How much do you know about honey bees and beekeeping?

Human Care of Honey Bees: A Historical Overview

• Beekeeping involves the maintenance of bee colonies, primarily for honey production, but also for other products such as beeswax, propolis, bee pollen, and royal jelly, as well as for crop pollination, raising queens, and production of package bees for sale.

• Honey bees in the genus Apis are the most commonly kept species, but other honey-producing bees such as Melipona stingless bees are also kept.

• Bee hives are kept in an apiary or "bee yard".

• The keeping of bees by humans began around 10,000 years ago, and Georgia is known as the "cradle of beekeeping", with the oldest honey ever found coming from that country.

• Domestication of bees can be seen in Egyptian art from around 4,500 years ago, and there is also evidence of beekeeping in ancient China, Greece, and Maya.

• Beekeeping has become more accessible, and urban beekeeping was described as a growing trend as of 2010.

• The scientific study of honey bees began in the 18th century, with Swammerdam, René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, Charles Bonnet, and François Huber among the first to make significant contributions.

• Huber is regarded as "the father of modern bee-science" and his work Nouvelles Observations sur Les Abeilles (New Observations on Bees) revealed all of the basic scientific facts of the biology and ecology of honeybees.

• Before the invention of the movable comb hive, the harvesting of honey frequently resulted in the destruction of the whole colony.

• Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth developed the movable comb hive in the 19th century, enabling the growth of large-scale, commercial honey production in both Europe and the U.S.

• Langstroth's design of movable comb hives was adopted by apiarists and inventors in both North America and Europe, and a wide range of moveable comb hives were developed in England, France, Germany, and the United States.

• In recent years, hives made from injection-molded, dense polystyrene have become increasingly common, and in 2015, the Flow Hive system was invented in Australia by Cedar Anderson and his father Stuart Anderson, whose design allows honey to be extracted without cumbersome centrifuge equipment.History, Hives, Equipment, Safety, and Modern Beekeeping Practices

• Jan Dzierżon' beehive design has influenced modern beehives.

• François Huber made significant discoveries about bee life cycle and communication.

• L.L. Langstroth has influenced modern beekeeping practice more than anyone else.

• Moses Quinby invented the bee smoker in 1873.

• Amos Root pioneered the manufacture of hives and the distribution of bee packages in the United States.

• A.J. Cook authored The Bee-Keepers' Guide; or Manual of the Apiary, 1876.

• Dr. C.C. Miller was one of the first entrepreneurs to make a living from apiculture.

• Franz Hruschka invented a machine for extracting honey from the comb by means of centrifugal force.

• Walter T. Kelley was an American pioneer of modern beekeeping in the early-and mid-20th century.

• Ahmed Zaky Abushady was active in England and Egypt in the early twentieth century.

• Natural beekeeping practitioners tend to use variations of the top-bar hive, which is a simple design that retains the concept of having a movable comb without the use of frames or a foundation.

• Urban beekeeping is an attempt to revert to a less-industrialized way of obtaining honey by using small-scale colonies that pollinate urban gardens.Beekeeping: A Guide to Behavior, Health, and Harvesting Honey

• Honey bees are social insects that live in colonies of up to 80,000 individuals.

• Honey bees are responsible for pollinating around a third of the food we eat, and their pollination services are worth billions of dollars to the global economy.

• Queen bees are the only egg-layer in the colony, and they can live for up to four years, although they often have a lifespan of less than a year.

• The behavior of honey bees is controlled by the pheromones produced by the queen, and as she ages, her pheromones begin to fail.

• When the queen's pheromones fail, the bees replace her by creating a new queen from one of her worker eggs.

• Different sub-species of Apis mellifera exhibit differing swarming characteristics, with northern black races being thought to swarm less and supersede more, while southern yellow-and-gray varieties are said to swarm more frequently.

• Diseases, parasites, and predators are the main factors that affect the health of honey bee colonies.

• Colony losses from colony collapse disorder (CCD) have been increasing across the world since 2006, although the causes of the syndrome are unknown.

• Nosema apis is the most common and widespread disease of adult honey bees.

• Varroa destructor, the Varroa mite, is an established pest of two species of honey bee through many parts of the world and is blamed by many researchers as a leading cause of CCD.

• According to Food and Agriculture Organization data, the world's beehive stock rose from around 50 million in 1961 to around 83 million in 2014, which represents an annual average growth of 1.3%.

• The world's bee population is under threat from habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change.