Guidelines to Breeding Honey Bees as a Hobby or Business

June 15th, 2009 | Author: Sibusiso M. Maseko
by Calvin Wapasa

Breeding bees is at its busiest stage in the spring season. When this season approaches make sure you are fully prepared. Of course, this assumes that proper management has been done in the winter season.

They are two things that go on in spring to your bees which is brood rearing and swarming

Brood rearing is the process by which young bees are maintained. In order to maintain young bees pollen is needed. When there is not enough pollen that is stored in the hive, then brood rearing can be effected. To avoid this, then you can always use pollen substitutes.

The issue of swarming needs management as well. Swarming is the process by which honey bees begin to create new colonies from the colony of bees that are in the hive. Many times the queen bee leaves the nest along with the worker bees in the swarming season.

Being a beekeeper, this can be an important issue because if your colony successfully swarms then this will allow your colony to die. So make sure you don’t allow swarming to take place. But this is difficult because the process of swarming is natural.

One thing to help prevent swarming is to obtain a new queen bee which can produce eggs in your colony and keep it going or another suggestion would be to clip the wings of the queen bee so that they don’t escape from the colony.

About the Author:
You can check out: Becoming a Beekeeper and books on beekeeping for more reviewed information.