During my first period in Nichos Tselios apiculture company we had to transfer apiaries from Kastoria, small city close to the Albanian border, to the area of Halkidiki. These apiaries we transferred were in a field in Kastoria from the beginning of July cause a big presence of chestnut trees that in this period have open flowers rich of pollen. As soon as the chestnut trees stop the production of pollen the work of the beekeeper is to transfer the apiaries in other field.
The transfer take place during the night because is in that moment that all the bees are inside the apiaries; when the sun was down we closed the “door” of the apiaries with a small piece of wood and load them to the track; after that we had to travel for 3 hours during the night and reach the new location where we discharged the apiaries before the night was over and after one hour we opened the “door” removing the piece of wood.
The new field ,in the western cost of the peninsula of Halkidiki, is rich of pine trees and plants of cotton , which in the end of august are rich of pollen and honey; the honey which bees get from the pine is produced by the planthopper Marchalina Hellenica that lives to the pine trees and produce a white wax substance that will be grasp by the bees; is very easy to recognize the presence of this planthopper cause the clear visibility of the white wax up to the branches of the trees.
Furthermore I practiced the beehives inspection that consist in open the apiaries and check if the bees got illness, if is present the queen bee, if the population is too much big or opposite too much small. We recognized an apiary where the queen bee was death by hearing the noise produced by the bees that where moving without stop their wings all together in order to express their discontent.
Furthermore I learnt: to recognize the bees of one day of life by their color very light, to identify the male and female bees by the body size ( the male are bigger), to recognize the cell where are deposed the queen’s eggs ( are the bigger cells in the beehive), to recognize if the queen cell was destroyed by other bees or queen ( if the cell is opened in the side and not in the top), to recognize the one day eggs, to understand in which beehive is located the queen bee by the presence of one day eggs in that beehive.
