Zootechnical Beekeeping Management

By: Pablo Montesinos Arraiz

Figure 1. Elements of the zootechnical beekeeping management.

As all livestock farms, the breeding of honey bees for production purposes must be managed with professional, technical and business guidelines in order to adapt them to the zootechnical, production and reproduction requirements that increase and contribute to the best operation and profitability of the beekeeping business.

The Zootechnical Beekeeping Management, ZBM (Figure 1), refers to the analysis and evaluation of the beekeeping parameters that come from the principles related to the brood nest, the development and growth of the brood nest and the organization and distribution of adult bees on the combs to apply the General Beekeeping Management, GBM, to obtain the maximum production of honey and by-products from the hives; always in correspondence with the animal welfare of bees.

These parameters, that can be qualitative and quantitative, or only qualitative, and displayed through the Model of Evaluation and Control of the Honey Bees for Production Purposes (Figure 2) using the Beekeeping Coding System, are obtained through the Method of Hives Inspection. All this, taking into account the conceptualization of animal welfare.

The Zootechnical beekeeping management must precede and have primacy over general beekeeping management, so that in beekeeping farms the maximum production and productivity of the hives be achieved with optimal levels of profitability.

The success of the ZBM depends on the solidity and veracity of the information obtained, analyzed and evaluated by beekeepers, during and after routine inspections of the hives. This information, which must be recorded in the beekeeping registers, must include all the biological events of a zootechnical, productive and reproductive scope that take place in the hives, as well as all the circumstances of beekeeping nature that come about when working with the hives. Hence the importance of periodically inspecting the hives to do an individual and collective assessment and implement the techniques and/or methods of the GBM that best suit each case. It is also necessary to monitor the effectiveness of the zootechnical beekeeping management and the general beekeeping management, and also the yields achieved on the farm, for which zootechnical, production and reproduction beekeeping indicators and indices should be used. In order to apply an appropriate ZBM and a GBM it is a sine qua non condition to use beekeeping registers and enumerate the hives.

Figure 2. Parameters and method of the model of evaluation and control of the honey bees for production purposes.

In beekeeping there are three types of parameters (Figure 3, next page): Beekeeping Zootechnical Parameters, Beekeeping Production Parameters and Beekeeping Reproduction Parameters. The Beekeeping Zootechnical Parameters are classified into two groups: Zootechnical Behavioral Parameters and General Zootechnical Parameters.

The zootechnical behavioral parameters are those biological elements that are constant in the development and growth of honey bee colonies and related to the development and growth of the breeding nest and the organization and distribution of the bees on the honeycombs.

There are nine zootechnical behavioral parameters:

1. General Condition of the hive (Good condition, GC; Regular condition, RC; and Bad condition, BC).
2. Queen’s presence (Queen’s presence, QP; Queen’s lacking, QL; and Orphan bee hive, OH).
3. Queen’s egg laying (abundant, a; regular, r; few, ; and null and has egg laying, HE).
4. Queen’s phenotype (by color, by side and by age).
5. Queen’s egg laying sites (in brood chamber, E BC; in brood chamber and super, E BCS; and only in super, E S).
6. Open brood, OB (qualitative and quantitative).
7. Sealed brood, SB (qualitative and quantitative).
8. Queen cells (open queen cell, OQC and sealed queen cell, SQC).
9. Honey stored (mature and immature and quantitative and qualitative).
10. The general zootechnical parameters refer to the data or elements of the honey bees breeding that come from the general beekeeping management that is carried out in beekeeping operations.

    There are eight general zootechnical parameters:

1. Type of hive inspection (Complete inspection, CI and Incomplete inspection, IC).
2. Indirect introduction of queen, IIQ.
3. Direct introduction of queen, DIQ.
4. Combination of hives, A C B.
5. Transfer bees from a nucleus hive to a hive, TNH.
6. Dead hive, DH.
7. Artificial feeding, AF.
8. Next inspection, NI.

Figure 3. Types of beekeeping parameters.

Regarding the production and reproduction parameters, they have to do with the qualitative and quantitative or only qualitative variables that result from the development and growth of honey bee colonies and from which the beekeeper benefits in terms of products and by-products of the hives.

There are ten beekeeping production parameters:

1. Total of hives, TH.
2. Hives in production, HP.
3. Harvested hives, HH
4. Total harvested honey, THH
5. Brood giver hive, BGH
6. Brood receiver hive, BRH
7. Honey giver hive, HGH
8. Honey receiver hive, HRH
9. Crowd (large population) of bees, CB
10. Little population of bees, LB

There are eleven beekeeping reproduction parameters:

1. Atypical egg laying, AE
2. Laying workers, LW
3. Removal of the queen by the beekeeper, RQBB
4. Queen cell giver hive, QCGH
5. Queen cell receiver hive, QCRH
6. Born queen and seen by the beekeeper, BQSB
7. Born queen and not seen by the beekeeper, BQNSB
8. Removal of queen cells by the beekeeper, RQCB
9. Split of hive, SH
10. Nuclei obtained, NO
11. Captured Swarms, CS