Exploring the role of beeswax foundation to promote comb honey production and economic profit for hobbyist beekeepers.

Shelby A Kittle Author

04/04/2021 Added

16 Plays

Description

This research project looked at how different amounts of beeswax foundation affect how honey bees create comb honey.

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:01.020]Hello everybody, my name is Shelby Kittle
[00:00:03.410]and my topic was "Exploring the role of beeswax foundation
[00:00:07.157]to promote comb honey production and economic profit
[00:00:11.327]for hobbyist beekeepers."
[00:00:15.120]So managing and keeping honey bees provides economic revenue
[00:00:19.220]either as the main source of income
[00:00:21.110]for commercial beekeepers or a supplemental income
[00:00:25.020]for many small scale or hobbyist beekeepers.
[00:00:28.490]Beekeepers commonly generate profit from extracted
[00:00:32.250]liquid honey, however, the average price of honey
[00:00:35.320]often fluctuates with the market.
[00:00:37.920]Hobby beekeepers have fewer opportunities to commercially
[00:00:41.180]sell their product, and often cannot compete
[00:00:43.840]with larger operations.
[00:00:46.470]Comb honey or honey that is still contained
[00:00:48.880]in bees like cells, is a high quality or value added product
[00:00:53.650]and production typically decreases as the size
[00:00:57.040]of a beekeeping operation increases.
[00:01:01.450]So the objective for my experiment, was to gather
[00:01:05.180]information on how different amounts of foundation
[00:01:09.850]in each frame affects how efficiently colonies draw out
[00:01:14.010]and fill comb honey frames.
[00:01:16.520]My hypothesis was that, frames containing a full sheet
[00:01:19.820]of foundation would be the most productive in building out
[00:01:23.290]wax cells and producing comb honey compared
[00:01:26.160]to other treatment frames containing
[00:01:28.020]either half foundation or no foundation.
[00:01:31.420]And some of the potential implications of this is that,
[00:01:34.850]this project highlights how beekeepers may refine
[00:01:37.500]both management and business decisions when creating
[00:01:41.070]comb honey as an economically profitable product.
[00:01:45.970]So for this experiment, my hives were located
[00:01:49.710]in Ord, Nebraska, I took data from June 1st
[00:01:53.220]to July 20th of 2020, and I graded my comb honey frames
[00:01:58.470]every two weeks.
[00:02:00.230]I chose 10 strong colonies for this experiment,
[00:02:03.050]and each colony was a standard 10 frame hive body and super,
[00:02:08.540]all hives were queenright, and I found them and marked them
[00:02:11.540]before the experiment.
[00:02:13.330]And these bees were a mix between Italian
[00:02:17.440]and Carniolan stock, or subspecies
[00:02:20.640]of the honeybee Apis mellifera.
[00:02:24.260]So in order to set up my experiment, all of my hives
[00:02:28.330]were originally in two brood chambers,
[00:02:30.620]so that's where they keep their babies and their honey.
[00:02:35.640]And so I organized the frames,
[00:02:38.190]and found the one full of bee bread or pollen,
[00:02:41.520]one with nectar and honey,
[00:02:43.010]and then eight miscellaneous frames
[00:02:45.340]of brood with different ages,
[00:02:48.440]and I organize that all into one box, and then I'd make sure
[00:02:52.780]I find the queen and place her in that box as well.
[00:02:56.680]And then I would shake any of the remaining frames
[00:02:59.140]so that all the bees go into that bottom box,
[00:03:02.630]and then I would add a queen excluder and a super
[00:03:05.860]that had my treatment comb honey frames in it.
[00:03:10.600]So for my treatment boxes, each box received
[00:03:13.290]three full foundation, three half foundation,
[00:03:16.110]and three no foundation, which you can see
[00:03:19.110]in the center images.
[00:03:24.123]Frames were marked with treatment ID and frame position,
[00:03:27.380]so either left side or right side, I did that because
[00:03:31.370]no positions were reversed in this experiment
[00:03:34.440]and each hive had a randomized frame order.
[00:03:36.930]So here you can see examples of this, I would organize
[00:03:40.720]each treatment next to a different one, but they would be
[00:03:45.920]in random orders, and then I labeled each treatment box
[00:03:50.870]with a numbers, so I could keep track of them.
[00:03:54.240]So from my results, the average wax produced over a season
[00:03:59.160]was highest in treatment one or full foundation,
[00:04:02.700]and it averaged 1,105 centimeter squared of area
[00:04:07.520]in wax production, it was significantly higher than
[00:04:11.080]treatment three, no foundation,
[00:04:13.510]but not treatment two, half foundation.
[00:04:16.700]Wax production was also significantly different
[00:04:19.350]from each collection date, except between the two July dates
[00:04:24.010]which is not surprising because most of the frames
[00:04:26.560]had been drawn out by them.
[00:04:30.270]Seasonal honey production for treatment one
[00:04:32.700]average 752.5 centimeters squared area and capped honey,
[00:04:38.170]and was significantly higher than T3, but not T2.
[00:04:44.620]And there was no difference in nectar production
[00:04:47.340]across treatment or collection date.
[00:04:54.700]Although nectar did not have a significant difference
[00:04:57.370]within the different treatment groups, the combined nectar
[00:05:00.430]and honey or seasonal food production graph, visually shows
[00:05:05.890]that most of the nectar collection was done
[00:05:07.970]in the first four weeks of production.
[00:05:10.200]This in turn leads to the creation of wax and eventually
[00:05:13.100]into capped honey, that can be cut and sold as comb honey.
[00:05:16.820]Also the amount of food stores for T3, no foundation,
[00:05:21.070]were very similar to T1 and T2, but for comb honey
[00:05:24.900]production purposes, the nectar was not dried enough
[00:05:27.710]to produce a profitable product before less desirable
[00:05:31.650]nectar sources started to boom.
[00:05:35.420]So for my discussion, the wax and honey production
[00:05:38.670]were the most important variables in this experiment,
[00:05:42.000]because that is what comb honey is made of.
[00:05:46.140]There were no significant differences in wax
[00:05:49.240]or honey production between using a full foundation
[00:05:52.190]and a half foundation, so each foundation can be cut
[00:05:56.400]and divided into half to cut the cost of production,
[00:06:02.294]and this is important because it helps decrease
[00:06:05.160]the cost of producing your product.
[00:06:07.740]Most of the nectar collection was done
[00:06:09.500]in the first four weeks of productions,
[00:06:11.500]that means the best time to put comb honey on is in June.
[00:06:16.600]Nectar collection was similar, however, in T3 the nectar
[00:06:21.650]was not dried out enough to complete comb honey.
[00:06:24.560]And the time needed to finish these would potentially
[00:06:27.220]overlap with undesired nectar sources
[00:06:29.950]and varroa treatment thresholds.
[00:06:34.130]Some of the limitations for this experiment,
[00:06:38.060]for management decisions, rotating and reversing frames
[00:06:41.130]were not done, and there may be value in using
[00:06:44.260]this as a management decision in other operations.
[00:06:50.160]The length of the experiment is also a limitation,
[00:06:53.260]this experiment only has one season of data,
[00:06:55.620]so there may be more significance between values,
[00:06:58.200]if multiple seasons of data were present.
[00:07:01.640]And resources, liquid honey production decreases the amount
[00:07:05.090]of wax production needed to produce a product,
[00:07:08.780]comb honey production is based off of the ability for bees
[00:07:11.440]to successfully draw out and fill wax in one season,
[00:07:15.020]and sometimes it's hard to get those bees to do that.
[00:07:19.100]My future plans include, conducting another year of data
[00:07:22.370]with the UNL research hives, and I got approved for another
[00:07:27.760]UCare grant so I can continue my research.
[00:07:30.880]I want to publish my findings to the scientific community
[00:07:34.070]as a peer reviewed article, and then I wanna help
[00:07:37.000]the UNL bee lab sell the comb honey that I produce,
[00:07:39.960]since I'm using their hives this year.
[00:07:43.130]And here are my references for my experiment.
[00:07:46.942]Thank you and have a good day.

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

Exploring the role of beeswax foundation to promote comb honey production and economic profit for hobbyist beekeepers.

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments