Modern beekeeping methods – 3 major disadvantages
1. Seasonal activities of bees
Bees can make honey only during the warmer months, when many more flowers are blooming and there is enough pollen to feed on, but during the cold winter months, bees make less honey. Bees, like humans, can sense changes in the weather and environment.
2. The life of bees compared to humans
Bees lead a life very similar to that of humans. They organize themselves and their work according to their designations and have a method in everything they do. The only difference between the queen bee and the female is that the queen bee is permanently pregnant from her first nuptial flight and remains in her hive producing eggs until the sperm runs out. The queen bee mates with 2-3 drones and this impregnates her for the next two to three years. The queen bee lays about 2,000 eggs per day and lives for about two years after her brood-producing period ends. After this, a new queen takes over the hive. Mating is seasonal and the pattern differs from one bee species to another.
The queen bee, like dignitaries among humans, is protected by worker bees and drones that keep buzzing around her to protect her from harm. These worker bees and drones will give their lives to protect the queen bee. The buzz of the queen bee is very different from that of the other bees and is a high-pitched buzz. The other bees recognize this sound and continue to swarm around it constantly.
3. Close-knit colonies of bees
The entire colony of bees works with a single objective, which is to protect their queen, raise the young and produce honey. Their ultimate release from all the hard work is their death, which they sometimes bring on themselves by the endless work they do. The queen bee also lives only to continue the lineage and lay eggs to multiply the numbers in her colony and her hive. Most of the bees in the bee colony are female, but only one will become a queen. Beekeepers still consider the ways of bees and their behavior a mystery and never really understand the life of a bee. Technology and science are trying to learn more about bee colonies and maybe learn a lesson or two from them to live together compatiblely instead of working at cross purposes in the same family most of the time.