Breeding bumblebees for honey. Bee and bumblebee honey: myths and reality

Technique and Internet 12.06.2019
Technique and Internet

They belong to the bee family and have a similar lifestyle with bees. They also live big families and collect nectar from flowering plants. They are difficult, so every student knows what they look like. But not many can say with certainty whether bumblebees make honey.

On a note!

Furry relatives of bees are able to process the nectar they collect with the help of special enzymes into a sweet and nutritious product called honey. They feed the larvae and feed on adults. The dessert created by bumblebees is no less healthy and tasty than bee dessert, and is of great value to people.

Collection of nectar by insects

The furry family has a strict hierarchy. The main female lays eggs and is responsible for increasing the offspring. She doesn't fly out of the nest. Working females make up the majority of the bumblebee family. They must use their long proboscises to collect nectar from plants and bring it to the hive. Worker bumblebees process their prey into honey. The life and well-being of the entire bumblebee nest depends on the performance of these family members.

Females, unable to reproduce, bring another benefit. They are able to collect nectar from 30 flowers in one minute. For this reason, they are deservedly considered the most effective plant pollinators. Bees during the same time manage to fly around only 10-12 inflorescences. And the working day of the bees is much shorter than that of their opponents.

Interesting!

Good vision of hairy insects allows them to collect flower fluid in rainy weather and even at dusk. Bees cannot boast of such abilities.

Male drones do not collect nectar. They build honeycombs in the form of deep cells, similar to closed water lilies. In some cells there are eggs and larvae, in others food supplies, including bee bread and pollen. With them they feed the growing larvae, so in need of nutritious and wholesome food. Bumblebee honey meets all these requirements and is the main feeding for offspring.

Features of the bumblebee product

The taste and texture of bumblebee delicacy are significantly different from the usual bee product. The bumblebee produces its honey from liquid nectar, in which there is more water in percentage terms. This is due to the fact that bumblebees prefer to pollinate plants whose flower juice is more liquid:

  • meadow clover;
  • pikulnik;
  • medicinal black root;
  • purpurea purpurea and others.

The floral fluid of these plants contains a large amount of water - up to 80%. Bees do not collect such nectar, preferring acacia and linden flowers, in which it is thicker. The density of a substance also depends on the density.

On a note!

The specific gravity of bumblebee products is low, and its calorie content does not exceed 300 kcal per 100 grams. Such a dessert will delight even those who follow their figure. Bumblebee syrup contains particles of pollen, which is also not typical for beekeepers' goods.

How much honey can bumblebees collect


Despite the high productivity of hairy insects, their reserves are significantly inferior to the number of honey bees. Bee families live in huge colonies of several thousand individuals, in order to feed their offspring, they need a lot of sweet product. In addition, bee families live for several seasons and every winter they need to hibernate, having enough food supplies. Their next of kin do not have such a need.

The bumblebee nest has an average of 400 - 500 individuals, most of which are working females. The life span of a family is only a few months. They live for one season from April to September. But do bumblebees have honey in reserve? To make it happen, interested beekeepers create special hives for bumblebee families and contribute to their favorable development. From one such hive, you can collect only 200 ml of a valuable product.

Due to such a small amount of healthy delicacy, breeding these insects for honey has not become popular. But they are bred for another equally important mission - to pollinate greenhouse crops on an industrial scale.

Bumblebees, like bees, collect nectar and produce honey. Its quantity is limited, since insects do not make large stocks for the winter. It is designed to feed the larvae and maintain the vital functions of the hive. Bumblebee honey has many beneficial properties for humans. Due to the limited supply, bumblebee honey is a rare and expensive product. Only a few beekeepers are engaged in its extraction, it is possible to purchase it via the Internet.

Why are bumblebees needed?

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of bumblebees in the development of natural flora and fauna. Especially it concerns northern zones. They are also useful in the development of gardening and horticulture. Bumblebee Features:

  1. They pollinate all types of vegetation. The structure of the body (proboscis) allows you to get to the most hard-to-reach plants. This feature makes them very useful in the development of the agricultural industry. Bumblebees carry pollen with the help of devices on their hind legs.
  2. They are cold resistant. Due to the unique thermoregulation, the bumblebee can maintain its body temperature at the desired level (40 ° C) at low temperatures. environment. This allows insects to live in northern latitudes and continue to work in cold conditions when other insects are not able to.
  3. Help plants. These insects secrete a special enzyme that helps plants kill harmful bacteria. Bumblebees also pollinate crops five times faster than bees.
  4. They have good eyesight. A bumblebee will quickly find a way out of a confined space, while a bee will beat against glass and other surfaces.
  5. They are not aggressive. A bumblebee bite is a rare event. These insects sting if they or their offspring are in mortal danger. Unlike bees, they do not have collective attacks. The stinger is not notched, so it does not stay in the wound.

Specificity of bumblebee honey

Bumblebee honey has characteristics that make it unique among great variety bee honey. It:

  • Liquid consistency. It looks like sugar syrup.
  • Low specific gravity. It is the ratio of the weight of a substance to its density.
  • Diverse pollen composition. This, in addition to standard components, includes pollen: red clover, pikulnik, purple lamb, black root officinalis.
  • Non-standard honeycomb shape. They look like closed jars. More capacious, but their number is significantly inferior to bees.

Bumblebee honey is produced in small quantities, since these insects do not need to store large volumes due to their short lifespan (1 season, from spring to autumn).

Gardeners arrange special houses for bumblebees on their plots to increase productivity. They can be made from improvised materials or you can buy a ready-made version.

Chemical composition of the product

The amount of proteins and minerals in bumblebee, compared to bee honey, is twice as much. A liquid consistency provides a large proportion of water.

  1. , in particular fructose and glucose;
  2. Proteins;
  3. Water;
  4. Minerals (copper, zinc, potassium, iron, cobalt).

The storage temperature of honey is 1-2 degrees Celsius. Starting from 8 degrees, the fermentation process will begin.

Bumblebee nectar calories

Useful and medicinal properties

Bumblebee product, as medicinal product are used for the following ailments:

  • disease respiratory tract;
  • problems of the gastrointestinal tract;
  • diseases of the liver and gallbladder.

Heals the whole body! Prevention of atherosclerosis, thrombophlebitis, thrombosis. Prevents the death of brain cells. The strongest antioxidant. Increases potency. life force and endurance. Even inhaling the vapors of this honey, you are already treating the body, restoring its strength!

For a long time all over the world, people have heard about bumblebee honey. But very few of those who know something about it, let alone taste it. We have been trying to find this honey in the wild for many years. And found, but in very small quantities. This happens for several reasons. Firstly, the bumblebee family is much smaller than the bee family, and secondly, bumblebees do not store honey for the winter, they will not need it, because only the female bumblebee leaves them in winter, falling into hibernation. Thirdly, the nectar collected by a bumblebee from flowers stays in the nectar collector (organism) much longer (up to 2 months) than that of a bee, i.e. the transformation of nectar into honey, the bumblebee is much more complex and long. They simply do not have time to make honey in large quantities.

Due to such a long and complex process of processing nectar, it is even more powerfully enriched with enzymes and microelements. Plus, thanks to a longer proboscis than a bee, the Bumblebee can get to the nectar of those flowers that bees cannot. As a result, the composition of Honey becomes unique and differs a lot from that of bees. Honey is obtained, stronger, richer and richer. It follows that the composition of this honey is many times greater than bee honey. 100 g of bumblebee honey, according to the concentration of vitamin, enzymes and trace elements, replaces 1 kg of bee honey.

Many are wondering if these are some kind of special bumblebees, because it seems to some that bumblebees can only pollinate a flower, but not collect nectar in any way. In fact, this is a mistake, the pollinator bumblebee is also a honey producer. But as in beekeeping (where there are breeds of bees of different honey productivity), in bumblebee breeding there are also more honey-producing breeds.

Which were brought to us from Europe, more precisely from Germany. It is from such bumblebees that our bumblebee apiary consists.

And here is the result! Now we produce Bumblebee Honey.

Of course, they do not produce as much honey as bees. From one bumblebee family, you can collect only 4-7 kg of honey per season. Bumblebee honey is pumped out in grams, not in kilograms, like in a bee.

Our bumblebees live in much smaller clues (bumblebees) than bees. On the this moment, we have about 40 bumblebee families.

The bumblebee apiary is stationary and is located in the foothills. Honey is collected from mountain, taiga, coniferous forbs. Special bumblebee fermentation, gives given honey, unique aftertaste.

In Europe, this honey is regarded as a very expensive medicine. We hope that our people will also appreciate this elixir.

So hurry up to get Bumblebee Honey. Quantity is limited!

Application, 1 tbsp. l. per day, 10 min. before or after meals, in the morning, from 1 month.

Shmlevnikov inside. Shmelyovniki.
Shmelyovniki.

Bumblebees: Spring worries. Today, about twenty thousand varieties of bees are known all over the world, of which more than three hundred and fifty species live on the territory of our country. All of them belong to seven different families. An ordinary bee first of all makes food supplies and only then begins to lay larvae, creating its offspring. It is interesting, but in wasps this process is exactly the opposite, but vice versa. Wasps lay their larvae, and then begin to catch insects, paralyzing them with their own poison. Thus, two very similar species live and reproduce in completely different ways.

Most often, wild bees do not live in flocks. They prefer a free life away from the colonies. Families, in our understanding, they do not create, but live separately. However, several species of bees are known to find mates and live together. In such bee families, all care for the offspring is assigned exclusively to the female, while the role of the male is limited only to her fertilization.

In a female honey bee, the stinger does not have any teeth that, during a bite, could catch on the body of the victim and provoke the death of the insect. That is why a bee can sting repeatedly. Male bees have no sting at all. Before mating, the female and male arrange mating games in the air. After the fertilization process, it flies away and dies. On the territory of our country, people consider more useful those types of bees that are closely related to clover, legumes, alfalfa or sainfoin, and less respect bees dealing with rapeseed, vegetables and fruit crops.

Interestingly, absolutely all bumblebees belong to the so-called polytrophs. They absolutely do not care what to pollinate. These insects bring invaluable benefits to anyone summer cottage, contributing to the active growth of the crop on it. Every new year, the female bumblebees begin to rebuild their own dwelling in order to create in it again new family. Moreover, their minks can be both underground and aboveground. Unlike ordinary bees, bumblebees feel great in cold weather and during rainfall. They are able to collect valuable nectar even during rain, while honey bees sit in their burrows, waiting for good weather. There is a myth that bumblebees are much more aggressive than bees - this is a lie. In fact, everything looks completely different.

The bumblebee has excellent vision and feels comfortable during the dark time of the day. That is why, once in a greenhouse or flying into your house, he will not knock his head on the glass, but will try to find a way out himself. In addition, these insects work up to five times faster than ordinary honey bees and produce honey that is unique in taste and benefits.

Another undoubted advantage of bumblebees is their unique color. They look very beautiful and serve as a real decoration of the fauna of our country. To date, fifteen species of bumblebees are listed in the Red Book. Most of it got into it over the past few years.

Talk about what honey bee absolutely domesticated by man - it is impossible, he only gives her a vacant place where she can build a house for herself and constantly takes care that in the cold season she does not freeze and does not die of hunger. Despite all this, the bees continue, to this day, to live in their homes solely based on instinct. Over the long years of cohabitation of man and bees, the latter could not come to terms with the killing smell of tobacco smoke or alcohol, as a result of which hundreds of thousands of citizens with numerous bee stings end up in hospitals every year.

Little is known about the life of bumblebees. Watch how they, flying, sit on the flowers in the garden. But to see their "hives" in the usual form was not possible. They simply do not exist - insects live in nests, hollows, often located in places inaccessible to humans.

Where does honey come from

Do bumblebees make honey? Yes. But in nature, bumblebee queens often equip their wax dwelling in pits, birdhouses, minks of other animals, which often have to be won back from them. It is almost impossible for a person to see the nests and taste the contents of the cells. Do bumblebees make honey useful for humans or not? Like bees, workers produce honey, it exists. Insects produce it from nectar, which, thanks to an elongated proboscis, is extracted even from inaccessible places.

Bumblebee collects amber honey

Does a bumblebee collect amber honey a lot or not? Yes, but he first takes the nectar, converting it with the help of enzymes produced by the glands into useful honey. In the nest, its reserves are insignificant, since one bumblebee family has only about a hundred individuals. In addition, there are such categories of relatives of bees that do not collect nectar and do not produce honey. Instead, males (they are called drones) build wax combs in the form of deep cells. Some of them are intended for the development and growth of pupae and larvae. In other "chambers" there are stocks of food in the form of honey, pollen and perga for young animals.

Most of the hive is made up of working females. Collecting nectar is precisely their “mission”. Then the collected must be delivered to the habitat of the family. The substance brought on the paws is fed to the future members of the bumblebee colony, the main food for them is honey. The uterus-"queen" has a different role. It consists in the constant laying of oblong translucent eggs and the increase in offspring. The main individual is always inside the nest, without leaving its limits.

The existence and “prosperity” of the entire bumblebee settlement depend on the efficiency of working individuals. But to produce honey in such a volume as in an ordinary bee apiary, they are beyond their power. Because it is produced by insects in small quantities and is not stored in the combs all winter, like bees. This is due to the short duration life cycle furry creatures.

The greatest activity of the uterus falls on the warm period - from spring to autumn. Fully devoting its existence to the replenishment of the hive, at the end of the period of activity, it dies, and young individuals come to replace it. In anticipation of winter, they fall asleep and only in the spring they warm up and become more active. So in winter, bumblebees do not need food in the form of honey reserves.

bumblebee honey

Bumblebee honey is intended for feeding the hatched larvae and for maintaining the viability of the nest. This product rarely appears on the market, it is even referred to as honey "exotic". You can buy it, but the price is high: the cost of a kilogram of honey is about five thousand rubles.

Characteristics and chemical composition of honey

Bumblebee honey is unique. Its container is an unusual larger honeycomb, the shape of which differs from that of bees. They are slightly expanded towards the bottom, therefore, after sealing, they look like bags. The honey contained in them has a low specific gravity. The consistency of the product is slightly different from the usual: not so thick, more like sugar syrup. This is due to the presence of more water in it. Being more liquid, it is well stored at a temperature not higher than + 3°C. When heated to 5-8 ° C, it begins to ferment.

Specificity of bumblebee honey

Since bumblebees can pollinate much more plants(almost all), then, compared to domestic bees, the composition of their honey and pollen is also more diverse. In addition to standard components such as proteins and carbohydrates (glucose and fructose), bumblebee products also contain minerals.

Bumblebees pollinate many more plants than domestic bees.

The presence of zinc, copper, iron, potassium, cobalt explains useful influence honey on human body. In terms of the amount of minerals and proteins, the substance exceeds the bee product twice. Also in honey and pollen are the medicinal components of various plants: pikulnik, red clover, purple yasnitka and other medicinal herbs.

Useful properties of the product and treatment

The benefits of honey produced by bumblebees are obvious. It is quite nutritious and high in calories. CNutrients can help get rid of:

  • digestive disorders;
  • respiratory diseases, asthma, bronchitis;
  • liver problems;
  • violations in the work of the organs of the excretory and reproductive systems.

Bumblebee honey helps cure dry cough. For this to warm milk add 1 teaspoon and a little butter.

Important! It should not be used if there is no certainty that there is no allergic reaction to the substance. In this case, it will not harm the body, but rather harm.

Bumblebee honey helps cure dry cough.

In the presence of elevated blood sugar levels, inclusion of the product in the diet should be avoided.

How to get bumblebee honey

If you can’t take honey in nature, there is an affordable way to try it. Bumblebees can be bred artificially. To do this, you first need to attract to the site, providing a house and food. Plants in the garden can help with this, because the bumblebee is the best pollinator of flowers of fruits and vegetables. The bumblebee apiary makes a profit. Its owners justify the nest for relatives of bees in different ways. For this, some try to make a special hive with their own hands:

  1. From an empty birdhouse.
  2. In the hollow of an old tree located on the site.
  3. From a piece of asbestos-cement pipe with closed edges on both sides. It will be a great place for a bumblebee family to settle. It is only necessary to leave the space open - a gap that will function as a notch.
  4. You can even adapt a flower pot.

On a note. Any dry place in the garden can become a habitat for insects.

The hive house is made with a removable top from a board, 2 cm thick. Notches are made in it, which are painted black to attract queens.

Bumblebee apiary makes a profit

All variants of the bumblebee "hive" will have to be filled with insulating materials: old mouse nests, polystyrene, moss. Bumblebee growers do not recommend cotton wool or tow as a heater. In them, insects can get entangled and die. A layer of sawdust is laid at the bottom, about 3 cm thick.

The notch from the rain is covered with a piece of plank laid on bars or bricks. Stones are laid along the edges and on the lid, protecting the bumblebee housing from the intrusion of animals and gusts of wind. Improvised hives can be placed on support tables located at a distance of about half a meter from ground level. There were cases when the colony chose a greenhouse for the settlement.

The owners of an unusual apiary also take care of protecting the house from pests:

  • - to prevent the presence of wax moths, 2-3 tablets of the moth preparation are placed on the cover of the structure;
  • - installation of a bumblebee outlet makes it impossible for ants and mice to invade;
  • - bumblebee deflector will not allow ordinary wasps and cuckoo bumblebees to get inside.

Artificial nests are usually populated with queens until mid-summer. AT natural conditions they love to inhabit mouse holes. Therefore, in order to attract bumblebees to nesting, you can saturate the insulation with a characteristic mouse smell. It does not matter if some devices are left empty. They will be needed next summer.

If the uterus has chosen a new haven, produced offspring, and the larvae have already formed and grown in the combs, it's time to think about how to collect honey. Worker bumblebees do not produce marketable honey in large volumes. How is this small amount of bumblebee honey obtained? A honey extractor will not help in this matter. To get what the insects managed to collect, you need to take a syringe with a thick needle and try to extract a light sweet substance with it.

If you managed to start several families, then you can not only taste honey, but also eat and even sell it. Honey from bumblebees is not only useful, but also has a special energy. After all, it is made by hardworking and devoid of aggression creatures.

We recommend reading

Top