Bee.
An apiary is the land or area where a person deliberately places several hives for bees to live. The apiary can be built to help with farming, to collect honey, or both. An apiary is beneficial to the agricultural land around it as it encourages bees to stay in the area. In turn, bees help in pollination, which helps vegetables and fruits grow. Typically, one hive provides enough bees to pollinate an acre of crops.
Sweetie.
Vegetables, fruit trees, and other plants require pollination to produce vegetables or fruits. If the pollen does not spread from one plant to another, the plant will only produce flowers. Bees help spread pollen from one plant or tree to another while completing their own task of collecting pollen.
In an apiary, several hives are placed on platforms. Special scents are used to attract queen bees to hives. As the queen sits in the hive, she sends her workers to collect pollen and nectar from flowers in the area. The bee colony uses pollen as protein to keep them well nourished while they go about their business. After the worker bees ingest the nectar they collect, they regurgitate it and store it in the hive’s combs. This is how honey is made.
A queen bee surrounded by attendants. Special scents are used to attract queen bees to the hives of apiaries.
Beekeepers build an apiary for the bees in order to give them a suitable area to produce an ample supply of honey. When it’s time to collect the honey, the beekeeper introduces a small amount of smoke into the hive. This causes the bees to go dormant. The beekeeper can then get to the hive and remove several combs, making sure to leave enough for the bees to eat. When the combs are removed and the hive is closed again, the bees work hard to replace the missing combs.
Buckwheat fields are an ideal place for an apiary.
Normally, an apiary is installed in a field of flowers that help to produce quality honey. The best location for an apiary is in a field of clover, orange blossom, heather, blackberry, blueberry, or buckwheat. The flowers around the apiary influence the taste of the honey. Clover honey, which is usually very sweet, is the most common. Honey made from nectar from fruit trees and shrubs tends to have a more fruity flavor.
Beekeepers use the smoke to put bees to sleep so that honey can be collected.
The nectar of some flowers is toxic to humans. Therefore, an apiary should never be placed near these flowers. Azaleas, rhododendrons, and mountain laurel, for example, contain grayanotoxin, which can cause irregular heart rhythms, low blood pressure, dizziness, vomiting, and muscle paralysis. Thanks to the proper location of the apiary, grayanotoxin poisoning from honey is extremely rare in the United States.