MANAGEMENT OF  HONEY BEE COLONIES  FOR POLLINATION

ABSTRACT

The Honey bee (Apis melifera) is one of the most beneficial insects in the world. There are some 150 U.S. crops and more than 50 California crops pollinated by honeybees, for example, apples, fruits, berries, almonds, melons, cucumbers, clovers and alfalfa. We have the honeybee to thank for one third of all the food we eat. Without the bees, we would be eating mostly rice, wheat, and corn instead of the wonderful variety of fruits, vegetables, and nuts we enjoy today. This insect pollinates BILLIONS OF DOLLARS of agricultural crops each year. In addition, it is impossible to determine the tremendous value these pollinators have in our urban gardens. Now, since the demise of all of our feral (wild) honeybee populations, their value in our neighborhoods is greater than ever.

Many people think of Honey bees simply as a summertime nuisance. But these small and hard-working insects actually make it possible for many of your favorite foods to reach our table. From apples to almonds to the pumpkin in our pumpkin pies, we have bees to thank. Now, a condition known as Colony Collapse Disorder is causing bee populations to plummet, which means these foods are also at risk. In the United States alone, more than 25 percent of the managed honey bee population has disappeared since 1990. Bees are one of a myriad of other animals, including birds, bats, beetles, and butterflies, called pollinators. Pollinators transfer pollen and seeds from one flower to another, fertilizing the plant so it can grow and produce food. Cross-pollination helps at least 30 percent of the world’s crops and 90 percent of our wild plants to thrive without bees.

INTRODUCTION

Agriculture depends greatly on the honeybee for pollination. Honey bees account for 80% of all insect pollination. Without such pollination, we would see a significant decrease in the yield of fruits and vegetables. One of the most familiar insects in the world is the Honeybee.  This member of the insect order Hymenoptera plays a key role in the human and natural world.  More has been written about honeybees than any other species of insect. The honeybee, man's oldest insect friend, gives us honey, beeswax and other valuable products. Most important of all, the fertilization of many crops is done by honey bee. Mankind knows this marvelous insect since the prehistoric times. The art of their management in hives and extracting surplus honey is called beekeeping. Beekeeping is a valuable and profitable venture to supplement farmer’s income.  At present beekeeping activity is practiced on a part-time basis in Bangladesh Anonymous (b), 2005. Bangladesh government and other non-government organizations, including Bangladesh Institute of Apiculture (BIA), Proshika and Mouchak Unnayan Sangstha (MUS) etc. have taken various schemes to provide technological support for training on beekeeping, developing, marketing facilities and supplying necessary equipment for the economic production of honey in the country.

Honeybees (Apis mellifera) are dependent on the supply of floral pollen and nectar. The activity of the honeybee is controlled largely by ambient conditions. In some habitats where the weather fluctuates annually, as in the ‘Sub-tropical region’, the warm season coincides with the lack of flowers and is considered the "dearth period" (Eisikowitch, 2004). In the cold season, when the flowers appear, the bees are at full activity, collecting and storing food, along with fulfilling their reproductive duties. Although bees are physiologically capable of being active in hot deserts, they suffer from the lack of food sources and water, the latter being used for cooling hives in addition to its physiological function. Honeybees are thus restricted to areas where blooming occurs at least for part of the year (Echazarreta and Paxton, 1997).

In early spring, before pollen and nectar are available or at other times of the year when these materials are not available for bees in the field or in the hive, supplementary feeding may help the colony to survive or sustain brood rearing and colony development. None of the protein supplemental foods fed to honey bees is a complete replacement for natural pollen; however, several brewer's yeast products, wheat and soybean flour, fed singly or in combination, can be used to improve the nutrition of colonies when natural pollen is scarce. Cane or beet sugar and isomerized corn syrup can be used to supplement the bee’s diet of nectar or honey (Standifer et al., 1977).

Objective:

The present study was carried out considering the following objective

ü To know about the management of  honey bee colonies for pollination.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

Though the bee keeping is an old human activity is an old process for mankind but the research related to the management of honey bees colonies. The information’s found in the available sources are discussed below with the following the sub headings.

Description of Honey bee:

          Honey bees (or honeybees) are a subset of bees in the genus Apis, primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of perennial, colonial nests out of wax. Honey bees are the only extant members of the tribe Apini, all in the genus Apis. Currently, there are only seven recognized species of honey bee with a total of 44 subspecies, though historically, anywhere from six to eleven species have been recognized. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the approximately 20,000 known species of bees. Some other types of related bees produce and store honey, but only members of the genus Apis are true honey bees.

           Honey bees are European in origin, and were brought to North America by the early settlers. Honeybees are not aggressive by nature, and will not sting unless protecting their hive from an intruder or are unduly provoked. Honeybees represent a highly organized society, with various bees having very specific roles during their lifetime: e.g., nurses, guards, grocers, housekeepers, construction workers, royal attendants, undertakers, foragers, etc. The queen bee can live for several years. Worker bees live for 6 weeks during the busy summer, and for 4-9 months during the winter months. The practice of honey collection and beekeeping dates back to the stone-age, as evidenced by cave paintings.

          The honeybee hive is perennial. Although quite inactive during the winter, the honeybee survives the winter months by clustering for warmth. By self-regulating the internal temperature of the cluster, the bees maintain 93 degrees Fahrenheit in the center of the winter cluster (regardless of the outside temperature).

 

 

Honeybees by the Number- 

The Honeybee colony has:
1  reproductive, the Queen. She lays
2  types of eggs, male & female. These become
3  casts of insect, drone, worker, & queen. They have
4  wings,
5  eyes,
6  legs, &
7  sub-brains, or nerve centers, called ganglia. This wonderful insect is killed by
8  legged mites, in more than
9  out of
10 cases.

THREE CASTES OF HONEY BEE

QueenBee:
There is only one queen per hive. The queen is the only bee with fully developed ovaries. A queen bee can live for 3-5 years. The queen mates only once with several male (drone) bees, and will remain fertile for life. She lays up to 2000 eggs per day. Fertilized eggs become female (worker bees) and unfertilized eggs become male (drone bees). When she dies or becomes unproductive, the other bees will "make" a new queen by selecting a young larva and feeding it a diet of "royal jelly". For queen bees, it takes 16 days from egg to emergence.

WorkerBee:
All worker bees are female, but they are not able to reproduce. Worker bees live for 4-9 months during the winter season, but only 6 weeks during the busy summer months (they literally work themselves to death). Nearly all of the bees in a hive are worker bees. A hive consists of 20,000 - 30,000 bees in the winter, and over 60,000 - 80,000 bees in the summer. The worker bees sequentially take on a series of specific chores during their lifetime: housekeeper; nursemaid; construction worker; grocer; undertaker; guard; and finally, after 21 days they become a forager collecting pollen and nectar. For worker bees, it takes 21 days from egg to emergence. The worker bee has a barbed stinger that results in her death following stinging, therefore, she can only sting once.

DroneBee:
These male bees are kept on standby during the summer for mating with a virgin queen. Because the drone has a barbed sex organ, mating is followed by death of the drone. There are only 300-3000 drones in a hive. The drone does not have a stinger. Because they are of no use in the winter, drones are expelled from the hive in the autumn.

              Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are the most important pollinators of manycrop species due to their high demand for pollen and nectar and their hairy body, which collects and disperses the pollen (McGregor 1976; Free 1993; Benedek 1996; Soltesz 1996; Delaplane and Mayer 2000; Stern et al. 2001, 2004). In addition, honey bee hives contain 30-50 thousand bees and are easy to mobilize. However, other bee species, such as Osmia cornuta (leafcutting bee) or Bombus  terrestris (bumblebee) may also prove to be efficient pollinators. O. cornuta is more active than honey bees in lower temperatures (<15ºC), makes better contact with the stigma and visits the flowers more frequently (Vicens and Bosch 2000; Maccagnani et al. 2003; Monzon et al. 2004). B. terrestris is also active at temperatures lower than 15ºC (Lundberg 1980; Corbet  1993; Calzoni and Speranza 1996), carries more pollen grains, visits more flowers (Willmeret al. 1994), and deposits higher quantities of more compatible pollen grains per stigma than honey bees (Jacquemart et al. 2006). Nevertheless, both species are still not used commercially for pollination in orchards (Mayer et al. 1994; Mayer and Lunden 1997; Delaplane and Mayer 2000), and for the time being honey bees are the main pollinators.

          Pome fruit, such as apple and pear, and stone fruit, such as plum, almond, apricot and cherry, are usually grown in temperate zones. Weather conditions during the blooming period may be unfavourable for flight of pollinating insects. Honey bees, in particular, are less active during cold, cloudy, rainy, and windy weather (McGregor 1976; Free 1993; Benedek 1996). Cool temperatures also affect pollen-tube growth and fertilization (Soltesz 1996; Westwood1993). Consequently, low cross-pollination levels are usually one of the most yield-limiting factors (Dennis 1979; Free 1993; Hoopingarner and Waller 1993; Westwood 1993; Soltesz 1996; Dennis 2003). In all Rosaceae fruit trees, the honey bee often abandons the target flowers in favor of flowers of fruit trees such as Citrus (Free 1993) and lychee (Stern and Gazit 1996), or competing flora that is more attractive and more rewarding for the honey bees (Free et al. 1960; Free and Spencer-Booth 1963; Dennis 1979; Delaplane and Mayer 2000). Moreover, honey bees tend to restrict their mobility to one row, which usually contains a single cultivar (Williams and Smith 1967; Eisikowitch et al. 1999).

         

             In addition, the “effective pollination period” (EPP), i.e.ovule longevity minus the time between pollination and fertilization, is very short in apple and pear (Williams 1966).In ‘Bartlet’ pear it could last only 1-2 days from anthesis at 9-10ºC (Lombard et al. 1971), whereas in ‘Red-Delicious’apple it could be even shorter (Dennis 1979, 1986). Thus, although the stigma remains receptive for longer periods of time, pollination needs to be accomplished in 1-2 days for fertilization to occur before ovule degeneration. Therefore, any technique that would increase the activity of bees andtheir efficiency in cross-pollination should improve the yield.

POLLINATION BY HONEY BEES

Pollination is the transfer of pollen grains, the male sex cells of a flower, from the anther where they are produced to the receptive surface, or stigma, of the female organ of a flower. Since the honey bee is the most important insect that transfers pollen between flowers and between plants, the word "pollination" is often used to describe the service of providing bees to pollinate crop plants. This service is now more important than ever in the Midwest because the acreage of insectpollinated crops is large as compared with the number of all kinds of bees (honey bees, humble bees, and solitary bees) that are available to provide pollination. In many states the estimated number of colonies (hives) of bees has dropped drastically in recent years. For example, in Illinois the estimated number of hives dropped from 101,000 in 1964 to 46,000 in 1984. These two figures are probably much more accurate than some of the older, larger estimates that may have reflected state pride more than reality. Because of the reduction in numbers of bees, growers in any state can no longer assume that there are sufficient numbers of bees nearby to produce the best possible crop from insectpollinated plants.

Honey bees are good pollinators for many reasons. Their hairy bodies trap pollen and carry it between flowers. The bees require large quantities of nectar and pollen to rear their young, and they visit flowers regularly in large numbers to obtain these foods. In doing so, they concentrate on one species of plant at a time and serve as good pollinators for this reason. Their body size enables them to pollinate flowers of many different shapes and sizes. The pollination potential of the bees is increased because they can be managed to develop high populations. The number of colonies can also be increased as needed and the colonies can be moved to the most desirable location for pollination purposes.

Honey bees are most active at temperatures between 60 degrees F. (16 degrees C.) and 105 degrees F. (41 degrees C.). Winds above 15 miles per hour reduce their activity and stop it completely at about 25 miles per hour. When conditions for flight are not ideal, honey bees work close to their colonies. Although they may fly as far as 5 miles in search of food, they usually go no farther than 1 to 1-1/2 miles in good weather. In unfavorable weather, bees may visit only those plants nearest the hive. They also tend to work closer to the hive in areas where there are large numbers of attractive plants in bloom.

The following midwestern crops must be pollinated by bees to produce fruit or seed: Alfalfa  Apple  Apricot  Blackberry  Blueberry  Cherry  Clovers  Sweetclovers,white and yellow  True clovers  Alsike  Ladino  Red  White Dutch  Cranberry

Cucumber  Muskmelon, cantaloupe  Nectarine  Peach  Pear  Persimmon, native  Plum, prune  Pumpkin  Raspberry  Squash  Sunflower  Trefoil  Watermelon

The following crops set fruit or seed without insect visits but yields and quality may be improved by honey bees:
 

Eggplant  Grape  Lespedeza  Lima bean

Okra  Pepper  Soybean  Strawberry

Honey bees visit several important crops but do not improve their yields of fruit or seed. These include the following:  

Field bean  Pea

String or snap bean  Sweet corn

              The provision of bees for pollination of crop plants is a specialized practice, not just a sideline of honey production. Beekeepers who supply bees for pollination must learn the skills of management that are necessary for success in this phase of beekeeping. Such skills include the development and selection of strong colonies that are able to provide the large force of field bees needed to do the job of transferring pollen. This task of the beekeeper is hardest to accomplish for fruit pollination early in the year. Each beekeeper or organization of beekeepers should set minimum standards for colony strength and size to use as a basis for establishing prices and for providing the best possible service. The number of bees, and not the number of hives, is the true unit of measure, and growers need to be told and shown what standards are being used to measure the honey bee colonies for pollination. For example, colonies for apple pollination should be housed in a two-story hive with a laying queen. There should be four or more frames with brood and sufficient bees to cover them. There should also be a reserve food supply of 10 pounds of honey or more. Colonies rented to pollinate crops that bloom later in the year should be proportionately stronger, with five or six frames with brood, approximately 600 to 800 square inches. In the field, the colonies must be supered and examined at intervals to keep them in suitable condition for pollination.

The number of standard colonies that are needed per acre of crop plants varies in relation to the attractiveness of the crop, the competition from surrounding sources of nectar and pollen, and the percentage of flowers that must produce fruit or seed to provide an economic return. Most crops are adequately pollinated by one strong hive of bees per acre. However, red clover grown for seed should have two or more colonies per acre moved to the field as soon as it begins to bloom (Fig. 76). Alfalfa requires three to five colonies per acre. Hybrid cumumbers grown at plant populations of 40,000 to 70,000 or more plants per acre for machine harvest may require up to four hives per acre. The higher number of hives may be needed where other cultivated plants or weeds compete strongly for the attention of the bees.

Bees for pollination should be placed within or beside the crop to be pollinated. For apples, place groups of 5 to 15 hives at intervals of 200 to 300 yards (Fig. 77). They should be moved into the orchard at 10 to 25 percent bloom. For cucumbers and other cucurbits, bees should be moved to the field when the first female flowers appear, not before. Place the bees in a single group for small fields. For fields larger than 30 acres, place the bees in two or more groups at the edges of the field but leave no more than %0 mile between groups. Bees seem to work better upwind from their hives than downwind, so it is probably worthwhile to locate more colonies on the downwind side of the field or orchard than on the side from which the wind blows.

Bees need a nearby source of water such as a farm pond or a stock tank with cork or wooden floats on which they can land. Water is important in the early spring for brood rearing and later for cooling the hives. In fruit pollination the bees benefit from full sun and shelter from the wind. Later in the year, some afternoon shade is helpful.

Contracts for honey bee pollination services should be a regular part of the business when more than a few hives are involved. Contracts prevent problems that may arise from misunderstanding, and they serve to emphasize the obligations and rights of both grower and beekeeper. Contracts should include provisions relating to pesticide usage, colony standards and the rights of the grower to examine the colonies, rights of access by the beekeeper, pollination fees and time of payment, and a statement about the timing of movements of bees to and from the crop.

Colony rental fees vary in relation to the expenses involved and the length of time the colonies are needed. The potential or actual honey production of the rented colonies is also a factor in establishing prices for summer-blooming crops, with higher prices for less productive plant species. Additional moves and the movement of colonies by grow- ers may increase or lower the price. The Honey Market News publishes typical prices being charged for pollination services.

Nutritional Requirement of Honeybee

Like other living animal honeybee also required a number of food substrate for their growth and development among them carbohydrate, water, pollen, proteins and amino acids are important. And the nutritional requirement is especially very important for the honey production basically in the period of dearth as the successful honey production is largely depended upon the supply of food and other nutritional requirement of honeybees. Proper colony management should ensure adequate food material for the survival and production of honey. Not only that, but also the existence of the bee hive is also dependent upon the proper bee hive management.

Honeybee nutrition is of interesting not only to bee nutritionists but also to the practical beekeeper determined to have strong and healthy colonies during dearth period. The honeybee requires proper diet for growth and development (Vesely, 1965). That is, the food must contain sufficient amounts of essential nutrients to support the normal life processes. It must be emphasized, however, that the food of larval bees is entirely different from that of the adult bees (Chauvin, 1962).

The basic dietary constituents of adult honey bees are nectar or honey and pollen. Honey is essentially a carbohydrate material with 95-99.9% of the solids being sugars (White, 1963). It is almost devoid of pertinacious material and contains components important in the carbohydrate metabolism. Thus, honey is basically a source of energy for bees (Wahl, 1959) and a material to be converted into a fat and glycogen. Honey bees can live on a pure carbohydrate diet for long periods of time. However, pollen is essential for the growth of emerging young bees and the development of the pharyngeal glands. Bees are unable to use pollen as an energy source. Most observed beekeepers are well award of this fact and have occasionally noticed that a colony will perish with out honey and energy source even though large amount of pollen or bee bread may be stored in the comb basically in the dearth period. On the other hand, expended brood rearing is not possible unless pollen or and appropriate source of protein, minerals and vitamins is available during dearth period (Haydak and Dietz, 1965); Standifer et al., 1973; Dietz, 1975; Herbert et al., 1977).

Water is a general solvent for most organic materials and salts and is essential for normal metabolism in the cells of the body. The water requirement is quite extensive, especially in the spring (dearth period in cool countries) when a large amount of larval food must be secreted by nurse bees. The more a colony must feed the higher will be the water requirement. Water, however, is also required in the utilization of old, thick, and perhaps crystallized honey.

Sympson (1964) showed that honey bees dilute food which contains a sugar contain of 50% or more, but food containing less than this amount was not diluted. Dry sugar used in this experiment was diluted more than honey or concentrated syrup. The collected water is also used to humidify the interior of the hive and for cooling on hot days.

[

The daily and yearly water consumption of the colony is not precisely known but it was calculated by Michailoff (1961) to be 200g/day/coony during the brood rearing period. The amount of water brought in annually, disregarding the water from the collected nectar, was estimated at amount 44 lbs (Weipple, 1928). Farrar (1973) sated that up to 50 gallons of water have been taken up in an apiary with 50 colonies in week.

Besides, House (1961) pointed out that the seven B-complex vitamins (biotin, folic acid, niacin, pantothenic-acid, pyridoxin, riboflavin, and thiamine) and 27trace elements are required for the whole bodies of the honeybees.

So, the management of the food nutrition for the honey bees is important and especially in the dearth period as Herbert (1979) suggested that the changes in the minerals constituting the honeybees as connected with their activities or division of labor. In addition, the change in food form pollen, with a much lower mineral content, to nectar or honey, with a much lower mineral content, un-doubtfully affects the mineral content present in older bees.

 But sometimes carbohydrate supplemental feeding also becomes necessary. Whenever colonies have little honey reserves, they should be fed. Carbohydrate foods have some value for stimulating queens to begin laying eggs, but no carbohydrate will support sustained egg laying or brood rearing in the absence of pollen or a protein supplementary food (Shimanuki, 1971)

Moritz et al. (1994) indicated that the diet of honey bees and their sociality; control of food procurement of the colony; nutrition and caste determination; prophylaxis.  Honey bees are the most complex social insects; it is difficult to analyze the role of nourishment in the social evolution of honey bees. However, the overall impression is that the nourishment specialization of honeybees seems to be sophisticated adaptations to the social organization, rather than the proximate cause for social behavior.

Table3. Showing the nutritional requirement of honeybees

Serial no.	Name of the Nutrient Element
1	Carbohydrate(fructose, glucose, lactose)
2	Protein
3	Vitamin (biotin, folic acid, niacin, pantothenic-acid, pyridoxin, riboflavin, and thiamine)
4	Minerals (27trace elements are required for the whole bodies of the honeybees)
5	Water

Source: House (1961)

Pollinator decline

With the decline of both wild and domestic pollinator populations, pollination management is becoming an increasingly important part of horticulture. Factors that cause the loss of pollinators include pesticide misuse, unprofitability of beekeeping for honey, rapid transfer of pests and diseases to new areas of the globe, urban/suburban development, changing crop patterns, clearcut logging (particularly when mixed forests are replaced by monoculture pine), clearing of hedgerows and other wild areas, loss of nectar corridors for migratory pollinators, and human paranoia of stinging insects (killer bee hype).

In 1989, following Hurricane Hugo, massive aerial applications for mosquitoes were done in South Carolina. The following year, watermelon growers who did not place beehives in the fields, observed the fruit begin to develop, then abort, or develop into small deformed fruit. There were entire fields that never yielded a single usable melon. Some growers went out of business; others began to seriously manage pollination. Since beekeepers were also heavily damaged by the mosquito spraying, the supply of bees for pollination was critically short for several years.

Bees Keep Our Economy Humming:

More than $15 billion a year in U.S. crops are pollinated by bees, including apples, berries, cantaloupes, cucumbers, alfalfa, and almonds. U.S. honey bees also produce about $150 million in honey annually. But fewer bees means the economy takes a hit: The global economic cost of bee decline, including lower crop yields and increased production costs, has been estimated at as high as $5.7 billion per year.3 Keeping bee populations safe is critical for keeping American tables stocked with high-quality produce and our agriculture sector running smoothly.

Bees Are Disappearing Around the World:

Beekeepers first sounded the alarm about disappearing bees in the United States in 2006.Seemingly healthy bees were simply abandoningtheir hives en masse, never to return. Researchersare calling the mass disappearance Colony Collapse Disorder, and they estimate that

nearly one-third of all honey bee colonies in the United States have vanished. The number of hives in the United States is now at its lowestpoint in the past 50 years.

 Causes of Colony Collapse Disorder:

Researchers think this Colony Collapse Disordermay be caused by a number of interwoven factors:

1. Global warming: which has caused flowers to bloom earlier or later than usual. When pollinators come out of hibernation, the flowers that provide the food they need to start the season have already bloomed.

2. Pesticide use on farms:  Some toxic pesticides meant to kill pests can harm the honey bees

needed for pollination. Many pesticides banned by other countries because they harm bees are

still available in the United States.

3. Habitat loss brought about by development, abandoned farms, growing crops without leaving

habitat for wildlife, and growing gardens with flowers that are not friendly to pollinators.\\

4.Parasites such as harmful mites. 

 

CONCLUTION

The honeybee, man's oldest insect friend, gives us honey, beeswax and other valuable products. Most important of all, the fertilization of many crops is done by honey bee. Mankind knows this marvelous insect since the prehistoric times. The art of their management in hives and extracting surplus honey is called beekeeping. Beekeeping is a valuable and profitable venture to supplement farmer’s income.  So, We have to protect  Honey Bees.Policy makers must take action to protect the bees and other pollinators that help keep fresh food on our table. This means:

1. Farmers must be rewarded for practices that help wild bee populations thrive, such as leaving habitat for bees in their surrounding fields, alternating crops so bees have food all year long, and not using harmful pesticides. Assistance should be provided to farmers who plan to support a wider variety of pollinators beyond just bees.

2. Bee research by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must be strengthened, and must also be broadened to include research

on pollinators besides honey bees.

3.  Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques should be used to minimize pesticide use and

risk to bees. By promoting beneficial insects to prey on pests, disrupting pest’s habitat and using

least-toxic products when necessary, IPM methods can provide effective, cost-effect pest control while reducing risks to pollinators. NRDC research finds that USDA is missing critical opportunities to promote IPM when allocating billions of dollars through Farm Bill conservation programs.

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