Honeybees and honey Flashcards
Bees are bred and kept by humans for two main purposes, they are?
- Honey and related products
- Pollination
Describe the activity of a hive throughout the year
Active hives only between spring and autumn when food is available. Over winter the queen and workers reduce their metabolic activity and survive on the honey reserves they produced during summer
Describe the different bees in a colony
- One queen
- Thousands of workers (females)
- Hundreds of drones (males; in summer)
What is the role of drones?
- Just flies out and mates with another queen from another hive
- When resources are low the males are kicked out of the hive and killed
Describe the life cycle of a bee
Starts as an egg born by the queen placed at the bottom of one of the wells, develops into larva, pupa and adult.
21 d cycle for workers and drones
16 d cycle for queens
Why do humans use and consume beehive products?
- Food
- Health / medicine (wound dressing, cold treatment)
- “Wellness”
What is propolis?
Glue from tree resin, data on this being used in medicine
Name the 3 beehive products that can be consumed
Nectar, pollen and propolis
Name all of the beehive products
- Honey
- Wax
- Royal jelly
- Pollen
- Propolis
- Bee venom
What is the UK/EU definition of honey
The natural sweet substance produced by Apis mellifera bees from the:
- Nectar of plants
- Secretions of living parts of plants
- Excretions of plant-sucking insects on the living parts of plants (honeydew)
Describe natural honey collection
- Collected by the bee in the crop which is enlarged
- Transported to the beehive, transferred to workers and stored in the honeycomb where water content is reduced from 70% to 20%.
- Cell then capped with a layer of wax.
What are some considerations when removing honey?
- Honey is the bee’s winter food reserve; they do not appreciate it being removed!
- Leave enough for the hive too and/or replace with sugar syrup or fondant
How is the water content of honey tested?
Using a refractometer to test the water content by specific gravity
What are the 3 different ways of collecting honey?
- On the honeycomb
- By centrifugation manual or electric
- By pressing/mashed (heather honey)
How is debris and contaminants removed from honey?
Filtration after mild heating
Describe pasteurised honey
- Extracted and cleaned using course filter
- Flash heating to a high temperature super filtered through a 1 to 5 micron filter, and quickly cooled.
- Will last over 9 months on the store shelf without granulating but little pollen left.
How is honey processed following filtration?
- After filtration honey is allowed to stand to “ripen”. This removes the air trapped in it during filtration before bottling
- Micro-crystallisation helps avoid the formation of large crystals that eventually are solid in the jar. This produces creamed honey which will not crystallise but it is not transparent anymore
- Blending of honey from different sources is allowed but needs to be labelled accordingly
Describe honeycomb
“Untouched by human hands. Contains all the goodness that nature has put into the honey.” Bit awkward to chew / eat the wax.
What happens overheated honey?
Used as an indicator of honey quality
Downgraded honey is known as “Baker’s honey” – used for cooking
What is royal jelly?
- Secreted by nurse bees
- Fed to all larvae for a few days. To queens for longer.
How is royal jelly harvested?
- Put artificial queen cells with worker larvae into a hive and workers feed them.
- Remove frame, take out the larvae and scoop out the Royal jelly.
Describe pollen/bee bread
- Food source – protein / amino-acids
- Collected into pollen baskets on the leg of bees from flowers
- In honey – oral dose to reduce allergy to local pollen?
- Mixed with nectar or honey to be stored in the comb as bee bread
- Harvested from hive to be eaten
Describe harvesting pollen with a pollen trap
- Pollen brushed out of pollen sacs as bees squeeze through narrow entrance.
- Thus bees have less pollen per trip for themselves
- 3mm grid filters out larger bits of debris and stops bees getting pollen back!.
- Then dry (under 6% moisture or will go mouldy), clean and store. Can be frozen. Use within 9-12 months
What features should be on a honey label?
- The name (Honey, filtered honey etc)
- The name or trade name and address of the producer or responsible food business operator
- The country or countries of origin
- Any special storage conditions
- A best-before date
- Batch mark
- Weight
- Store conditions
What is the cause of infant botulism
Caused by toxins produced by Clostridium botulinum bacteria
How do the clostridium botulinum toxins affect the body?
These toxins attack the nervous system (nerves, brain and spinal cord) and cause paralysis (muscle weakness).
From what age do humans have defences against botulism?
About 1yo
Name some notifiable diseases affecting bees
- Acarapisosis of honey bees
- American foulbrood of honey bees
- European foulbrood of honey bees
- Small hive beetle infestation (Aethina tumida)
- Tropilaelaps infestation of honey bees
- Varroosis of honey bees
Describe Acarapisosis of honey bees
- Called Acarine or Isle of Wight disease in UK.
- Caused by the mite Acarapis woodi
- Found in the trachea: mites seen in the windpipe of bees
- Reduces the bees lifespan
- No major problem in the UK but no treatment either
Describe American foulbrood of bees
- Pepper-pot brood pattern: larve have died because of the bacteria and been cleared out by worker bees
- Sunken, greasy or perforated, darkened cappings
- Roping, sticky larval remains
- Dark scales, difficult to remove from cells
- If present bees and brood have to be destroyed by incineration and the hive disinfected with fire
Describe European foulbrood
- Erratic brood pattern
- Twisted larvae with creamy-white guts visible through the body wall
- Melted down, yellowed larvae, almost like wax
- An unpleasant sour odour
- Loosely-attached brown scales
How is European foulbrood treated?
- Under direction of bee inspector not vet in UK
- “shook swarm husbandry method”
- Oxytetracycline (Terramycin®) treatment.
- The colonies may be destroyed, as for AFB.
Which parasite causes Varroosis?
Apis Melifera - Varroa mites
Describe the pathogenesis/life cycle of Varroa mites
- Feeds on haemolymph (blood) or larvae or adult
- To breed, the adult female mite enters a brood cell just before the cell is capped over, where she remains in the brood food until the cell is sealed.
- She then feeds on the immature bee and begins to lay eggs. Mating between mite offspring (usually brother and sister) occurs within the cell
- Mature female mites leave the cell when the host bee emerges.
- Males and any remaining immature females die, unable to survive outside the sealed cell.
What happens to Varroa mites in the winter?
- In winter, when brood rearing is restricted, mites over-winter solely on the bodies of the adult bees within the winter cluster, until brood rearing commences the following spring
- Can act as a carrier of other disease (Acute viral paralysis) or increase the effect of other infestations (Acarapis woodi)
How are Varroa mites controlled?
- Management methods (‘biotechnical methods’)
- Chemical controls (‘varroacides’)
- Combination og both: integrated pest management
How can varroa mites be treated?
- Tau fluvalinate: Apistan - strips in the brood chamber for 42 days
- Flumethrin: Bayvarol – strips in the brood chamber for 42 days
- Thymol: Apiguard, Apilife-VAR, Thymovar – Strips or trays left in hive for 2 x 2 weeks
- Formic acid: Mite Away Quick Strips (MAQS) left in hive for 7 days, Formicpro.
