HONEYBEE KEEPING: An alternative livelihood

CEBU, Philippines - Honeybee keeping or apiculture is the art of caring for and manipulating colonies of honeybees so they will produce and store a quantity of honeybee products above their own needs.

Many products are derived from culturing honeybees. Honey may be the most common and popularly-known bee product. Other products include the pollen, royal jelly, bees wax propolis and bee venom. Aside from the nutritional and medicinal value of honeybee products, bees are also efficient pollinators thus increasing crop yield. Scientists recognized the important ecological relationship of pollinators to plant diversity conservation and increased seed production of plants.

Honeybee keeping is an environment-friendly enterprise considering that bees are important crop pollinators, thereby promoting seeds yield, fruit-setting and increase yield of various plants. Likewise, communities that are into beekeeping will surely do away with pesticides and will protect vegetations which are the sources of food for the bees.

Studies conducted locally and abroad show that honeybee pollination increases crop yield by up to 40 percent. In some plants (like sunflower), seeds are only produced when the flowers are cross pollinated. Cereal crops like corn and plant such as banana, mango, coconut, coffee, cacao, citrus, peanut, mongo, tomato, eggplant, etc. are favorites of honeybees. A marked increase in yield can be expected when these plants are pollinated by honeybees (Baconawa).

The Philippines has diverse vegetation, which is a good source of nectar and pollen for the bees. However, during the last decade, beekeepers preferred the imported species of honeybee, the Apis mellifera than the native. This is because of the high honey yield of the imported species.

Honeybee keeping is an income generating venture which encourages the participation of women in economic activities. It involves women-friendly technology that requires less time and labor.

Methods of Production – When to Start a Colony

The best time to start a colony is during summer. Flowers are in bloom for sufficient source of nectar and pollen. Procure bee from a reliable source. Usually, a package colony is a three-framed colony with the presence of all the stages of brood-egg, larva and pupa, a young good laying queen and presence of pollen and nectar. The colony should be free from mites and diseases.

An initial amount of P10,500.00 is required as working capital in which P6,500.00 is the cost of one nucleus colony with three brood frames and seven frames with foundation waxes. The P4,000.00 covers the cost of the tools and other materials which includes the smoker, hive tool, pollen trap, queen excluder and super hive.

– The Bee Colony

The bee colony is composed of the queen, the drones and the workers. A strong colony of Apis mellifera of 14 frames could have a population of 50,000 workers, a queen, a few drones, 6,000 eggs, 10,000 larvae and 20,000 pupae.

The queen is the female parent of the colony. Her role is only to lay eggs in the colony. A queen lays 1,000 to 1,500 eggs a day (DENR-CAR). Pheromones produced by the queen are responsible for the coherence of the colony. The drones are the male bees responsible for mating. Drones are stouter and larger than queens or workers. Worker bees are the smallest and the most numerous members of the honeybee colony.

They are responsible in feeding newly hatched larvae with royal jelly. They collect pollen, nectar, propolis and water and bring them to the hive. Some worker bees remain to guard, clean and build wax combs. These also include the nurse bees that feed the young and queen, and regulate the temperature of the hive.

Honeybee Keeping Tools and Materials

The following are the needed tools and materials for honeybee culture:

a) Smoker – used to generate smoke for subduing honeybees.

b) Bee veil – used to protect the neck and face of the beekeeper from bee sting.

c) Gloves – used to protect hands from bee sting.

d) Hive tool – used to help move apart the hive frames inside the bee colony. It is used for scraping wax and propolis inside the hive.

e) Bee brush – used for removing bees from comb.

f) Bee hive – a container provided for honeybees to nest in.

g) Frames with foundation – it is embedded to the hive, where honey comb is built-up for honey storage and bee multiplication.

h) Honey extraction – a cylindrical drum with at least 2 frames containers inside into which a handle is a hached and driven manually to create centrifungal force which spills out the honey from the uncapped honey comb.

Colony/Hive Management

1. Inspection of the Colonies

Honeybee colonies should be inspected weekly or once every two weeks. Inspection is done to check the presence or absence of pests and diseases, check if there is enough food for the bees, determine when to add frame with foundation wax and assess the queen’s performance in terms of laying eggs.

There are some tips when inspecting honeybee colonies:

a) Use bee veil to avoid sting.

b) Do not stand in front of the hive, the foraging bees will blocked.

c) Lift the upper cover of the hive gently and puff smoke including the entrance of the hive with the use of the smoker. You may not use the smoker when bees seem to be gentle.

d) Remove one frame at a time and inspect both sides. Examine the rest of the frames and arrange them in such a way that the queen will be provided with empty cells to lay her eggs. See to it that food and brood frames could not block the queen in finding cells where she can lay her eggs.

e) In arranging frames inside the hive, food frames should be placed at the outside most portion of the hive, followed by the sealed brood frames, then the larvae and egg frames. This is done to protect the larvae and eggs from predators and other bee enemies and because they still need a warmer temperature for their development into pupa stage.

2. Brood Rearing

During honeyflow, population of bees in a colony shall be increased in order to have plenty of worker bees to gather nectar and pollen. They store their honey and pollen during summertime in preparation for rainy season. But since the stored honey will be harvested by the beekeeper, the supply left in brood area will not be sufficient to sustain bees during the rainy days. Therefore, supplemental feeding using sugar is necessary during dearth period. The syrup is made of sugar with the following concentrations:

60% sugar + 40% water – comb building

40% sugar + 60% water – maintenance of the population

50% sugar + 50% water – brood rearing

The sugar syrup is placed in a plastic bag (preferably the 3cm x 16cm ice water cellophane wrapper) pinch with a hole and placed on top of the frames/hive.

The following are some tips in feeding bees.

a) Never feed when it is raining.

b) Reduce the entrance of the bee hives.

c) Take great care not to spill sugar syrup in the apiary, this will cause robbing.

d) See to it that feeders are not accessible from outside predators and intruders.

 To increase population, the space for the queen to lay her eggs must not be restricted. However, if the space is more what is needed, this must be avoided. The addition of empty comb must have proper timing.

A colony or hive with few worker bees need support of either sealed or brood bees to maintain the moral of both worker and queen bees. Brood support can be from other colony of the same strain and known to have been free from diseases.

Harvesting and Marketing

Harvesting of honey can be done in two methods. The first one is selective harvesting wherein frames with ripe honey or sealed frames with honey are selected for harvest. The other method is harvesting once about the end of the honey flow.

The honey is extracted from the frame with the use of centrifugal honey extractor. The honey produced is transferred to sterilized bottles, sealed and labeled for market.

Post Harvest Management

After honeyflow, colonies can either be maintained in a standard box or spilled into nucleus colonies depending on the next purpose of the colonies. To minimize cost of feeding during dearth period, population of bees shall be reduced to about four to five frames. Feeding should be done to maintain the moral of bees. Colony that was used for the honey flow should be fed to avoid swarming and collapsing of the colony.

Gender Responsiveness

Honeybee keeping activities are just very light and easy tasks to do, except when a beekeeper will be the one to make the boxes and frames for beehives, because it already needs the skill of a carpenter. Basic beekeeping activities include inspection and feeding of the colony, which is done on weekly basis, application of treatment when pests and disease will occur; splitting of colony if a beekeeper wants to expand or add for another colony; merging of colony if one colony is found queenless; harvesting of honey and pollen during honeyflow period; and making of boxes and frames as beehives if a beekeeper has the skill to do so. These activities are considered gender-friendly tasks because both husband and wife can share or do alone these activities in the absence of one. Even their 8-10 year old children can assist them in the basic manipulation of beekeeping.

Marketing Considerations

The demand for honey and other bee products in the country is undeniably high that beekeepers can not even cope up to supply the local markets. The project had not done any market study of the honey produced by the beekeepers in Guadalupe. However, the project felt the necessity of having that market study to identify other market outlets of the product. As of the moment, direct buyers of the honey produced by the PO are the local communities in the area and nearby barangays and the employees of the DENR (Regional Office, CENRO and PENRO Cebu). 

Their previous harvests were not enough to supply the needs of these consumers. A bottle of honey (375 ml) is sold at P150.00 at farm gate price (PO price patterned after Cebu Honeybeekeepers Association, Inc.) in 2005-2007. At present a bottle of 375ml honey is already sold at P 250.00. An individual buyer purchase an average of two to three bottles, but there are some buyers who purchased by gallons. Hence, there are demands to pack the honey in gallons (4 liters capacity). At present, the PO used breakable bottles of wine locally termed “lapad” in packaging with a capacity of 375 ml.

In terms of quantity, the honey harvested did not meet the needs of the consumers. Many orders were not served because of insufficient supply of honey. In terms of quality, honey produced in Guadalupe, Carcar is one of the tasteful and best honey in Cebu considering that the sources of nectar are mango and other fruit trees, coconut and some forest trees.

It is called a multi-floral honey, known as the best kind of honey. However, the quality of packaging the product needs to be improved and proper labeling should be done. Label of product is important to advertise the producer of the honey and to inform the consumer about its source. (FREEMAN NEWS)