A colony of bees consists of three castes of bee: a queen bee, which is normally the only breeding female in the colony; a large number of female worker bees, typically 30,000–50,000 in number; a number of male drones, ranging from thousands in a strong hive in spring to very few during dearth…
Related to natural beekeeping, urban beekeeping is an attempt to revert to a less industrialized way of obtaining honey by utilizing small-scale colonies that pollinate urban gardens. Urban apiculture has undergone a renaissance in the first decade of the 21st century, and urban beekeeping is seen by many as a growing trend. Some…
The natural beekeeping movement believes that modern beekeeping and agricultural practices, such as crop spraying, hive movement, frequent hive inspections,artificial insemination of queens, routine medication, and sugar water feeding, weaken bee hives. Practitioners of ‘natural beekeeping’ tend to use variations of the top-bar hive, which is a simple design that retains…