The end of May means the end of acacia pollen collection and the beginning of acacia honey. Across Italy, beekeepers are starting the delicate work of extracting this precious ‘nectar’ from their hives. Honey from acacia is one of the first to be harvested each year and is widely appreciated for its gentle taste and golden colour.
Have you ever wondered how beekeeprs collect and harvest honey? Special hives that are grouped together in an apiary is central to the work and in this post, we are explaining how they function.
DEFINITION OF AN APIARY
An apiary is where manmade beehives are kept. Hives are enclosed structures that are designed with the purpose of raising a colony and then collecting the honey without harming the bees. An apiary is the place where either hobbyists or professional beekeepers house their hives for optimal performance. Natural hives are actually called nests and it is impossible to collect the honey without destroying it, whereas hives are structured with frames for the bees to build comb, just as they would in the nest and organize the colony into brooding cells and production cells.
ITALICA – CARLINI
The history of honey is full of various types of hives used by man: straw, terracotta, or even hollowed logs laid in strategic vertical/horizontal arrangements. Throughout most of this history it was nearly impossible to collect honey without destroying the hive and the colony. These traditional hives are called ‘fixed-frame’ since they were simply built to protect the colony while producing honey, but since there were no internal structures in the hive, the bees would build honeycomb in an uncontrolled way which led to its eventual destruction when it came time to collect. Overtime fixed-frame hives slowly developed into what today are called ‘mobile-frame’ hives, which meant beekeepers could both collect honey and ensure the continuation of their colony. A pioneer in this method of hive-building was Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth, an American shepherd and inventor who built the first top-open box hive with moveable frames based on his study of ‘bee-space.’ Today, the most widely used hives in Italy are called Italica-Carlini and are based on the Langstroth hive with key modifications introduced by Johan Blatt and Charles Dadant. The immense success of these hives is clear. In 1932, the National Congress of Beekeepers chose the Italica-Carlini hive as the best in practice for Italian beekeepers and it hasn’t changed since!
THE STRUCTURE
The structure of Italica-Carlini hives can be divided into three basic parts: the lower section, the boxes and the upper section.
LOWER SECTION (A)
The lower section (fig.1) provides the foundation of the entire hive as well as the main entrance/exit for the bees. This section can also be broken down into the three main parts: the bottom board which provides the bottom closure of the hive and has an extended ‘landing board’ where the bees can enter or exit the hive (fig. 3), a verroa destructor which functions as a separator between the hive and harmful varroa mites (a common pest to bees) (fig.2) and lastly, a metal grid (fig.4) that is placed at the entrance of the boxes that stops bigger bugs and animals from entering the hive.
BOXES (B)
The box or boxes can be best described as the nest of the hive. Each box houses between 8-10 frames and foundations (fig.5). The frames are generally made of wood and the foundation is a waxed sheet of paper with an etched comb design that are mounted with wire into the frame. These foundations are used to aid the bees in the creation of honeycomb where the eggs are laid and honey is stored. In this hive system, the box (or multiple boxes if the colony is large) is generally used as the brooding nest as it is warmer, which is essential to survival of the queen and the eggs. The last frame in this system is designed with a specific end frame (fig. 6) that allows worker bees, but not the queen, to ascend into the upper section where they store honey.
UPPER SECTION (C)
This is a secondary, shallower wooden box that rests on top of the nesting box and also has frames and foundations (fig.7). The queen is not able to access this section of the hive to ensure that no eggs are laid in the comb, where they are less prone to survive. This is essentially where all the honey is stored. Honey is basically a bee’s food, and so it is important that they have enough of a supply of it in the comb throughout the winter, but if the production season was particularly difficult, the beekeeper can feed the bees. This is done with the hive inner cover (fig.8) which has a hole cut out where a feeder can be placed if necessary. The entire hive is capped with a top cover (fig.9) which is usually made of metal to provide the best protection of the hive throughout the winter.
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