TESTING A METHOD OF SAFE-KEEPING OF SMALL BEE COLONIES, WITH SCANTY HONEY-COMBS

Plamen Hristov Petrov

Abstract: Very often used is the making of summer bee-colonies. They often do not produce enough honey-bee reserves. When there are bad conditiones for honey-bee production and because of the predominant hobbycharacter of the bee-keeping in Bulgaria and in Europe, it often happens that there are missing enough
honey-bee combs for the winter. The aim of the test was to study the possibility for successful winter survival of small bee-colonies at erected scanty honey-combs, and their productivity. For the test were used twelve bee layers with an average weight of the bees in the fall between 600-700 g from Ap.meliffera macedonica (rodopika) L. There were used Langstrot-Rutovi (LR) hives with one and two buildings and four LR cakes for each test family.
The bee-colonies survived successfully and the time for their first feeding up coincides with that of the normal in strength tradiotionaly-kept colonies.
Spending the winter at erected scanty honey-combs was uninfluential for the amount of produced honeybee, while the traditional grounded method of bee-keeping requires many winter feedings and poses risks to their survival.

Keywords: scanty honey-combs; small bee-colony; successfully hibernation

Date published: 2023-02-22