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Bee forage

Nectar and pollen are key resources for honey bees and bees must be able to find sufficient quantity and quality within their foraging radii. The foraging radius depends on the bee race, the local climate as well as on the environment, but a benchmark of 3 km can be expected for European A. mellifera colonies. Not every blooming plant produces nectar AND pollen and they differ in terms of nectar and pollen production (protein content, quantity, quality and flowering time). In a consequence, a high diversity of bee forage around the apiary is from high importance for honey bee health and in a broader sense for the income of the beekeeper.

Beekeeping

Beekeeping or apiculture is the housing and maintaining of bees, mostly of the genus Apis, in hives. Not only the choice of the right honey bee race, but also the right hive-system and appropriate hive management contribute to successful and high profitable honey bee product yields. In this chapter honey bees that are used for beekeeping in the two target countries, as well as commonly used hive types and hive/colony management were assessed. In both target countries, the use of mostly traditional hive systems is common. In both countries the hive management plays a subordinate role, which means, that methods like supplementary feeding, requeening, swarm prevention or bee health management is not common in every region of the countries. Besides classical beekeeping, honey hunting and the use of stingless bees (meliponiculture) are widely practiced to gain bee products. The research results also indicated, that there is no nation-wide good beekeeping practice and no pollination business at all. There are few beekeeping associations, but they have no similar structure than those of Europe. Constraints and problems regarding the beekeeping sector were also assessed resulting in a variety of problems, from lack of knowledge about bee biology to a lack of market or finance facilities.

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Bee pathology

There are numerous pests, pathogens and predators which affect the health of honey bee colonies and further may cause economic loss. Therefore, it is important for beekeepers to know about existing threats and how to treat a possible infestation. In the following chapter, an assessment on honey bee health status, major pests and predators and local treatment methods was conducted. Summarized, there is a wide variety of pests a pathogens that affect honey bee health in Ethiopia and Indonesia. They range from viruses, protozoa, bacteria, fungi and insecta to mites and mammals. In general, the research indicated that beekeepers in both countries underestimate the risk of honey bee diseases and that treatment methods, that are commonly used in the western world are unknown in Ethiopia and Indonesia. It is necessary to work on education dissemination to enlarge the understanding of honey bee biology and further increase the income.

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Possibilities for smart bee management (Precision Beekeeping)

To assess the status of a honey bee colony, the beekeeper needs to visually inspect the inside of the hive. This procedure is time consuming and may stress the colony. The active monitoring and remote sensing by appropriate ICT solutions (Precision Beekeeping) may be a useful tool to support the management of honey bee health, colony development and even the bee productivity. One practice for Precision Beekeeping is the use of Decision Support Systems. Without sufficient data analysis it is not possible to get added value from different bee colony measurement systems. Decision Support System (DSS) can be adapted for the Precision Beekeeping for automatic data analysis and is considered as one of the sub-systems of the Precision Beekeeping. Using different algorithms and models, DSS can help the beekeepers to identify different bee colony states and warn about abnormal situation of the colony. Different bee colony states may have different levels of importance and can be identified with different levels of reliability. DSS can process and combine data related to the bee colony weight, temperature, sound etc. DSS decisions can be split into two groups: individual rules, which are based on single colony monitoring and differential rules, which are based on comparison of different colonies within one apiary.

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Knowledge gaps

Wiki site for SAMS project.

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