Honeybee Plants That Bees Choose. Honeydew Honey

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

With the onset of warm, stable summer days and nights, when flowering plants release nectar in abundance, bee colonies leave the swarm state (the reproductive instinct), actively switch to collecting nectar and pollen, and the hive bees are busy processing it into the final product, honey and bee bread. without storage of significant reserves of which the further existence and development of the bee colony is inconceivable.

As can be seen from the lifestyle of these social insects, where each bee performs a certain job during its development, and in critical cases can quickly switch to other activities in the interests of its community, they remain strict vegetarians, consuming honey as a carbohydrate feed, and in a certain the time of its development - protein fodder: plant pollen stored in the cells of the combs, processed under the influence of fermentation bacteria into bee bread, filled with a small amount of honey as a preservative. In everyday life, this product is highly valued for its high nutritional and medicinal properties, it is also called "bee bread".

The benefits of phenological observations

If you have already acquired bees or intend to thoroughly prepare for the coming spring-summer season, you need to do phenological observations. This term should be understood as observing the timing of flowering of plants that produce nectar and pollen in the area of the apiary. At the same time, one should pay attention to many other factors of the behavior of bees and, of course, to weather conditions. The duration of flight of bees during daylight hours and much more are also important.

It is advisable to keep a diary of observations, where every day, or as important changes in nature, it is necessary to record only significant deviations from ordinary behavior, to record past events in chronological order by day and hour.

Having collected detailed information for a certain period of bee development and analyzed it over several years, the beekeeper, depending on the previously obtained observations, can predict the expected situation in advance, which saves time and, of course, significant funds.

This information includes the following: the weight gain of the control hive, if it is possible to install it on the scales and record it daily. It is also a fixation of weight loss during long, cloudy cold weather. It is necessary to reflect weather factors - temperature day and night, wind, precipitation and more; years of bees - weak, medium, strong - relative to the strength of the family, according to the number of streets covered; the beginning and end of flowering of the melliferous plants prevailing in the region.

In the same records, according to the numbering of the hives, the main phenomena from the life of the family should be described - the first cleaning flight, the first bringing pollen pollen to the nest, the beginning of whitewashing the combs with fresh wax, the appearance of the first drone brood, the time of laying swarm bowls and swarm queen cells, the emergence of swarms as the first, and the latter (this is with the admission of natural swarming), the time of expelling the drones from the hive, the assembly of the nest for winter maintenance, the time of carrying out preventive measures to combat diseases and pests of bees. When feeding, it is necessary to pay attention to the rate and timing of the use of medicinal products, in order to evaluate their effect later. Phenological observations make it possible to draw up a flowering calendar for honey plants in your area.

Honey plants that a bee chooses. Depending on the climatic conditions in your area, summer honey collection can include the flowering of plants such as white clover, various field weeds, for example, wild radish, field mustard, cornflower, sedum, sow thistle, raspberry and many others. Late summer melliferous plants include plants that bloom after linden flowering, until about mid-August. These are alfalfa, sweet clover, rapeseed, willow-herb, meadow geranium, mint, sage and many others. Of the especially productive honey plants for the North-West region, several plants can be distinguished and their productivity can be traced, but since continuous crops of homogeneous plants are rare and weather conditions always make their own adjustments, the given figures of honey productivity from one hectare of area are rather arbitrary, but compared to other melliferous plants,who only give supportive bribes are very revealing.

Meadow geranium - 22 kg / ha; biennial white sweet clover - 200-300 kg / ha; ivan tea - 350 kg / ha; white clover - 100 kg / ha; small-leaved linden - from 500 and more kg / ha; raspberries - up to 150 kg / ha; bruise - 400 kg / ha; meadow sage - 150 kg / ha.

However, you should pay attention to the fact that linden, for a number of reasons, does not produce the expected nectar annually and, as a rule, a successful coincidence in its collection on it happens once every 4-5 years. A more stable honey plant in time and where it exists is white clover, willow tea, and, of course, common bruise. It should be discussed separately. This plant grows along roads on dry slopes, wastelands, and quickly infests farmland that is not properly maintained. For its unpretentiousness and honey productivity, the bruise can be attributed to the best honey plants in the region after Ivan-tea. It blooms for about two months, honey productivity in nature is from 250 to 400 kg / ha, and in culture it gives at least 500 kg / ha.

The honey is thick, light amber, high quality, aromatic, crystallizes slowly, fine-grained.

Another melliferous plant that should be paid attention to is a perennial herb of the fireweed family - narrow-leaved ivan tea.

In connection with the uncontrolled barbaric felling of forests and frequent forest fires, free territories appear - felling and burning, which quickly fill the thickets of willow-herb and raspberries. As for the properties of willow tea as a melliferous plant, in the taiga forests of Russia it is one of the main melliferous plants, and in the European part of Russia one can expect a collection of honey from 100 to 250 kg / ha.

Honey has a slightly greenish color, delicate taste, weak aroma; honey crystallizes into a fine-grained snow-white mass.

This list of the advantages of honey plants in the North-West can be continued, but, perhaps, it is necessary to set out in more detail those negative circumstances that a beekeeper who has no idea about the causes and consequences of such a non-infectious disease of bees as honeydew toxicosis can meet at any time.

Is honeydew honey a blessing or not?

During phenological observations, it is possible to identify the beginning of a tipping-free period, when weather conditions prevent the production of nectar from flowering plants, and plant pests are activated in favorable weather conditions. It can be a long hot dry summer, and sudden temperature changes at night and daytime, and some other factors.

Under such unfavorable weather conditions, bees do not have the opportunity to replenish their food reserves, i.e. there comes a non-draft period. However, at this time, a sweet sticky liquid may appear on the leaves of many trees, some shrubs, conifers and even cereal plants, which is released by some plants independently (honeydew), but most often by plant pests - aphids, leaf beetles, worms that feed on plant sap, and also some fungi and bacteria.

This sweet liquid - a waste product of plants, pests, fungi and bacteria - is usually called honeydew and honeydew, and the disease that occurs in bees as a result of the consumption of honey obtained from honeydew is called honeydew toxicosis, which is characterized by a disorder of the digestive organs of adult bees in winter.

According to studies carried out by Russian scientists, data have been obtained that one aphid feeding on the juice of a linden leaf for 24 hours can release up to 0.00875 cm3 of honeydew, and the vital activity of aphid colonies can range from 34 to 190 days. A lot of honeydew can be observed in the forest zone, and again, under favorable conditions for its development.

Most often, this phenomenon can be observed in the second half of summer. In the absence of a bribe from plants, bees willingly switch to collecting honeydew, in which the sugar content in the hot time of the day can reach 70-80%, but best of all they take honeydew in the morning, between 11-12 hours and, of course, in the evening, from 16-17 hours.

This honey from honeydew is much darker than flower honey, but from conifers, for example from fir, it can be almost transparent. The taste of such honey depends on the nectar of plants that was previously present in the combs or collected from the plant when a bribe occurs.

In terms of the composition of sugars, honeydew honey differs significantly from flower honey, and the presence of ash residue in it is high and, of course, the content of various mineral salts in it is 8-10 times higher.

It has an increased content of potassium, iron, manganese, revealed 20 essential amino acids, essential oils, organic acids and biologically active substances.

The coniferous pad has a high antimicrobial activity, but at the same time it contains a large amount of algae and spores of many fungi, both carried by the air flow to the pad and developing in this habitat.

In some countries of Western Europe, honeydew belongs to the main source of honey collection and for its high content of various salts, amino acids are highly valued in the domestic market. We have, according to the handbook on diseases and pests of bees, with a favorable development of the honeydew, for example, in the Ryazan region, up to 726 kg of honeydew was obtained from one hectare of elm, and 774 kg from linden.

But honeydew honey is not suitable for keeping bees in winter and, as a rule, its consumption ends in the death of the family. This is usually due to the fact that the increased content of melesitose in it leads to rapid crystallization of honey and bees can die from starvation, although there will be a sufficient amount of food in the nest.

The increased introduction of spores of various fungi into honey, high humidity in the hives often lead to honey fermentation, it becomes unsuitable for further feeding to bees. The consumption of such honey in winter contributes to the overload of the bee's intestines with various indigestible substances and to premature defecation on the surface of the honeycomb and the walls of the hive, which contributes to the infection of bees with pathogens of intestinal infections.

But most often, bees become infected with microbes, causative agents of nosemosis, and their life expectancy is sharply reduced. In the summer, with the vigorous activity of bees, this disease is rare.

The diagnosis of honeydew toxicosis can be made on the basis of studying the behavior of bees, indicating the signs of this disease, but it is possible to accurately answer all the questions that have arisen only as a result of opening the bees and laboratory research of honey for the presence of honeydew.

The main preventive measures to prevent honeydew toxicosis are replacing honeydew honey with flower honey collected in the first half of summer, when there was no honeydew or there was a steady flow from honey plants. For bees located in the forest zone, it is imperative to replace part of the feed with sugar syrup.

And if an unfavorable wintering is found, it is advisable to give the bees water, and when a thaw sets in, allow them to quickly carry out a cleaning flight of the family.