Friends who know about bees know that the bees currently farmed in China are divided into Italian bees and Chinese bees, and literally we can guess that Italian bees are introduced from abroad, and Chinese bees are native bee species in China.
In fact, since the introduction of Italian bees into China, China's beekeeping industry has undergone earth-shaking changes, first of all, the living area of Chinese bees has been greatly compressed by Italian bees, and even some plain areas have been extinct, followed by China's Chinese bees to open a modern breeding model, breeding success has been greatly improved, I have to say that the introduction of Italian bees, the modern breeding of Chinese bees provides a lot of materials, but the impact on Chinese bees is also very huge.
Nowadays, the continuous endangerment of Chinese bees by Italian bees has become a major contradiction between beekeepers, the living space of Chinese bees has been greatly compressed, and even the convenient Italian bees of the road have also invaded the territory of Chinese bees that have retreated to the mountains, resulting in the survival of Chinese bees facing a threat again.
According to relevant statistics, the number of bee colonies in China reached 9.075 million in 2014, of which the number of bee colonies in key bee breeding provinces in China reached 5.3705 million. It can be seen how large the scale of Italian bees breeding in China is. Many friends can't think clearly of a question, since the Italian bee as an introduction of bee species, seriously endanger china's indigenous bee species, why should China still breed a large number of species? In fact, the reason is also very simple.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" > why can Italian bees harm Chinese bees? </h1>
Although the Italian bee and the Chinese honey bee have more similarities, but there are still large differences, such as in the size of the head, collection habits, secretion of royal pulp characteristics, are quite different, and in the Weihai bee problem, the Italian bee is mainly manifested in two aspects.
(1) Aggressiveness: Because the size of the Italian bee is larger than the Chinese bee, in terms of combat ability, the Italian bee has the advantage, so once the Italian bee wants to attack the Chinese bee, the Fighting Ability of the Chinese Bee is relatively poor, and it is easy to be eliminated by the Italian bee, which is a reason why the Italian bee can harm the Chinese bee.
(2) Concealment: Italian bees also have a feature, that is, the size of the italian bee's worker bee and the size of the Chinese bee are similar, the more fatal problem is that the frequency of the Italian bee's worker bee vibrating wings is close to the frequency of the Chinese bee's male bee flapping wings, and the male bee in the bee world can enter any bee swarm at will without being blocked, and the condition for the guard bee to let go of the male bee is also the frequency of the male bee flapping wings.
Therefore, the worker bee of the Italian bee can use its body size to be close to the size of the Chinese bee male bee, and the frequency of flapping wings and the advantages of the Proximity of the Chinese Bee Male Bee can easily blend into the Chinese bee swarm, but the driver kills the queen of the Chinese bee, resulting in a large number of Chinese bees losing the king, seriously affecting the development of chinese bees.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="23" >Why is the Italian bee so harmful that China still breeds a large number of people? </h1>
In fact, needless to say, since it is clear that there is a hazard and a large number of breeding, it must be profitable, I have to say that the advantages of the Italian bee are also very obvious, to a certain extent, the Italian bee really changed China's beekeeping market, mainly from the following aspects.
(1) Honey: Italian bees are good at using bulk honey sources, the ability to collect nectar is strong, especially in the case of surprise honey collection, the honey production capacity of Italian bees in a day is very high, taking honey as an example, a box of high box Italian bees, in a day can produce nearly 20 pounds of honey, this number, is the annual output of Chinese bees in many places, which shows how much significance this is for the increase in the yield of honey in China.
(2) Royal jelly: Now when it comes to traditional nutrition, many friends are no strangers to royal jelly, especially the royal jelly acid in royal jelly, which is a magical substance that has aroused the curiosity of scientists around the world, and it is precisely because of the existence of royal jelly that royal jelly has become a high-end nutritional product that developed countries around the world are scrambling to obtain, and China has become the country with the largest production of royal jelly in the world.
Here many friends overlook a problem, that is, royal jelly so far, did not use the bee to produce royal jelly, according to the data of the China Bee Products Association:
In 2020, China exported a total of 765.99 tons of royal jelly, with an export amount of 19.6956 million US dollars, up 13.44% and 7.07% respectively over 2019.
From this data, we can find that the money earned on royal jelly alone can feed as many people as possible, which is one of the reasons why the Italian bee is harmful to Chinese bees but still breeds in large quantities.
(3) Propolis: Propolis is actually a substance that bees use to fill the gaps in the hive, which is processed from the resin on some trees, and is also a very valuable Chinese herbal medicine, and many friends only know propolis, but do not know that the honey picking habits of Chinese honey do not include rubber picking, that is to say, honey bees cannot produce propolis, which shows that the Italian bees have the exclusive advantage of Propolis.
(4) Bee pollen: bee pollen is the main source of protein for bee larvae in the bee colony, even the protein needed by adult bees is also dependent on bee pollen intake, as a high-protein bee product, bee pollen is also edible, and the nutritional value is also high, so bee pollen is also a more popular bee product.
(5) Beeswax: Although chinese bees and Italian bees will produce beeswax, Italian bees have a very strong wax-secreting capacity due to large bee colonies, and the production of beeswax is also relatively large.
In fact, the beeswax of the Italian bee and the beeswax produced by the Chinese bee are also different, because the Chinese bee does not collect glue, resulting in the fragile nest spleen of the Chinese bee, and the Italian propolis, its nest spleen is relatively soft, for the production of the nest base, it is generally the use of the beeswax produced by the Italian bee, so the flexibility is better, easy to transport, if the use of beeswax, it is very easy to break.
This is the 5 advantages of the Italian bee compared to the Chinese honey bee, which shows that each advantage contains huge economic value, and it is no wonder that the Italian bee always bullies the Chinese bee but is also bred in large quantities.