The History of Beekeeping

Urban family keeps bees for many years. This photography shows placing a honey bee swarm to the hive in 1941 in Krecovice 31. 

Beekeepers from the left: Jan Urban, Zdenek Miskovsky, Vaclav Urban

The Bee Temperature

The bee colony keeps its consistent temperature and humidity. The precise temperature of 34,5°C is need to be kept in brood chamber. The temperature increase is cased by bee activity and regulated by ventilating and water evaporation to prevent overheating the hive. The bee colony stays in tight cluster in winter. The temperature inside a cluster doesn't fall below 17°C.

The photography is from 31st December 2008, the outside temperature was -5°C.

The Bee Colony

In a fully beveloped hive is:

One Queen

300 - 600 Drones

40 - 60 thousand Workers

Queen lives two or three years and deposits about 1500 eggs a day. Worker usualy lives 40 days and flies up to 800 km during its flow. Winter generation lives 6 - 7 months. Drone, a bee male, lives with a hive from spring till autumn. Hive needs pollen - bee bread and honey stored in waxen combs to provide for its keep.

Urban Family Apiaries

Urban family apiaries keeps 180 bee colonies placed in two spots in the Czech Republic. One location is the Czech and Moravian Highlands. It is an area characterised by flow of cultivated plants like rape, phacelia and clover. But also provides a flow of spruce forests in the peak of summer. The other location is a ridge part of Vsetin Hils (600 m above s. l.) a part of Walachia. Walachia is part of Beskydy Mountains foothils. There is the beekeeping influensed by border of the cold mountine climate and the mild lowland climate. There are no cultivated plants grown in this area, that's why its flow is characterised by mountine meadows, pastures, mixed forests and individual fruit trees.