Briar Patch Honeybees

Educating the Public, Supporting New & Local Beekeepers,& Helping our Ecosystem by Breeding Genetically Superior Honeybees When entering the world of beekeeping, its important to do your research and learn all you can about your new buzzing friends. That way you not only grow your knowledge and have better success in caring for your bees, but you can also become a bee advocate. Honeybees or Apis melliferais a domesticated honeybee that is native to Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. They have been introduced all over the world including to United States. Honeybees are social incest’s who live in large colonies that can contain thousands of female workers and one queen bee.  The queen bee’s job is to lay eggs for the hive; Fertilized eggs become female worker bees. While unfertilised eggs will become male bees or Drones – Drones are typically only seen during the spring mating season and their only purpose is to reproduce with young queens. Apiculture or Beekeeping is the human management of honeybee colonies to harvest honey. Apiculture dates back almost 10,000 years ago starting back in Ancient Egypt. Today, modern beekeepers typically create human made beehives that have rows of wooden frames with wax for the bees to build – most hives in the USA follow Langstroth dimensions, this type of hive has been used for over 150 years and allows the beekeeper to be able to easily access the bees, the honey, and the brood (Bee Larva) Honeybees main product of course is honey, people have been consuming honey for centuries, its high sugar contain makes it a great natural sweetener. Honeybees also produce many different products other than honey. They create beeswax from their glandular secretion that they use to build the cells to storage both the brood and the honey. Beeswax has multiple uses; you can create candles, skincare products, and more. Honeybees are an extremely valuable pollinator – a pollinator is a creature that carries pollen from plant to plant to help them produce seeds, flowers, fruits, and vegetables. Honeybees play an important role in our ecosystem as they pollinate a third of the world’s food production and help pollinate more than 100 crops in the US. Honeybees contribute to our biodiversity – the biodiversity is the mixture of creatures, plants, and organism who contribute to the ecosystem. In the United States, there are over 4,000 native species of bees that range in different sizes and colors; while all bees may not create honey, all bees do help pollinate our world. When bees land on the plants, pollen will then gather behind the bee’s legs called pollen baskets and is carried to other plants as they forage. Honeybees are the only insect in the world who creates food for humans – Honey. When bees are collecting nectar, they do so by collecting nectar into their mouths and into an organ called a honey stomach. When the workers return to the hive, they regurgitate the nectar in a chain until the bee’s enzymes have broken the nectar down into simple sugars. Once this process is completed, the nectar is dehydrated to have less than 20% of water, then it’s sealed in a honeycomb chamber with beeswax. Also long as the honey is properly stored, it can last for years to come. The main threats to honeybees are grouped into what scientist call “the four p’s”Pesticides, pests, pathogens, and poor nutrition. As our world evolves and commercial farming grows, so has the use of pesticides. These chemicals are a threat to the native insect population and has a negative impact on our environment. Luckily many countries have become aware of these issues and have changed regulations to call for a reduction in pesticides. In the United States, there are two different types of mites that are harmful to Honeybees: tracheal mite (Acarapis woodii) and Varroa mite (Varroa destructor) Tracheal Mites:These mites are microscopic parasites that live inside the tracheae in the body of Honeybees – the trachea are the breathing tu