Today, honey bees are found in all parts of the world, except for the polar regions. Many amateurs and professionals are passionate about beekeeping, approaching this business with special care and attention.
Today’s beekeepers choose modern hives for bees, which allow them to provide comfortable living for pets and high yields of marketable honey. They carefully study thematic articles, implement other people’s advice in practice, gaining their own invaluable experience. And, most importantly, the destruction of bees with whole nests for the sake of obtaining honey is no longer practiced! The apiary has become an environmentally friendly and completely humane business.
The content of the article
- 1 Beekeeping before 1500
- 2 Improvement of beekeeping techniques
- 3 Our days
- 4 Types of hives
- 5 design Features
- 6 In conclusion
Beekeeping before 1500
Until the beginning of the 7th century, the habitat of honey bees was the Old World. The first depiction of a man robbing nests in hollows dates back to 000 BC. The corresponding drawing was discovered by scientists in caves in the east of Spain.
Actually, the origin of primitive beekeeping can be attributed to this period. People have learned to keep honey bees in tree hollows, gradually replacing them with other types of makeshift dwellings.
We can say with certainty that modern hives do not have a single place of origin! Bee dwellings were created and refined in all regions, as people stopped roaming and gathering. And their design directly depended on the materials used and the skill of folk craftsmen of a particular settlement.
In areas where trees did not grow, they practiced the use of clay vessels. Ancient Egypt used boots – special baskets with a narrow neck, coated on top with white clay or cow dung. Similar finds have been found in England (Yorkshire Valley) and other regions of Europe.
The volume of the sapetka was small compared to modern bee houses. Swarms were inhabited in it, waiting for their development and the period of honey collection. After that, the bees were destroyed by immersion in boiling water, and honey and wax were withdrawn for their own needs.
Later, burning sulfur was used to kill insects. The beekeeping calendar was limited to working with swarms. At the beginning of summer, beekeepers caught swarms in their natural habitat and put them in homemade hives. They poisoned the bees with sulfur at the end of the season and cut out the honeycomb.
Until the XNUMXth century, some beekeepers practiced keeping bee colonies in winter. In this case, the combs cut out in the destroyed nests were given as food to the wintering bees.
This beekeeping technology was due to ignorance of the processes taking place inside the hives.
Since the 1625th century, the development of science in general has made it possible to understand the basic life cycles and biology of honey bees. Scientists began to observe life inside the bee dwelling. A number of scientific treatises and works have been published on this topic. For example, in Italy in XNUMX, even a member of the royal family was engaged in research – Prince Cesi published the first drawings of bees made with a microscope.
Improvement of beekeeping techniques
For the next three hundred years, beekeepers tried to invent ways to select honey without destroying their pets. In particular, the bees were driven out of the hives, united for the winter in one large house. The queens fought among themselves, as a result, the strongest female remained. She also went to winter.
Another method of humane beekeeping of those times was the use of extensions in the form of a sapet or glass cone. Here the bees rebuilt the combs and stored honey, while the brood remained in the nesting tier of the hive. Or a box of planks used by insects to store honey stocks was attached to the side.
Closer to 1800-1850, many designs were invented, equipped with top bars and frames. But the beekeepers failed to achieve a breakthrough – to open the so-called “bee space”.
In 1806 a beekeeper from Ukraine created the first bee house equipped with movable honeycombs. The design of Pyotr Prokopovich had three vertical sections. In the upper compartment there were honeycomb frames with slots at the ends of the bars for the unhindered movement of insects. The honeycomb frames were taken out through the back plane of the dwelling. It was a structural breakthrough of its time! But, unfortunately, the fundamental idea of the beekeeper was not understood and accepted – this type of hive never became widely known in the professional environment.
The step that changed the state of affairs in beekeeping was made by the American Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth. In 1851, he invented the well-known suspended movable honeycomb frames. The inventor was the first to understand that insects do not build up the “bee space” left between the honeycomb frames and the walls of the dwelling. The frames really began to move freely when needed!
Newly designed hives began to be widely used in the United States, and ten years later they were brought to the UK. The modern bee hive spread to Europe thanks to the notorious Charles Dadant and his articles that appeared in popular French and Italian magazines.
This discovery became the starting point of modern beekeeping. In the coming years, an artificial foundation was invented (1857, Germany, Johann Mehring). Store extensions have been developed. The first centrifugal honey extractor was constructed in Austria (1865, Major F. Grushka). A dividing grid was created (1865, France, Abbot Collin). Bee remover invented (1891, USA, E.C. Porter).
In short, the modern beekeeping system was defined in a short period from 1850 to 1900. We are reaping the fruits of that revolutionary breakthrough to this day – beekeepers widely use the Langstroth-Root and Dadan-Blatt systems.
The manufacture of hives for bees is most often carried out precisely according to the drawings proposed by the above inventors. These are the well-known Dadans and multi-body hives (risers or verticals) – the most common models of bee housing in the world.
Our days
So what should a modern hive look like? Team . believes that the currently used “modern” designs are time-tested classics, or structural improvements based on it.
But when it comes to materials, there is an obvious breakthrough in technology. Nowadays, new building materials are used for the manufacture of houses – various polymers that retain heat well and are lightweight.
An analogue of the Finnish bee box can be created in any home workshop, if you wish! How to do it yourself, you can read in our separate article:
Production of beehives from expanded polystyrene plates
Such a modern bee house has both its obvious advantages and some disadvantages that the apiary owners will have to reckon with.
Types of hives
Making a modern bee hive is impossible without knowing the typical variety of these products.
There are houses with horizontal development of the bee nest… Beekeepers actively use several types of sun beds:
- classic for 20 or 24 frames;
- Vladimir with an increased volume of up to 32 frames;
- for 16 cell frames with extensions;
- Ukrainian, equipped with narrow-high frames inverted by 90 degrees;
- Lazutin, also on a narrow high frame.
Their designs and dimensions can be found at the following links:
Plank bed from Fedor Lazutin
Vladimirsky lounger
Ukrainian beehive lounger
16-frame beehive – basic beekeeping methods
How to assemble a beehive lounger with your own hands
Multihull designs are also extremely popular.… The classics in this segment are represented by Rut and Dadan models. There are interesting improvements based on them, for example, the design of Cebro or Boa by Vladimir Davydov.
You can read about all this here:
Multihull hives – appearance, design
Dadanovsky hive – features, advantages, manufacturing
Beehive designed by Vladimir Petrovich Tsebro
Beehive Boa by Vladimir Davydov
Beehive designed by Mikhail Palivoda (horned)
design Features
Any of the bee houses, regardless of its type, consists of:
- from one or more cases, outwardly resembling a box;
- from the bottom, which, depending on the design, can be detachable, complete with a mesh for collecting mites, debris, ventilation, as well as solid (deaf, integral);
- from ceilings – special boards or a shield that forms an overlap on top of the frames;
- from a sub-roof that facilitates the installation of a warming mattress and a feeder (not all structures have a sub-roof);
- from the cover – a gable, flat or single-sided shield, upholstered with roofing material;
- from store extensions (these elements are only in multi-hull structures and sunbeds designed for their installation).
A board for the arrival of bees must be installed outside. In the body, tap holes (above) and slots (below) are made. To separate the nests or to restrict them, diaphragms are used – deaf plug-in boards, suspended inside on folds like honeycombs. And the movement of the queens is limited by special dividing bars.
The complete set with frames is carried out depending on the type and size of the dwelling. Dadanovsky standard – 435 by 300 mm, rutovsky (multi-body) – 435 by 230 mm. In store extensions, honeycombs measuring 435 x 145 mm are placed. There are other non-standard sizes used in special hive designs.
The number of honeycomb frames also depends on the type of house. From 16 to 32 frames are installed in the lounger. In vertical houses from 8 to 12 cell frames for each building.
In conclusion
Despite the abundance of modern building materials, quality wood is still preferred today. The tree ensures the ecological safety of the bee dwelling, at the same time providing a microclimate inside the nest as close as possible to its natural habitat.
But at the same time, in regions with a harsh climate, one cannot refuse from expanded polystyrene or polyurethane foam – materials that provide a comfortable and safe wintering.
As for the variety of models, detachable bottom hives are considered more modern, since non-collapsible houses are bulky and inconvenient to use when it comes to wandering.
Summarizing the above, we note once again that in the case of choosing the best hive for your apiary, practice and personal experience decide everything. A beekeeper should rely only on them and common sense, regardless of his experience.
