Commercial Opperation

My next stop was at a queen breeder’s apiary in a small village called Moshav Orot. The landscape around that area was interesting; most of the landscape was all agricultural based with small villages scattered around. In that area there are three major beekeepers each have at least 100 hives. There many acres of; orange, avocados, eucalyptus, and mango trees. Though the trees produce some nectar and pollen for the honey bees the main thing that this beekeeper was complaining about was the amount of pesticides that are put on all these trees. Due to the immense monoculture of the area, certain times of the year large amounts of nectar would be brought into the hive. Once these nectar sources ended a dearth took place, because there weren’t enough other sources of food for the bees. This caused the bees to starve. He showed me the practice that he has implemented to combat the dearth period, this is to plant many types of eucalyptus trees. Certain types of eucalyptus trees can produce over a full super of honey per tree. He took me to one of these trees that had been planted twenty years before. He told me to take the flower and shake it; shaking the flower caused nectar to come gushing out. His plan is to increase the amount of honey he can produce as well as feed his bees through the planting of these eucalyptus trees. The bees that he used were golden in color resembling the Italians; he told me that if he was to use any other color of honey bee no one would buy his queens. This is because in that area the feral honey bee, Syrian bee, was a darker color and is more defensive. This causes people to see all dark colored bees as not enjoyable to work with. His apiaries are located in two different locations in his village. The first was in his back yard he had approximately 40 hives and 90 mating nucs in this location. He dedicated 3 of his hives to the queen production. The other 37 hives in his back yard were there for growing bees to distribute to the queen producing hives as well as honey production. His other yard was under a eucalyptus grove that his mentor had planted 30+ years ago. Under the eucalyptus a vibrant forest of flowers, trees, and shrubs naturally occurred. In this area he had 20 hives and 100 mating nucs. The distance between the two yards was approximately ½ a kilometer, a distance that drones from both yards could mate with the surrounding queens.

Commercial Operation

I had the opportunity to work at a commercial operation. At this operation they ran 4000 hives all over Israel. Though I had worked on small scale commercial operation working on a 4000 hive apiary was one of the most challenging things I had done in the bee world. Every yard we went had approximately 100 hives. We fed them large amount of sugar syrup. In Israel most commercial operations keep their brood chamber to a single super. The hives were in avocado, orange, and mango orchards. The beekeepers are happy with the avocados because avocado growers have no need to spray chemicals. Working the bees at this operation became a rhythm, pour out the old sugar syrup, open the hive, go to the bottom super, take off the queen excluder, take out two brood frames bring them to the top super, put foundation frames into the bottom super, put the queen excluder back on, put the top super back in place, feed them sugar syrup and repeat with a new hive.