Basic Beekeeping Terminology

Beekeeping, also called apiculture, basically refers to the maintenance of honey bees by humans. A beehive can be defined as an enclosed man­made structure that houses the honey bees and their young. Honeycombs are hexagonal cells that the bees use to store their food and are made of beeswax.

A beekeeper is a person who keeps bees in beehives in order to collect honey and other products such as wax and royal jelly. Other names that are used to refer to beekeepers are honey farmers, apiarists or apiculturists.

An apiary or a bee yard is a set location where beehives are kept.

Types of Beekeepers

People keep bees for different reasons. Some people do it as a hobby while others do it for income generating purposes. The reason behind it will determine the number of bee colonies one will keep. Below is a list of the different classes of beekeepers:

Queen breeders : Queen breeders raise queen bees to sell to other beekeepers. They use Jenter kits to quickly and efficiently produce large numbers of queens. Queen breeders have to make sure that their colonies have superior qualities.

Hobby beekeepers : Hobby beekeepers often own a few hives. They are mainly interested in natural science and environmental preservation and as an added advantage reap honey.

Sideline beekeepers : Sideline beekeepers practice beekeeping to have an additional source of income. The profit margins from sideline beekeeping are modest and therefore the practice has been widely adopted as a side hustle. Their bee colonies are not very large and are often within the range of 300 producing an average of 20 metric tons of honey.

Commercial beekeepers : Commercial beekeepers keep bees solely for commercial purposes and they keep large colonies averaging about 50,000 which produce millions of tons of honey annually.

The market for bee related commodities such as honey is huge and thus the rise of the beekeeping craze comes as no surprise. Bee related commodities can be sold in retail, through commercial packers and distributors or as self-brokers. Bee related commodities vary widely and they include honey, royal jelly, beeswax, pollen and, propolis. Of all the commodities, honey is the most exploited.