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*Beekeeping - New Challenges*

pollination/foraging activity.

biodiversity.

**4.4 Timing and duration of the placement period on the site**

bees must stand on the site for the entire flowering period.

relation to the risks of widespread winter colony losses.

The site is a place where honey bee colonies stay for a defined period of time depending on the duration of the flowering or from the requirements of the pollination service. The timing of the placement period on the site is defined by the flowering phenological phase of the plants on which honey bees must perform their

Timing and duration of placement period of the honey bee colonies on the forage site greatly vary depending not only on the species to be pollinated but also on the basis of the purpose of the stay on the site. In some cases, honey bee colonies must stop only for a time much shorter than the actual duration of the flowering, for example, to avoid running into the scheduled treatments with crop-protection products. In other cases, however, especially in crops cultivated to produce seeds of fodder or oleaginous plants for the production of alimentary oil or biofuels, honey

In forage sites covered by wild vegetation, in the case of a prolonged placement

Timing can affect the level of sustainability of beekeeping as early blooms occur

The microeconomic model of the migratory beekeeper formalized in this chapter allows calculating revenues, variable costs and gross income per each site and each sequence of sites. The sequence with the highest gross income, identified by applying the recursive procedure to the data provided by the migratory beekeeper, can be compared ex post with the one it has actually implemented to verify which

often when honey bee colonies may not yet be well developed but, on the other hand, these early blooms may allow honey bee colonies to complete their development in view of the transfer on further sites of the sequence or of their multiplication. Late blooms can bring another big advantage to the beekeeper, allowing the honey bees to breed winter bees in the presence of abundant food sources (pollen is the limiting factor in this regard) and at the same time to store significant stocks of honey, with a large saving of sugary foods that the beekeeper should provide to bees in the absence of such flowering. Autumnal blooms, however, can affect the survival of honey bees since the life span of a working bee depends on its more or less intense foraging activity. Pollination and the consequent production of honey of buckwheat (*Fagopyrum esculentum*) in the Alpine areas until the 1950s are interesting in this sense. The late flowering of this crop forced local beekeepers to ward off most of their colonies. Honey bees that were left on the buckwheat harvested abundant honey but were destined in large part to succumb by the end of winter, brittle from the intense harvest but without being then replaced, for the arrival of winter, by other new and strong bees. The migratory beekeeper in the selection of the site had to evaluate the advantages obtained with the production of honey in

period on the site, the pollinating and foraging effects are greater, since honey bees succeed, through their cognitive abilities, to better exploit the resources of a site that they "learn" to know and manage [55, 56]. The prolonged stay in the sites, especially if not in correspondence with a conspicuous bloom (producing monofloral honey) also improves the value of the ecosystemic service. From the point of view of sustainability, it is essential that bees manage to pollinate a broader spectrum of plants, creating the benefit of pollination to a large number of plant species and contributing substantially to ensure the conservation of the plant and overall

**18**

**5. Conclusions**

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*Beekeeping - New Challenges*
