**3.2 Basic beekeeping conditions**

#### *3.2.1 Seed bee rearing*

beekeeping technology extending over many years, I have identified many problems existing in the modern beekeeping such as beekeeping in inappropriate environments, deterioration of colonies due to overloading of production and excessive selective breeding, reduced disease resistance, inappropriate processing, insufficient attention paid to quality control of apicultural products, and so on [5, 6]. On the other hand, there are also problems in the major countries consuming apicultural products, such as Japan. Specifically, the following problems cannot be ignored: low awareness of the quality of apicultural products, insistence on "quantity over quality" and "cheap price", and ambiguous quality standards for apicultural products. On the other hand, beekeeping is an industry, and therefore profit cannot be neglected. In order to solve these problems, difficult countermeasures are required to meet the consumers' needs and harmonize cost performance on an

In this paper, I would like to propose the measures to solve the problems based

In the natural condition, secretion of RJ occurs when the colony in the bee hive propagates and the colony splits (swarm, hive division). For colony splitting, one queen bee is essential for each colony, and when the time of the split approaches, 10–15 natural queen cell cups are prepared in the hive. The queen bee lays fertilized eggs into these natural queen cell cups, and the worker bees secrete RJ. The first queen bee emerging and leaving the brood is tested by the worker bees to check whether it can work sufficiently as a queen bee. When it passes the test, the larvae of other sister queen bees remaining in the queen cell cups are killed by the worker bees. There is a principle that only one queen bee can exist in each bee hive. A new queen bee is reared with the RJ secreted by the worker bees, and the swarm phenomena are seen before the new queen bee emerges. After emergence, the new queen bee flies out of the beehive for a mating flight, copulates with drone bees of another colony and returns to the hive. However, the new queen bee may be attacked often by a foreign enemy and may not be able to return to the hive. In the society of honeybees, the egg-laying bee is the queen bee, and each colony will be in danger of extinction in the absence of the queen bee. When the worker bees get a scent of the danger of extinction, they will take emergency measures by finding third-instar or younger larvae growing in the worker bee-rearing cells and starting the construction work to expand the worker bee-rearing cells to queen bee-rearing cells while giving a large amount of RJ to such larvae. In other words, the larvarearing policy is changed. The cells prepared when the larva-rearing policy is changed are called "emergency queen cell cups". Utilizing this habit of preparing the "emergency queen cell cups", Inoue invented artificial plastic artificial queen cell cups and filed a patent application in 1963 [3]. On November 19, 1965, the utility model registration (Registration No. 785804, Japan) was filed for dissemination of this technology. This invention of artificial queen cell cups enabled mass production of RJ leading to dissemination in Japan, Taiwan and China. Only about one dozen natural queen cell cups are prepared in the natural hive, but it is possible to set 200 artificial queen cell cups in one bee hive, and about 750 mg of RJ can be pooled in 72 h in each queen cell cup. About 150 g of RJ can be harvested at once,

In the period from the 1960s to the 1980s, the beekeeping business was active in Japan. There were 12,000 beekeepers and 320,000 colonies. Along with dissemination of the artificial plastic artificial queen cell cups, the previous beekeeping business targeting only honey production proceeded with production of RJ. However,

on his past experiences and practices of natural beekeeping.

industry-wide basis.

**3.1 Definition of natural beekeeping**

*Modern Beekeeping - Bases for Sustainable Production*

enabling mass production of RJ.

**120**

Domesticated honeybees have fixed the characteristics suitable for beekeeping through selective breeding, extending over a long period of time. In addition, there


#### **Table 1.**

*Comparison of the natural beekeeping and ordinal beekeeping.*

has recently been an increase in artificial mating of queen bees. On the other hand, such selective breeding tends to lead to inbreeding, resulting in new secondary problems such as shortened lifespan of queen bees, reduced disease resistance and loss of specific biological capability. In order to solve these problems, it is important to avoid the degeneration of species appearing after artificial inbreeding by means of appropriate interbreeding.

Furthermore, the following conditions are also desirable:

plants.

**Figure 1.**

**Figure 2.**

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*3.2.4 Conditions of bee forage*

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89647*

i. The target nectar plant grows in a concentrated manner.

ii. The flowering season of the target nectar plant is different from that of other

*Kikuji Yamaguchi Principles of Natural Beekeeping: A Novel Bio-Method of Natural Beekeeping…*

iii. It is far away from farms growing commercial plants with agrochemicals.

The bee forage is a substantial base for beekeeping and also a major food source for survival of honeybees and the prosperity of descendants. Therefore, the bee forage should basically be native grass flowers or tree flowers in the agrochemicalfree area located in the highland or mountain area at least 2000 m above sea level. It is possible to cultivate a bee forage by seeding, but in such cases, it is necessary to prevent contamination of apicultural products by using a bee forage cultivated

*An ideal location of the apiary for natural beekeeping. It should be in a secluded highland where the target nectar plant grows in a concentrated manner, the flowing season of the target nectar plant is different from that*

*of other plant, and far away from agrochemical-using farms of commercial plant.*

*Uncontaminated (agrochemical-free and chemical fertilizer-free) area of Chinese Highland.*
