There are many enemies of honey bees that may cause your bees to temporarily or permanently move from their hive.
It is important to understand who the enemies of the bees are so that as the beekeeper you should be able to control them.
Honey bees enemies are grouped into three categories:
- natural climatic conditions,
- man and his activities and
- natural pests and diseases.
NATURAL CONDITIONS
The amount of annual rainfall and the temperature of an area exert a great influence on the life and work output of the honeybee.
The insect has been called a “summer bird”, for it performs most energetically and relatively high temperatures, up to 350c.
Its activity slows when the temperatures drops below 200c, and bees will not move at all below 80c.
Low temperatures and rainy season
At low temperatures, comb building ceases. Bees remain indoors and cluster to generate heat to keep themselves warm.
To fan themselves or to cluster, they need fuel to burn; honey fuel allows them to perform these functions. Therefore if one of these two activities is allowed to continue for long, field bees will not fetch food and other necessities of life and the colony will have to depend on honey stored in the comb cells.
If bees are confined because of unfavorable weather, an average colony may consume as much as 1.4kg of honey in a day. Should this continue, whole stores of honey may be completely depleted and the colony will face famine?
High temperatures
At very high temperatures above 370C, combs begin to melt and most bees in the hive will move out and fan themselves and the brood nest frantically.
At such temperatures bees will spend all their time fetching water to cool the hive and nectar collected will cease completely.
Other problems are also encountered by the honeybee in the dense equatorial forests:
- Some trees are so tall that worker bee will not visit them for any reason.
- Tall trees in the equatorial forests have few or no flowers, so that nectar and pollen are scarce.
- The sun’s rays cannot reach the forest floor, the thick undergrowth prevents the free flow of air and the temperatures are too low to induce worker bees to fly out to procure the commodities essential for the colony.
- High humidity levels promote serious fungal diseases in the insect.
- High moisture content in the nectar prevents honey from curing well.
- Ants, reptiles, birds and other predators are present in the forest in large numbers.
HUMAN ACTIVITIES
The honey hunter
Honey hunters using outdated, barbaric methods are a terrible danger to the bees. Not only do they deliberately kill many of them, but as they cut down trees to take the colonies’ combs, they destroy the tree hollows that are the bees’ natural home. The colonies are thus forced to hang outdoors, exposed to all their natural enemies and if the bees are destroyed they cannot fertilize flowering crops, and this again contributes to famine condition.
Control: Governments should not only regulate honey hunting and enforce the regulations once made but, should also make serious efforts to instruct honey-tappers in the newer more efficient ways of honey hunting as well as to encourage them to keep bees themselves.
Bush-burning
Some obvious reasons for bush burning are:
- To clear the land for farming
- To clear the bush and make hunting easy
Control: The bee keeper must guard his hives against bush fires. Before the dry season, he should make a fire belt around the apiary and visit it as frequently as possible, removing any fallen wood or leaves which could spread a fire on the site.
Bee-burning
Where water is scarce during the dry season, the honeybee makes life difficult for man by collecting his water.
While returning from the farm late in the evening the exhausted, thirsty farmer finds that his only bucket of water has been drained by the bees.
What is more, the bees harass the women pounding grain. In extreme cases they try to suck human sweat and these results in scuffle.
In some places therefore the villagers hunt the bees and burn them.
Control: Bees must be watered in the same manner as birds are watered on a poultry farm.
The palm-wine tapper
The palm tree produces a sweet, refreshing liquid which is drunk by man in many tropical countries. The honey bee also refreshes herself with this type of wine from the pot of the wine tapper. The honey bee begins to leave the hive as early as 5 a.m.
Control: in general, drunken bees are like human drunkards. They work less and produce little honey. Apiaries should therefore not be set up near places where wine-tapping is in progress. Colonies may dwindle in size and may perish completely as the insects are burned, crushed and drowned.
Poisoning bees
As the honeybee visits plants during her search for nectar or pollen, she flies from one plant and flower to another. Sometimes the insect unknowingly lands on a poisonous plant or contacts a poisonous pesticide which the farmer has sprayed to protect his crops.
Control: Beekeepers are strongly advised to keep their hives away from sprayed fields.
NATURAL ENEMIES, PESTS and PREDATORS
Ants
The greatest natural enemies of the honeybee are all types of ants: driver, army, tailor, red, brown, large or small all are dangerous to the hive. They eat sweets such as nectar, honey, sugar and the bee’s body. They like to live in hollows like the bee, and the same empty bee hive produced by man for the bees can also be a good home for them.
Control
All four wires or the legs of the hive should be protected by insect repellents.
The part of the suspension wire nearest to the branch on which the wire hangs should be coated with thick grease. The legs of the hive stands can also be protected with grease, but the best insect repellent to use with a hive stands is dirty engine oil, each leg of the stand being placed in shallow container full of the oil. Spreading wood ash or charcoal ash around the stand will also keep ants away.
A newly installed hive should be visited frequently to check whether it has been colonized by bees or ants.
Destroy every ant found in the hive.
Honey badger (mellivoracapensis)
Mammal whose delicacy is honey
Pushes the hive down and eats honey
The badger has very thick fur and fatty layer bellow the skin and does not feel any pain
Also rolls on mud and gets a coat of mud
Control:
By suspending the hive to prevent the badger attack
Wax moths (Galleria mellonella and Achroiagrisella)
The wax moth is the bee’s second worst enemy. There are two types: greater and lesser wax moths. They attack colonies during the warm periods of the year. Strong colonies are able to repel them but, weak ones are susceptible to attack. The moth itself does no harm to the adult bee but does harm the larvae. The female, which is slightly smaller than the honeybee, enters the hive freely and lays her eggs in the combs. The eggs hatch in three days, and the emerged larvae begin to eat the wax, tunneling through and destroying the comb cells and spinning web-like cocoons about themselves for protection against the bees. They are capable of destroying all the combs in a hive. The bees may leave the hive and cluster on a support near the apiary. If the beekeeper’s attention is drawn to this he can sometimes prevent the colony from absconding by cleaning all the destroyed combs and removing all the larvae of the wax moth. The bees may return to the hive and start all over again.
When the wax-moth reaches its pupa stage, it digs hollows in wood for its cocoon and by doing so damages or destroys the inner surface of the hive and the top bars.
Weak colonies can be protected against wax moth by making them strong, for example by uniting two or three colonies. The moth usually enters a hive to lay her eggs when a colony swarms.
When strong colonies swarm, most of the bees leave the hive and the few which remain may not be able to cover all the combs. Unguarded combs should be removed, stored and replaced later as the colony increase in size.
Control
By use of biological control like bacillus thuringiensis. The pesticide is sprayed in the comb when it germinates it destroys caterpillars of wax moths and has no effect on honey bees and man
Fumigate the combs using paradichlorobenzene
The entrance of a weak colony should be reduced to enable the few ‘’security officers’’ guard it effectively. Other holes which can serve as entrances to the hives will surely be used not only by the moth but by other hive predators as well. Such entrances should be sealed off as soon as they are discovered.
Lizards
Lizards, reptiles measuring about 25cm from head to tail, are mostly found in backyard gardens, in villages and outskirts of the city. The activity of the ‘’home lizard’’ may cause great concern to the beekeeper. It sometimes stays very close to the hive or accommodates itself very comfortably between the lid and the hive body, if it can find an entrance. From that convenient spot, it may feed indefinitely from the bees.
Even lizards not living near the hive will feed on the bees once they can locate the apiary. Although they prefer dead bees, they will eat live ones as well. A worker bee acting as a scavenger, will pounce on an old, lazy or sick bee and try to tear the victim’s wings, breaking them into pieces. While this action is in progress, lizard will rush in and lick both of them up with its sticky tongue.
Toads
Toads are same as lizards and will remain in the apiary if they can get bees to eat. The toad generally consumes only weak and dead bees but, if it can reach the hive it will eat live bees as well. The toad does not pose as many problems as the lizard because it cannot climb. The best means of protecting hives against toads is therefore to install them at least 60 cm above the ground.
Snakes
Some snakes known as eat bees. They do not cause much damage to the bee colony but, the bee keeper should always be careful to avoid being bitten by a poisonous snake near the hive.
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The bee pirate
A wasp-like insect with orange and black skin is sometimes found molesting the field bees entering and leaving the hive. This insect is usually active between Octobers and may. There is nothing the bee keeper can do to stop it but, it cannot cause any great harm to a colony of bees.
The praying mantis
The praying mantis also eats bees, but this insect cannot cause any great damage to a colony.
The spider
The spider constructs webs around the apiary or in an empty hive. Once the web catches the bees, the spider will eat them.
All webs found in or near the apiary should be destroyed. The hive should be cleaned and the entire web found within it removed. Otherwise, the scout bees will be caught and eaten and no swarm will ever take possession of the empty hive.
Alpine swift
This bird is well known for eating bees. The birds arrive in December and stay on for several weeks usually causing considerable losses.
Other organisms
There are other organisms which follow a swarm and settle with them in the hive. Some harass the bees, and the workers are often found trying to drive them away.
The hive beetle (Aethinatumida)
This is a small black insect with an armour-planted shell which the honeybee is unable to crack with her mandibles or sting to death. The beetles are found in the hive every day and their number increase during the honey-flow season. A colony of bees containing large numbers of this insect produces les honey than one of the same size without the insects. The bees try to keep them away but, as the bees’ chase them out the beetles resist and waste the honeybees’ time. There is no known way to eliminate them.
The bee scorpion (pseudo scorpion)
This insect as the name implies looks like a scorpion. It usually clings to the legs of the bees and accompanies them to the nest. The worker bees try to keep them away but, like the Aethinatumida the pseudo-scorpion will never go away.
The bee louse (Braulacoeca)
One or two may be found on a worker or drone, but more are usually found on the queen bee, probably because the braula enjoys taking royal jelly; hence, it would be the first to partake of the food whenever the queen is served. The worker bees never attack them, but the queen can be deloused by catching her and holding her between the thumb and the finger, placing a live cigarette ash on the louse. It will quickly fall off. It can also be smoked out with the smoke of a cigarette.
