How to Breed Bees

Breeding bees is at its busiest stage in the spring season. There is so much going on that you have to be prepared for. Of course, this assumes that proper management has been done during the fall and winter seasons.

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

The process where by young bees are maintained is called brood rearing. Pollen is needed in order to maintain young bees. If there's not much pollen in the bee hive, then brood rearing can be effected. To avoid this, pollen substitutes should be used.

The issue of swarming need 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. It is often that the queen bee will leave the nest along with the worker bees in the swarming season.

Also Read: How to Start Making Honey

As a beekeeper, this is important 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 obtaining a new queen bee that can produce eggs in your colony and never stop or another suggestion would be to clip the wings of the queen bee to ensure that they are unable to leave the colony.

The Beekeeping Equipment

Your bee breeding activity will require you to gather some basic equipments before you can embark in this fun and challenging activity. You must buy this equipment before the post office calls you to come collect your bees. The most important piece of equipment you need is the beehive.

Make sure that your beehive has five supers. The supers are important to the beehive because this is the place where the honey will be stored. Make sure that the five supers fit in the space between the bottom of the hive and its top cover. Supers are not used just for storage of the honey, they are also used for raising the young bees.

When the hive starts buzzing with activity, each of these frames will show nine to ten frames. You can opt for a shallow super or for a deep super. When you get a hive with a deep super, you will need to purchase just a single size of foundation. But you must be ready for the weight – when full, a deep super can weight a hundred pounds.

Carefully place your beehive on a flat surface so that it does not tip over when the wind gets too violent. Set up your beehive in an area that is not trespassed by pets or humans. If you want to arrange the frames in an equidistant manner while they are inside the super, you will need a spacer.

After all this, you will need to get hold of a smoker. With the help of the smoker, you can drive the bees out of the hive when you want to remove the honey. There is not much to speak about the structure of a smoker. The main components of the smoker are the funnel, the chamber for combustion and the bellows.

Also Read: Raising Queen Bees

You can ideally use burlap in the smoker for the ignition because it lights up quite fast and it smolders a lot, producing thick dense fumes. You may also plan on using corn cobs, provided they are dried out. The bellows will allow the fire that you light in the combustion chamber burning and the funnel will allow you to maneuver the fumes into the hive.

The next piece of equipment to use is the metal hive tool. Your metal hive tool will come in handy when you have to pry the hive open, separate the compartments of the hive and for its cleanliness. The metal hive tool can really do a lot of thing in beekeeping for you. If you haven't got a bee brush yet, don't think of getting your bees. The use of the bee brush is to remove the bees from the way when the frames need to be examined.

When it is time to harvesting your honey, you will need a fumer board. When you want to remove their honeycombs, you will have to remove the bees first. For more guidelines on starting successful bee farming get yourself a copy of my guide below.....

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