What is Beekeeping

Beekeeping or apiculture, from Latin word apis, bee is the maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. A beekeeper (or apiarist) keeps bees in order to collect honey and beeswax, for the purpose of pollinating crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary.

Beekeeping, the practice of artificially maintaining honey bee colonies, is one of the oldest forms of food production. Formally known as apiculture, beekeeping is thought to have been practiced as early as 13,000 BC. The ancient Egyptians were particularly skilled in the art of beekeeping, since they considered honey to be an important part of their diet.

City Beekeeping

Many beekeepers have bee hives in their back yards. Some bees are even kept on city roof-tops. Bees can travel several miles to collect nectar and pollen, so they do not need flowering plants close by. Most suburbs have plenty of flowers, and bees can make a good crop of local honey.
City beekeepers must take special care so their bees do not become a nuisance to neighbors, or even appear to be a problem. We all want good neighborly relations!
With so much buzz about colony collapse disorder (CCD), even those who live far from the farms and orchards are pitching in to beef up the nation's bee populations (while reaping some sweet rewards for themselves). This is city beekeeping!
City beekeeping is technically keeping bees in the city, that is growing and managing a beekeeping hobby or business in the city.

But is it wise to invite bees into the city limits? Neighbors might have something to say when they see a full-blown hive on an adjacent rooftop or in a neighbor's backyard. YES! because "Honeybees are not interested in you. They're interested in nectar."
Relatively few communities in the U.S. outlaw beekeeping. However, most have "nuisance laws" that are intended to outlaw things that most people would find objectionable, such as a barking dog or a stinky smell. Some communities have laws that put practical constraints on beekeeping, such as limits on numbers of hives and a requirement that the beekeeper provide water for the bees.
There will be bees in our cities and towns as long as there are nectar and pollen-producing plants. Outlawing beekeeping tends to replace domesticated bees with wild bees, but does not make bees go away.
Prospective City beekeepers should learn about legal restrictions before embarking into city beekeeping. Regardless of the law, a good city beekeeper does not allow his bees to annoy neighbors. Sharing a jar or two of honey helps too!
There is also a question of just how many bees a concrete jungle can support. "You can have too many hives in an area [where] there's not enough [food] to support a colony," one city beekeeper might say. But in leaner times, city beekeepers can supplement hives with sugar water and protein supplements, which are "like a PowerBar for a human,". Winter is a concern for beekeepers in northern climes (urban, suburban and otherwise) set on keeping their bees at home year-round. Those persons practicing city beekeeping points out that for their bees to survive a Massachusetts winter, they make sure that each hive has at least 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of honey to eat.

Bees might be adept airborne navigators, but they aren't necessarily built to live high in the sky. City beekeepers often wonders if high winds and the chill might be a drain on bee energy for hives planted on top of tall city buildings. Although not all practitioners of city beekeeping know exactly how high they can thrive, some says the highest hive they’ve ever worked with was six stories up—and the bees didn't seem to mind.

Beekeeping history can be traced as early as the rock age. Early rock paintings on cave walls in Africa and eastern Spain show people gathering honey from trees or rock crevices while bees fly around them. Cave drawings in Spain, near Valencia from around 7000 B.C. show figures climbing to out of reach places and gathering honey. Other cave images show figures surrounded by bees without being stung. Early honey gatherers probably learned by accident that smoke would calm bees as an offshoot of using fire for "warding-off" or driving other animals.

Beekeeping History proves to be a great tools for learning the art of bee keeping. There is evidence that man has long known that honey is a valuable food source. However, until man took the step to establish artificial hives, honey was only a rarely obtained "sweet reward".

Beekeeping history shows that Beekeeping originally may have developed following the observation that swarms will settle in any container with a dark interior space protected from the elements, similar to holes in trees or logs where bees are naturally found. Pottery vessels or straw containers provide the necessary shelter and protection for hive establishment.

It is also duly noted on a number of beekeeping history artifacts that Beekeeping is one of the oldest forms of food production. Some of the earliest evidence of beekeeping is from rock painting, dating to around 13,000 BC. It was particularly well developed in Egypt and was discussed by the Roman writers Virgil, Gaius Julius Hyginus, Varro and Columella. Traditionally beekeeping was done for the bees' honey harvest, although nowadays crop pollination service can often provide a greater part of a commercial beekeeper's income. Other hive products are pollen, royal jelly and propolis, which are also used for nutritional and medicinal purposes, and wax which is used in candlemaking, cosmetics, wood polish and for modelling. The modern use of hive products has not changed much.

For several thousand years of human beekeeping, human understanding of the biology and ecology of bees was very limited and riddled with superstition and folklore. Ancient observers thought that the queen bee was in fact a male, called "the king bee," and they had no understanding of how bees actually reproduced. It was not until the 18th century that European natural philosophers undertook the scientific study of bee colonies and began to understand the complex and hidden world of bee biology. Preeminent among these scientific pioneers were Swammerdam, René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, Charles Bonnet, and the blind Swiss scientist Francois Huber. Swammerdam and Réaumur were among the first to use a microscope and dissection to understand the internal biology of honey bees. Réaumur was among the first to construct a glass walled observation hive to better observe activities within hives. He observed queens laying eggs in open cells, but still had no idea of how a queen was fertilized; nobody had ever witnessed the mating of a queen and drone and many theories held that queens were "self-fertile," while others believed that a vapor or "miasma" emanating from the drones fertilized queens without direct physical contact. Huber was the first to prove by observation and experiment that queens are physically inseminated by drones outside the confines of hives, usually a great distance away.