APICULTURE – GOLDEN SWEETNESS
Apiculture is a management of bee colonies in an artificial beehive to produce honey and wax.
HONEY is a substance made by gathering of nectar and the sweet deposition from plants. It is a nutritious viscus fluid collected by honeybees which is good for human health. In ancient period honey is used as food, medicine etc.
At some extinct bees are responsible for pollination, so bee keeping may increase the yield of different crops and plays an important role to generate employment opportunities for the rural areas.
The bees are divided into three castes,
1. Queen
2. Drone
3. Worker.
The queen bee lays thousands of eggs, the worker bee collects nectar and the drone bee fertilizes the eggs laid by the queen bee.
STEPS INVOLVED
1. Choosing a good location for apiary, where there is good source of raw material.
2. Setting up the boxes, which are made of in-distractable material.
3. Addition of sugar syrup or any other attractants to attract bees.
4. Harvesting honey from hive boxes.
5. Extracting products and storing them in a conditioned environment.
6. Finally selling in market
The good quality honey starts at bee farms. Bee-keeping activity should generally locate where there is a minimum movement of human-beings with no noise pollution, where there should be no disturbance in the manufacturing process. Priority should be like forest area therefore, suited with many flowering plants naturally grown. wooden frames which are movable with boxes are placed at such locations and these boxes are spread with syrups to attract more and more honeybees. These bees leave fresh nectar sucked from flowers in the cells of honeycomb provided in the boxes to eat bee feed. When these cells are full of honey, then they are sealed by capping with wax and then honey is extracted from these cells. Newly extracted honey is warm and easy to transfer in bottle. Honey readily absorbs moisture so it should be stored in dry places.
USES:
• Honey has good medicinal properties.
• Simultaneously, Honey is used extensively in making ayurvedic medicines.
• Honey was used for variety of disease conditions including eye diseases, asthma, throat infections, tuberculosis, thirst, hiccups, fatigue, dizziness, hepatitis B, constipation, worm infestation, piles, eczema, healing of ulcers, and wounds in traditional medicine.
• Acts as healthy alternative to sugar, a natural cough syrup and also improves digestion.
DISADVANTAGES
• Forager bees able to transmit bacteria, play a key role in transmission of pollen born viruses.
• Bee can also collect some poisonous pollen of some plant species and store them in their colonies, this phenomenon is known as bee poisoning.