Chapter 373 Beekeeping Guide
It is said that sour boys and spicy girls. Although the bayberries were still very sour, Gao Mingcheng still picked two red bayberries and took them back. He planned to share the joys and sorrows with many beauties.
However, a woman's appetite does change during pregnancy. If it were in the past, Xuanyuemei would have been like him, with her facial features deformed by the sourness. But now, Xuanyuemei eats the sour bayberry and says it's pretty good.
"If you like, I'll pick more for you." Gao Mingcheng said immediately.
"Yangmei, don't worry. You have to go buy rice in the afternoon. There is not much rice at home, and it has bugs!" Manyumei couldn't say how shocked she was when she opened the lid of the rice jar and saw the jar full of rice bugs.
However, rice weevils are harmless. As long as the rice is not moldy, it does not matter if it has weevils.
When washing rice, just soak it in water for a while, the rice weevils will float on the water surface, and then you can pour out the water.
But part of the rice was eaten by insects, so naturally some of the nutrients were lost and the taste was a bit bad.
It is easy for insects to grow in hot weather. When Gao Mingcheng came back last time, he didn't eat a single meal at home. After such a long time, it is natural that rice is easy to get infested with insects.
"Okay." Gao Mingcheng responded, planning to buy rice after dinner.
In the afternoon, he went to the cooperative and bought 20 kilograms of rice. He also bought some cakes and biscuits to keep at home for future use, so that if he was hungry, he could have a bite immediately.
After putting the things back home, Gao Mingcheng led the two dogs into the mountains.
This time he was going to check on the beehives. The hardworking little bees contributed a lot of honey to him every year, so naturally he had to pay more attention to them.
Last time, a box of honey became diseased, so he bought some medicine and sprinkled it near the beehives. Now is a good time to go and see if there are any new developments.
Although the honey he raises is collected from the local mountains, the bee species is not unique to the local area, but Italian honey, also known as Apis mellifera.
The introduction of Italian bees into China can be traced back to 1895. The trend reached a peak between 1928 and 1932, with Italian bees introduced to many places. Today, Chinese bees and Italian bees have become the mainstream bee species.
There are naturally Chinese bees in the many mountains of Gaojia Village, but when Gao Mingcheng decided to raise honey, he decided to raise Italian bees, because Italian bees are very active in collecting honey and can collect honey more times a year.
But Italian bees also have a disadvantage, which is that they are not as disease-resistant as Chinese bees.
Once the bee colony is weak, it is prone to disease and attack by foreign enemies.
A box of bees is a bee colony. A bee colony has only one queen bee and a dozen drones, and the rest are worker bees.
But the drone bees are also quite miserable. They are the reproductive tools of the queen bee. After mating with the queen bee, the drone bee's organs will remain in the queen bee's body, and its internal organs will be pulled out. At this time, the drone bee will die quickly. Even if it does not die for a while, it will be driven out of the nest by the worker bees.
The most interesting thing is that the queen bee only needs to mate with many drones for a short period of time to absorb the reproductive genes in the drones. After that, it no longer needs to mate but can continue to lay eggs.
Gao Mingcheng checked the beehives one by one. It was daytime now and the bees were actively collecting honey. Most of them were outside collecting honey. They would only fly back to the beehives when the honey sacs in their bodies were full.
After returning to the beehive, the bees will feed the nectar in the honey sac to other bees. The nectar is converted a little by the conversion enzyme in each bee's mouth, and then fed to the next bee for further conversion. After all the nectar is converted, it can be injected into the honey comb in the beehive for storage.
Under normal circumstances, it only takes bees about a week to fill the honey combs in the beehive. Once filled, they can secrete wax to seal the honey for brewing.
The brewing time is about ten days, that is to say, if there is sufficient nectar source, the honey can be shaken once every twenty days or so.
Gao Mingcheng opened the lid of the beehive and saw that there were quite a few bees lying on each honeycomb. They flapped their wings and made buzzing sounds and seemed very busy.
In fact, they are indeed busy, because the bees are flapping their wings to evaporate the moisture of the honey in the honeycomb, increase the Baume concentration of the honey, and use digestive enzymes to break down sucrose into monosaccharides such as glucose and fructose.
Once honey is thoroughly brewed, it has a unique sweet flavor and is extremely nutritious.
Gao Mingcheng tried his best not to disturb these hardworking little bees and just checked the condition of the brood combs.
Because bees have a short lifespan, in order to maintain the strength of the bee colony, the queen bee lays eggs frequently. As for whether the eggs are queen bees, drones, or worker bees, it actually depends on the size and number of brood combs in the beehive.
Gao Mingcheng planned to divide the honey into two boxes, one box for himself and the other box for the villagers who asked him for it. He promised to give it to them if he had it.
Twenty days have passed since the last time I shook the honey. The honey in the honeycomb looks full and the color is very nice, which means it is ready.
In this case, Gao Mingcheng plans to come and shake the honey tomorrow.
He stared at several bee colonies for a while and found three new queen bees. Two of them were already mature queen bees, and one was still in a queen bee cocoon and needed to wait to break out of the cocoon.
Gao Mingcheng immediately took the empty beehive and moved the original beehive with two queen bees to the side. He placed the new beehive next to the original one, with the nest doors facing each other. He then evenly placed the brood combs, honey combs and bees from the old beehive in the two boxes.
The old beehive will naturally hold the old queen bee, while the new beehive will hold the new queen bee. In this way, the bees that come back from collecting honey will fly into the beehives on the left and right sides. Over time, they will be divided into two bee colonies. When the number of bees on both sides is almost the same, the two beehives can be separated.
Cheng is very familiar with this job, after all, he was the one who did the box sorting before.
There were no other beehives at home, so he took an old wooden barrel, opened a nest door at the bottom, and covered it with a wooden board to provide shade and protection from rain.
Such a simple wooden barrel can also be used to raise bees. Once the bees in this box are separated, they can be given away.
He also wanted to know if other people could raise bees well.
Gaojia Village is surrounded by mountains on three sides, and it exclusively occupies Niuweiling. Even if the villagers raise bees, they place the bees in other mountains, which will not affect its side.
If other people can grow honey well, it can also be a way to make a fortune.
The first day Gao Mingcheng returned to the village was to divide the beehives into boxes. The second day was to shake the honey and check the growth of Poria cocos. On the third day, it was finally time to harvest the rice.
The last time he came back alone, he didn't want to cook, so he could only go to his grandmother's house to eat and drink. Now that many of his beauties have come back with him, he no longer has to worry about the house hygiene, meals, and the feeding of poultry and livestock.
Although many beauties have big bellies, they can work just as well as before. The only difference is that they cannot stand for long periods of time, otherwise they will feel their bellies are sinking.
Gao Mingcheng felt the benefits of having a wife. While harvesting rice in the rice fields, he met Gao Liang and others who were of similar age but still single, so he began to urge them to get married.
"Gao Liang, my son is about to be born, and you don't even have a wife. You have to work harder!"
"Gao Yong, you have to work harder. From now on, your children will have to call my son brother!"
…
Gao Liang and others were very upset. Is it because we don't want to marry a wife? It's because we don't have the money to marry a wife!
But life got better day by day, and the family had more money, so Gao Liang said, "Gao Mingcheng, when will you start harvesting herbs this year? After selling this year's herbs, I can see you at the end of the year."
When it came to collecting medicinal materials, Gao Mingcheng started thinking about it in his mind.
Collecting medicinal herbs is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and he is afraid that he does not have that much time, so he has to find someone to help. As for the candidate, he already has an idea in mind.
After reading a book called "The Beekeeper in the Magical World", I suddenly realized that although I have been writing about beekeeping, I have not written it in detail, so this chapter is a popular science on beekeeping. I will not mention it in detail later.
(End of this chapter)
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