Canadian beekeeping can become a benchmark for other countries. First of all, the scale of apiaries, which takes a minimum of financial investments, is striking. Read more about this method of keeping apiaries below.

History of Canadian Beekeeping

For the first time, French and English migrants brought honey bees to Canada about 250 years ago. Due to the fact that the road to Canada took a lot of time (about 3 weeks), there was an urgent need to find a way to transport bees. They did this with the help of straw slippers packed in ice and sawdust.

Bees themselves in Canada have a diverse color and behavioral characteristics, because they are the result of crossbreeding. Maternity was not developed at all in this country. Initially, beekeepers did not even practice wintering methods with bees. Bee packages along with the uterus were in the public domain and were imported from the south of the United States. Insects managed to quickly develop and give a good bribe.

Did you know? During the wintering period, the bees do not defecate at all.

In the autumn period, the bees were simply lit up, and honey was completely taken away. However, the situation changed dramatically when in 1990 acaropidosis was introduced from Florida to the country, and in 1995, varroatosis. In addition, killer bees bred near the US bee nurseries that supplied insects to Canada. A little later appeared and new parasite - small beehive beetle. In this regard, the import of insects from abroad in Canada was banned, and work began to optimize breeding and wintering.Considering that the climate in winter in Canada is quite severe, honey bees were transferred to beehives with frames. Over a long time, the technology of keeping bees in the winter in Canada was improved - this has made it possible today to achieve 95% of the conservation of insects, which eliminated the need for their import from abroad. Since the time when various breeds were in the public domain, Canada has preserved a unique mixture of these varieties with a predominance of Italian.

Another area of ​​maternal breeding was the search for varieties resistant to varroatosis. By the way in northern Canada, places where warroa ticks are not common are still preserved. To date, of all the breeds that have been tested, the Russian bee shows the highest resistance, but even these individuals are not able to survive for more than 2-3 years without chemical treatments from varroatosis.

Highlights of bee keeping technology

The main point of keeping bees in Canada is the huge size of apiaries - from 2,000-6,000 bee families. In no other country there are simply no such large apiaries. The apiary begins with a honey pumping room equipped with pallets and a forklift. Most of the work is done automatically. The main goals in honey production is to preserve the health of bees and people serving the apiary, which, in fact, helps automation.Apiaries are designed in such a way that there are no steps or sills in the room for the extraction of honey. Such an arrangement can be compared with the trading floor of a large-scale supermarket. It allows you to freely enter the car and move the product, in addition, it can be freely transported from one compartment to another using wheelbarrows. The hives themselves are all year round on pallets prepared for transportation. Automated lines in large-scale apiaries allow pumping out up to 6 tons of honey in 8 hours.

Did you know? The speed of the bee can reach 65 km / h.

The working room is equipped with a thermal room. Often, at the end of summer, unopened honeycombs are only stored in the working compartment, and they are already printing them in the autumn. The thermal room is used before pumping. In this room, unopened cells can withstand three days at a temperature of +30 ... + 40 ° C. This approach simplifies the task of pumping honey. The resulting product is poured into tanks for sedimentation, and then poured into barrels of 200 liters.

Another of the features of Canadian technology is the huge demand for bees as pollinating insects among farmers. During the flowering period of honey plants, many farmers conclude contracts with beekeepers for the supply of bee families. The cost is set for 1 bee family and is about $ 100, which provides the beekeepers with a "quick" income. Trucks are used for transportation, since sometimes under a contract it is necessary to carry a large number of beehives over hundreds of kilometers.The main problem in Canada, which still requires a solution, is wintering. A large number of bee colonies die during the cold season. This is due to another feature of keeping bees in Canada. The fact is that insects are not fed from individual feeders, but barrels with a volume of 200 l with syrup are brought to the apiary. In such circumstances, weak families are plundered, resulting in their death.

Plus, from a common feeder, bees harvest their own food for the winter much less than when using individual ones. Canadians prepare bees for winter in very tight spaces - 1 building of the hive Langstrota-Ruta. It is the compressed habitats, firstly, that do not allow, and secondly, they reduce the desire of the workers themselves to harvest a large amount of food for the winter. This is the only minus of Canadian beekeeping, which at the same time is a payment for the possibility of maintaining a large number of families.The hive of Langstroth-Ruth. However, on the other hand, wintering in one building allows bees to create a fairly dense large conglomerate and reproduce more thermal energy. Considering this technology in this perspective, it turns out that feeding from common feeders is, as it were, a process of culling weak families in a natural way, because only the strongest families will leave in winter.

Types of Canadian Hives

In the Canadian practice of beekeeping, Langstroth-Ruth hives are used, consisting of 5 buildings. In this case, the tap hole is installed only in the lower part. Its size is 2–2.5 cm. Inside the hive, a dividing lattice is necessarily mounted to prevent the uterus from moving into the hull. In winter, all bees are transferred to one building.

Important! In order to be able to use the Canadian technology of beekeeping in the winter, when a large number of insects are contained in one building, special attention should be paid to the lines. It is necessary to select breeds of bees whose uterus does not worm during the cold period.

The main methods of beekeeping

The main beekeeping techniques used around the world:

• Chaikin;
• Kolodzeychik;
• Mishak (Mikhail Kutsy);
• Starobogatov-Kolodzeychik;
• Levitsky;
• Wels;
• Loubet do l'Ost;
• Bryukhanenko;
• Vashchenko;
• Butkevich;
• Tseselsky;
• Burlepsha;
• Metz.

In Canada, they use the Mishak technique, which will be discussed below.

Features of Canadian beekeeping by Mishak

Mishak or Mikhail Kutsy began to practice bees in 1991. Initially, there were small apiaries in the North of Kazakhstan. He worked according to the method of nomadic beekeeping, that is, for wintering, the bees were exported to the Chui valley of Kyrgyzstan, and to the main honey collection - to the Omsk region (Siberia). In another way, this technique is also called the pavilion, since the apiary itself is a mobile pavilion mounted on a car trailer.

In 2003, Mishak was invited to work in Canada at Dutchmans Gold INC. In the country, apiaries contained 1,400 families. The apiaries themselves were located from north to south at a distance of 200 km from each other. In his technology, Mishak used the experience already existing among Canadians in keeping bees in winter in one 230 mm case, under snow, as well as the technology described by Peterson.

The essence of the Mishak technique is as follows:

1. The uterus is contained and functions in a case with frames of 10 × 230 mm.
2. Next is the separation grid and shops for honey. The letlet is located only in the lower part, due to which pollen harvesting practically does not go above the dividing lattice, but it remains on brood frames. In the process, it was found that when using upper doors for ventilation, bees store pollen much less, so this approach is considered impractical in the harsh climate of Canada.
3. For autumn feeding, a 150 mm case is used - it is redone for a feeding trough.
4. Feeding is carried out after the last store has been removed from the hive - mid-August-early September.
5. Before the initial feeding round, each hive is weighed and syrup is made - for 100 families, 1300 l of syrup or 13 l for each are accounted for. In the technology of preparing syrup for the first feeding, not only water with sugar is used, but also Fumagilin.
6. As soon as the first round syrup is used, the bees are given the same amount of syrup, but already without Fumagilin.
7. For the third round of feeding, more syrup is given to those families that are underweight.
8. In the spring, inspection of all bee colonies is carried out, and if necessary, they are fed by candies directly on the frame.
9. For the winter, the hulls with bees are insulated - the lids are reinforced with denser plywood. On the front side, leave a free entrance of 10 × 50 mm in size, which provides ventilation and allows bees to fly if necessary. The hives themselves are installed as close as possible, and they are wrapped in 4 pieces. a heater consisting of 2 layers of black polyethylene with a fiberglass backing. Warming material goes to the top of the hives and covers them from all sides. Opposite the upper notch, an incision is necessarily made to provide oxygen access.

Important! All work on warming hives in Canada is carried out until the end of October.

With the right approach, there are no problems with swarming in either the spring or summer periods. The essence of swarming prevention is the timely addition of stores with dividing grids. In the summer period, swarming prevention consists in the timely removal of boxes filled with honey and replacing them with empty ones. Plus, in the apiary, 2-3 swarms are installed, in case the bees do fly away. The main work, which allows to obtain a large amount of honey, is aimed at replacing the uterus.The brood quantity and the level of the bribe depend on the queen’s condition. So, annually 95% of queens are replaced with new. Grow them in separate mother liquors. The Canadian technology of beekeeping today is a reference, though the technique has not yet been mastered in the whole world. The main goals of this technology are to keep insects in a relatively small area and replace 95% of the queens annually.

Video: Canada's Industrial Beekeeping