by adding combs, and partition boards can also be used to divide the hive into 2-3 sections for keeping multiple colonies in the same hive.
(4) Standard hive for Chinese bees: The standard hive for Chinese bees is a beehive specially designed for scientific keeping of Chinese bees. It uses a shallow super with a height of 135 mm, and the outer length of the super is 420 mm and its height is 125 mm.
(5) Simple transport beehive: The transport beehive designed by Zhejiang Agricultural University is especially suitable for migratory beekeeping, and its structure is basically the same as the 10-frame standard beehive. Its special features are:
① At 60-100 mm on the inner side of the front and rear hive walls where the frame grooves are, quick comb fasteners are installed;
② The hive board at the lower part of both side walls extends forward beyond the front hive wall by 55 mm and is 10 mm high; this section can be used to install a hinged entrance flap, with a cover board nailed on it, and when the entrance is closed, when the flap is turned it can also serve as a resting walkway for bees;
③ A bottom ventilation window is opened in the hive bottom 120-220 mm from the front edge, with a sliding board that can be opened and closed;
　　
2. Hive entrance blocks
An entrance is provided between the brood chamber and the hive bottom for bees to enter and exit during keeping. The size of the bee entrance and exit differs in different seasons, so entrance blocks are needed to better adjust the size of the entrance. For hives with a movable bottom, a square wooden entrance block is generally used, 380 mm long, 22 mm wide and 22 mm high. On different sides of the square wooden block, two notches of different sizes are cut: the large notch is 165 mm wide and 9 mm high, and the small notch is 50 mm wide and 8 mm high, so that three different bee entrances and exits can be formed. During the full bloom period, a large entrance and exit is needed, and the entire hive entrance can be made into the entrance and exit; during the near-full bloom period, one of the large and small notches on the entrance block can be chosen as appropriate as the bee entrance and exit. For fixed bottoms, a compound entrance block is generally used, that is, a rectangular wooden strip 380 mm long, 10 mm thick, and 30 mm high. The wooden strip is placed on the entrance landing board, and its height partly covers the hive entrance. Two grooves of different sizes are cut on the wooden strip, with a groove height of 9 mm and widths of 60 mm and 40 mm. The grooves face the entrance landing board, and into each groove a small strip the same size as the groove is inserted. The small strips are fastened in the grooves of the wooden strip with nails so that the small strips can move freely. To adjust the size of the hive entrance, first adjust the distance between the entire entrance block and the entrance landing board; second, fix the entrance block and control the opening size only by adjusting the height of the two movable strips.
　　
3. Division boards and isolation boards
The board used to isolate bees is the division board, which can cut off bee passages. When two or more independent colonies need to be kept in a hive, the hive must be divided into two or more independent spaces. At this time, isolation boards are used and inserted into the hive as a "wall" to separate the spaces, cut off the bee passages at the front, back, top, and bottom, and prevent bees of different colonies from interacting.
　　
2. Bee tools
There are many tools for bee keeping and management. Besides the beehive, foundation, honey extractor, veil, hive tool, bee brush, and queen excluder are all essential and should be selected according to the scale of beekeeping. Other bee tools, such as equipment for producing royal jelly and bee pollen, can be purchased as needed.
1. Foundation: Foundation is the base installed in the frame for bees to build comb. It is an artificially made beeswax sheet pressed by a foundation mill, with a base plate having cell bottoms and cell walls. There is Italian bee foundation for keeping European bees; drone foundation for producing drone pupae; and Chinese bee foundation for keeping Chinese bees. Combs built using foundation are neat, flat, sturdy, and have few drone cells.
2. Veil: The veil is a tool used when managing colonies to protect the operator's head and neck from bee stings.
3. Hive tool: A special tool for beekeeping. One end is a curved blade, and the other end is a flat blade. It is used to pry, scrape, and shovel things, such as prying up the inner cover and scraping dirt inside the hive and on the frames.
4. Smoker: A tool for subduing or driving away bees. It consists of two parts: a smoke barrel and a bellows. When using, light paper, dry grass, or burlap, put it into the smoke barrel, cover the nozzle, and work the bellows to make it emit thick smoke, but do not let sparks come out.
5. Bee brush: Mainly used to brush off bees attached to combs, hive bodies, queen-rearing frames, and other bee tools. It is a long fan-shaped long-bristle brush. Generally it has two rows of bristles, with bristle length of 65 mm, made of white horse mane or horse tail hair that does not absorb water easily.
6. Bee tool stool: Can hold management bee tools and a record book. It serves as a stool when inspecting colonies.
7. Queen excluder: The queen excluder is a grid board that controls the queen's egg laying and movement, strictly separating the colony into a brood-rearing area and a honey-production area, so that larvae, pupae, pollen, and so on will not mix with honey, while worker bees can pass through freely. The wire queen excluder made of No. 14 galvanized wire is firm and durable, not easily deformed; the gap between the two wires is about 4.4 mm, and the queen cannot pass through, but the price is relatively high. The bamboo queen excluder made of bamboo strips 7.5 mm in diameter is convenient for obtaining materials in southern China, easy to process, and low in cost, but its firmness is poorer and it deforms more easily. Queen excluders are divided into flat queen excluders and frame-type queen excluders. The flat queen excluder separates the brood combs from the honey-storage super, making honey extraction easier and improving honey quality. The frame-type queen excluder is inserted into the hive and can confine the queen to lay eggs on several combs.
8. Feeding utensils: There are many kinds of utensils for supplementary feeding of honey syrup, sugar syrup, or water. Commonly used ones include:
(1) Entrance feeder: The so-called bottle feeder consists of a wide-mouth bottle and a base. Several small holes are made in the bottle cap with a small nail. The bottle filled with honey syrup is placed upside down and inserted into the base. Under atmospheric pressure, the honey syrup can be sucked out by bees without dripping. At night, insert the base opening of the entrance feeder into the hive through the entrance. It is suitable for stimulating feeding and can avoid causing robbing. For weak colonies that do not fill the hive, it can be placed outside the division board inside the hive for feeding. The plastic cup feeder developed by the apiary of Hebei Agricultural University is convenient to carry. After filling with sugar syrup, cover the bottom lid, turn it upside down with the bottom lid facing down and place it flat, and insert it into the hive through the entrance.
(2) Frame feeder: A long flat feeding trough similar in size to a standard frame. There are wooden and plastic ones, and it can also be made of thick bamboo. Inside the feeder there are thin wooden floating strips for bees to stand on and feed. The frame feeder is suitable for supplementary feeding. In addition, a rectangular shallow groove can be cut in the top bar of the frame, which can also be used for feeding a small amount of honey syrup.
(3) Top feeder: A large feeder placed on top of the hive, dish-shaped and similar in size to a shallow super, suitable for emergency supplementary feeding and overwintering feed, and can hold 5-10 liters of sugar syrup at a time.
9. Queen introduction tools: Commonly used queen introduction tools include wooden cage introducers, safety introducers, and frame introducers.
(1) Wooden cage introducer: The wooden cage introducer is a flat iron gauze cage. A small hole is opened in the wooden plug at one end, fitted with a pullable iron sheet, and a thin wooden board is inserted into the open end of the iron gauze cage.
(2) Safety introducer, also called the comb-pressing introducer, is a rectangular silver wire gauze cage. The lower part of the four walls has teeth made of iron sheet, which can be pressed into the comb, and the lower part has a pullable iron sheet.
(3) Full-frame introducer: Uses wooden boards or iron plates as the frame, with galvanized wire gauze fitted on the two large sides. Its inner width is about 43 mm and its height is 245 mm, just enough to hold one comb, with a pullable board on top.
(4) Queen cage: A small rectangular cage made of galvanized wire gauze, with a volume of about 23 cm × 33 mm × 50 mm. There is a round hole in the iron wall on top, through which a queen cell or queen can be placed, and the round hole has a sliding iron sheet cover. The lower part is fitted with an openable and closable wooden feed trough, in which fondant can be placed. It can be used to introduce a queen cell or queen, and can also confine the queen. In recent years, a queen cage made of bamboo strips has been widely used. Plastic sheets with small holes drilled around them are used as the upper and lower ends, and bamboo strips 2 mm in diameter are inserted into the small holes to form a small rectangular cage, with a volume of about 20 mm × 33 mm × 50 mm, and the spacing between each bamboo strip is 3 mm. One of the bamboo strips is longer and movable and can be pulled out, through which the queen is placed inside. It is mostly used in late autumn or winter to confine the colony's queen in the bamboo-strip queen cage, causing the queen to stop laying eggs, which makes it easier to control bee mites.
10. Other tools and equipment: Beekeeping uses many wooden bee tools such as beehives and frames, which need frequent maintenance and repair. Therefore, it is very necessary to learn the basic operation techniques of woodworking. Preparing a set of common woodworking tools, such as saw, plane, hammer, pliers, and screwdriver, makes work more convenient.
　　
3. Disinfection of bee tools
Bee diseases and pests cause great harm to beekeeping production. While preventing and controlling them, beehives, combs, and the bee tools used must be thoroughly disinfected. Commonly used disinfectants include:
1. Formalin: Mix 1 part formalin with 9 parts water to make a 4% aqueous solution. Soak empty combs and small bee tools in it for 24 hours, shake off the liquid medicine, rinse with clean water, and dry. Put the combs into supers, 8 combs per box. Remove the iron gauze from 1 empty brood box with a screen window, stack 5 supers of combs on top, cover with a wooden inner cover, and seal all gaps tightly. Put 2 parts formalin and 1 part water in a carbon or glass container, place it into the brood box through the window, then add 2 parts potassium permanganate to the liquid medicine, quickly seal the window tightly, and fumigate with the resulting formalin vapor for 24 hours.
2. Table salt: Add 360 g of table salt to 1 liter of water to make a saturated salt solution. Empty combs and small bee tools can be soaked in it for 24 hours. The disinfection effect is not as good as formalin.
3. 80% glacial acetic acid: Used to fumigate empty combs. Use 100-150 ml of 80% glacial acetic acid per box of combs, place it in a glass container on the surface of the super, and fumigate sealed for 3-5 days. Suitable for disinfecting combs of colonies suffering from nosema disease.
4. 2% hot alkaline water: Add 1 kg of caustic soda to 50 liters of water, heat and boil to wash bee tools, covers, work clothes, and so on.
5. 5% bleaching powder: Add 2.5 kg of bleaching powder to 50 liters of water, and scrub beehives and wooden bee tools.
6. Sulfur dioxide: Use 3-5 g of sulfur per super of combs, ignite it, and fumigate the combs sealed.
7. 10%-20% lime water: 5-10 kg of quicklime, add 50 liters of water, spray and whitewash the ground and walls to disinfect the overwintering room and apiary.
　　
4. Building, repair, and storage of combs
The quality of combs is an important condition related to the success or failure of beekeeping. Combs built by bees themselves are inconsistent in size, mixed with many drone cells, and consume the bees' physical strength and honey, and are also uneconomical in terms of time. Scientific beekeeping uses artificially made foundation inserted into standard frames to let bees build high-quality combs. Foundation sold on the market includes ordinary foundation, deep-cell foundation, and Chinese bee foundation. Deep-cell foundation with neat cells, a high melting point, and deep cell walls should be used.
1. Threading wire through frames
Use No. 25-26 thin galvanized wire to run four straight wires horizontally across the frame. Wire that is too thin is not easily embedded into the cell bottoms, iron wire and steel wire are brittle and prone to rust, and copper wire is soft, so none of them are suitable. Pull both ends of the galvanized wire tight and fix them with small nails.
2. Threading wire with clamps
The frame wire must not be slack. Use a woodworking clamp of the kind used for marking with wooden strips to clamp the two side walls of the frame so that they bend slightly inward, pull the frame wire tight with pliers, and after fixing both ends, release the clamp so that the frame wire can be stretched tight.
3. Tools for embedding foundation
(1) Foundation wire-embedding board
A wooden board 15 cm thick, 5 mm smaller than the inner dimensions of the frame, with one 15 mm X 25 mm wooden strip nailed horizontally at each of the two lower ends.
(2) Wax melting pot
A double-layer pot made of galvanized iron sheet. The inner pot holds wax. When heated, the wax is melted by the heat of the water. This avoids directly heating beeswax and can also keep the wax liquid molten.
(3) Gear wire embedder
A movable gear is mounted on a wooden stick, used to embed the frame wire into the foundation. It can be soaked in hot water and heated before use.
(4) Electric soldering iron wire embedder
File a small notch at the soldering tip of an ordinary electric soldering iron, the thickness of No. 26 galvanized wire. When using it (after heating), pass the small notch along the wire, and the wire can be embedded into the foundation.
4. Installing foundation
Insert the foundation from the middle of the frame so that the upper and lower parts of the foundation each have two wires, and insert the upper edge of the foundation into the groove of the top bar. Hold the bottom bar at an angle of about 300 degrees with one hand, and hold the wax melting pot with the other, with the spout facing the frame groove so that melted wax slowly flows down. When the wax liquid solidifies, the foundation is firmly stuck in the groove. Spread a piece of paper on the foundation wire-embedding board, place the frame with the foundation flat on the foundation wire-embedding board, and use a gear wire embedder (or electric soldering iron wire embedder) to press the two wires on the upper part of the foundation into the foundation respectively. Then turn the frame over and press in the other two wires. If there are places where the wire has not been pressed into the foundation, run the gear wire embedder over them again, or use a clean brush to apply melted wax. The foundation must be installed flat and firm.
5. Electric heat wire embedding
Using low-voltage electricity of 6-12 volts through the galvanized wire to generate heat gives a better effect than embedding the galvanized wire into the foundation. Fix a 0.3 A transformer on a wooden board. Tape the two 110 V input wires separately and leave them unused, and connect the plug wire to the 220 V input end. There are 4 groups of output voltage: the groups of 5 V, 6.3 V, and 12.6 V are respectively connected to the terminals; the two wires of the 350 V high-voltage group are taped separately and left unused.
When using electric heat wire embedding to install foundation, arrange the four wires on one side, place the frame with the foundation flat on the foundation wire-embedding board so that the foundation is below and the wires are above, and connect the two ends of the frame wire respectively with 6.3 V or 12.6 V wires. After the power is turned on for only 4-7 seconds, the heat of the galvanized wire melts the beeswax, and the galvanized wire automatically embeds into the wax.
The input end of the transformer is 220 V voltage, which is dangerous and must not be touched by hand. The 350 V high-voltage output end is also dangerous, so care must be taken to wrap it well with insulating tape.
6. Building and repairing combs
When making artificial swarms or when natural swarming occurs, take advantage of the enthusiasm of the swarming colony and add foundation frames to the new swarm, which can produce very regular worker-cell combs. From late spring to early autumn, when there is a nectar source outside, combs can be built. In late spring, when the climate is stable, the average temperature is about 15°C, and there is a nectar source, and white new wax is found on the combs, comb building can begin. Spray honey syrup on the foundation, sprinkle some wax scraps (wax scraps scraped from beeswax with a narrow long steel piece or wire brush), and add the foundation frame between the honey combs and brood combs on the outer side of the nest. Feeding sugar syrup at night can speed up comb building. When a strong colony begins to build comb, the first one or two combs may have some drone cells, and afterward they can build combs entirely of worker cells. Generally, add 1 foundation frame each time, and after 1 frame is built, add another; a strong colony can add 2 frames at a time. In order to fully give play to the advantage of strong colonies in building combs quickly, the foundation frame can first be added to medium and small colonies. After 1-2 days, when all the cells have been raised by 2-3 mm, take it out and give it to a strong colony to complete.
7. Storage of combs
Combs taken out of colonies and not in use are easily damaged by wax moths and attract robbing bees and rodents, so they must be stored well. During the active season of bees, unused combs can be concentrated, placed in supers, and added on top of strong colonies to let the bees take care of them. One colony can care for 4-5 supers of combs. In autumn before overwintering, the surplus combs withdrawn from colonies should be cleaned, classified, and properly stored in a tightly sealed, dry, clean place free from rodent damage and chemical contamination. Scrape off propolis, beeswax, and other substances from the frames, remove old combs more than 3 years old and poor-quality combs with many drone cells, and put honey combs, half-honey combs, pollen combs, and empty combs separately in supers, and preserve them by fumigation with chemicals.
(1) Carbon disulfide fumigation
Stack 4-5 supers of combs on the hive, put 9 combs in each box, seal the cracks of each box tightly, and according to the dosage of 10 ml per box, drip carbon disulfide onto filter paper, place it on the top bars of the uppermost box body, cover with the hive cover, and seal it flat. Carbon disulfide volatilizes easily at room temperature, is flammable and toxic, and care must be taken when using it.
(2) Glacial acetic acid fumigation
98% glacial acetic acid has a high killing effect on eggs and larvae. Use 20 ml per box, and the fumigation method is the same as above.
(3) Sulfur fumigation
Place an empty beehive with a window below, stack 4-5 layers of supers containing combs on top, cover with the hive cover, and seal all gaps flat. Through the window, put in an iron sheet or tile, place several burning charcoals on it, and then sprinkle sulfur powder. Use 5 g of sulfur powder per box of combs. The sulfur dioxide produced by burning sulfur cannot kill the eggs and pupae of the greater wax moth, so fumigate once every 12-15 days, for 3 consecutive times. In addition, in places in the north where the minimum winter temperature can reach below -10°C, seal the comb supers tightly and store them outdoors frozen, which gives good results.