BEEKEEPER:What Does It Take to Be a Successful Beekeeper?

Beekeeper or apiarists is a person who keeps honey bees in beehive and practices beekeeping.General management of the bee colonies has an overall impact of the quality of the produced honey. The beekeeper must have the basic knowledge about beekeeping practices to keep a sustainable beekeeping and to produce a high quality honey.

Lack of knowledge of beekeeper about basic beekeeping practices can raise the possibility of risk occurrence like Spread of diseases, lack of competence, lack of tractability.Thus, beekeeper should undergo training for general and advance requirements for bee keeping.

General Requirements and Recommendations for Beekeeper:

• Beekeepers should be well trained.
• The persons working with the honey should not have any infectious diseases.
• The staff should know about Good Manufacturing Practices and health hazards.
• The honey put on the market should be traceable both upstream and downstream in the production chain. If the honey is sold directly to end consumers the tractability is only demanded upstream.
• The persons working with the honey should not have any infectious diseases. Clean hands and if wounds on hands, disposable gloves should be used.
• The staff handling the honey shall have good knowledge about Good Manufacturing Practices and know about the hazards in the production.
• Beekeeper should include tractability as part of system.

Guide Design for Scientific Beekeeping

This guide highlights on the responsible honey production with due consideration to relevant hygiene standards as well as requirements for contaminants and residues with emphasis on the self-control of production chain including working with hives, working with honey and post handling of extracted honey, in order to produce honey with high quality and safer consumption.

The process of honey harvest at apiary level involves various steps from selection of apiary to collection and storage.