Detailed Introduction to Common Beekeeping Tools and Their Uses

1. Foundation Foundation is the base installed inside the frame for @#@255@#@ to build comb; it is a man-made sheet of beeswax pressed by a foundation mill, with a base plate having cells and cell walls. There is Italian bee foundation for keeping European honey bees; drone foundation for producing drone pupae; and Chinese bee foundation for keeping Chinese bees. Combs built with foundation are neat, flat, and sturdy, with 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, 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 box. When in use, light paper, dry grass, or burlap, put it into the smoke barrel, cover the nozzle, and pump the bellows to make it emit thick smoke, but do not let sparks come out.

5. Bee brush Mainly used to brush bees attached to combs, hive bodies, queen-rearing frames, and other bee equipment; it is a long-fan-shaped long-bristle brush. Generally it has two rows of bristles, with bristle length 65 mm, made of white horse mane or horse tail hair that does not absorb water easily. 6. Beekeeping stool Can hold beekeeping tools and record books used for management. It serves as a seat when inspecting colonies.

7. Queen excluder A queen excluder is a grid plate that controls the queen's egg laying and movement, strictly separating the colony into a brood-rearing area and a honey-storage area, so that larvae, pupae, pollen, etc. will not mix with honey, while worker bees can pass through freely. The galvanized wire queen excluder made of No. 14 galvanized wire is sturdy and durable, not easily deformed; the gap between two wires is about 4.4 mm, so the queen cannot pass through, but it is relatively expensive. The bamboo wire queen excluder made of bamboo strips with a diameter of 7.5 mm is easy to source in southern China, easy to process, and low in cost, but its sturdiness 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 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 supplemental feeding of honey syrup, sugar syrup, or water. Commonly used ones include: (1) Entrance feeder, also 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. Turn the bottle filled with honey syrup upside down and insert it 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 from the entrance into the hive. It is suitable for stimulative feeding and can avoid 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 over with the bottom lid facing down and place it flat, and insert it from the entrance into the hive. (2) Frame feeder is a long, flat feeding trough similar in size to a standard frame. There are wooden and plastic ones, and it can also be made from thick bamboo. Inside the feeder there are thin wooden floating strips for bees to stand on and feed. The frame feeder is suitable for supplemental feeding. In addition, a rectangular shallow groove chiseled in the top bar of the frame can also be used for feeding a small amount of honey syrup. (3) Top feeder is a large feeder placed on top of the hive, dish-shaped and similar in size to a shallow super, suitable for emergency supplemental feed and winter feed; it can hold 5-10 liters of sugar syrup at a time.

9. Queen introduction devices Commonly used queen introduction devices include wooden cage introducers, safety introducers, and frame introducers. (1) Wooden cage introducer The wooden cage introducer is a flat iron gauze cage. The wooden plug at one end has a small hole and is equipped with a pull-out iron plate. The open end of the iron gauze cage is inserted with a thin wooden board. (2) Safety introducer, also called 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 pull-out iron sheet bottom plate. (3) Full-frame introducer Uses wood or iron plate as the frame, with galvanized wire gauze on the two large sides. Its internal width is about 43 mm and height 245 mm, just enough to hold one comb, with a pull-out plate on top. (4) Queen cage is a small rectangular cage made of galvanized wire gauze, with a volume of about 23 mm x 33 mm x 50 mm. There is a round hole in the iron wall on top, through which a queen cell or queen can be placed. The round hole has a sliding iron sheet cover, and the lower part is equipped with an openable 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, with plastic sheets drilled with small holes as the upper and lower ends, and bamboo strips with a diameter of 2 mm inserted into the small holes to form a small rectangular cage, with a volume of about 20 mm x 33 mm x 50 mm. The spacing between each bamboo strip is 3 mm. One bamboo strip 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 so that the queen stops laying eggs, making it easier to control bee mites.

10. Other tools and equipment Beekeeping uses mostly wooden bee equipment such as hive boxes and frames, which need frequent maintenance and repair. Therefore, it is very necessary to learn the basic woodworking operation techniques. Prepare a set of common woodworking tools, such as saw, plane, hammer, pliers, screwdriver, etc., to make work more convenient.