Beekeeping In Different Areas Of The World
Many areas in the world are producers of honey and beeswax for medicinal and food purposes. You’ll find a lot of beekeeping in the United States, Asia, Africa, and some parts of Europe. Since beekeeping had originated in Europe and had been modernized in the United States, the way it’s done is different and the way it’s taught is different as well. Yet this is a very interesting way to see how different cultures train someone to do beekeeping as a way of life and part of the culture.
The cool thing is that honey is used for most food in so many cultures that use it in religious and celebratory occasions when preparing certain concoctions or meals and honey is used to sweeten it. Americans are usually in the business of beekeeping to produce honey for the supermarket and for shipment overseas to markets and countries that don’t have beekeeping businesses that are advanced enough to mass-produce the necessary amount to ship overseas to stores owned and operated in the United States like Whole Foods Market when they carry specific brands.
Most countries overseas don’t have the system the way the United States does to mass-produce a single product like honey since we managed to harvest effectively, so we can produce enough to meet the needs of the market until the season to produce starts again in the spring, since bees are inactive during the winter months and start again in late March-early April when the mating season for bees is fresh and flowers are in abundance for them to feed and pollinate on.
The U.S. alone turns out the majority of the honey that’s used when they provide to supermarkets owned by American-based companies to their stores and restaurants overseas.
Beekeepers could be observing hives every 7 to 8 days generally making it the ideal time on the weekend to pass time. Hives don’t need a lot of maintenance just an hour a day between the peak season around May to September.
A good season can produce for a keeper 60-100 pounds of honey and depending on how much the buyer charges by the pound that’s what you go by to what you’ll make for every harvest you get.
The most common annoyance to beekeepers during their harvesting and maintenance of the hives are bumblebees these are the big ugly black and yellow bees that are seen going through the flowers honey bees have already visited and these bees live underground so they can be an annoyance to beekeepers when they swarm from the ground up.
Many beekeepers will move their hives around which is called migratory which is one of the secrets to increase honey production and giving bees a fresh supply of flowers to pollinate and feed on so they can produce different variations and batches of honey.
Each batch produced can differ with each pollination or when hives are rotated and bees go to different flowers so that’s why sometimes honey may have a distinct taste since it’s the type of flowers available to them at the time of migration.
