Migratory beekeeping is the practice of moving hives from one location to another. The purpose is to help farmers pollinate crops such as apples, almonds, berries and pumpkins.
About half of the 2,000 commercial beekeepers in the United States migrate. This pays off in two ways: it lets bees work a longer blooming season and it enables them to carry their hives to farmers who need bees for pollination.
1. Flow-chart completion
Flow-chart completion is a question type that tests your ability to understand and fill in the gaps of the information given in the passage. It is a common question asked in IELTS Academic and General reading test papers.
In this question, the flow-chart will show a process or sequence of events and you will have to identify the sequence and fill in the missing information from the passage. This task might be difficult to complete, but it can be mastered with the right strategies and techniques.
To solve this type of question, you need to skim the passage and look for key words and phrases that will help you identify the missing information in the flow-chart. The key words can be names, places or figures.
You can also look for them in the title of the passage or in each box or step in the flow-chart. This will help you to quickly find the correct answer.
Another good strategy is to read the passage carefully and then write down keywords or ideas beside each paragraph. This will make it easier to find the missing information later. This strategy will help you to score higher marks on the Flow-chart completion question.
2. Diagram labelling
Migratory beekeeping is the practice of raising honey bees to move from one state to another to pollinate crops. Hundreds of hives are packed on pallets and then moved on large flatbed trucks.
To plan their routes, migratory beekeepers follow the honey flow and regional growing cycles. These help them find the best places to visit and produce the most honey.
In February, migrant beekeepers head to California’s Central Valley to pollinate almond trees. They use 80 billion bees to spread trillions of pollen grains.
They are very hard workers. However, the cold weather and low temperatures can cause them to suffer from illnesses and even die.
It is therefore important to ‘feed’ the bees in order to make them stronger for the following season. This is done by feeding them with a special liquid called ‘bee sugar’.
To encourage the bees to produce as much honey as possible during this period, ‘the beekeepers open up their hives and stack ‘extra boxes called supers on top’.
The extra boxes contain ‘frames of empty comb’ for the bees to fill with honey.
After three weeks, the’supers’ can be taken to a warehouse where they are used to remove the wax and extract the honey from the comb. Then the honey is transferred into barrels for export.
3. Yes/No/Not Given
In migratory beekeeping, bees move from place to place in order to pollinate flowers. This type of beekeeping has been around for ages, and it is practiced in many countries.
In ancient Egypt, for example, they moved clay hives, probably on rafts, down the Nile to follow the bloom and nectar flow as it moved towards Cairo. In North America, in the 1880s, beekeepers experimented with moving their hives on barges along the Mississippi and on waterways in Florida, but they kept falling into the water.
Then, they tried the railroad and horse- drawn wagons, but that also did not work. Finally, in the 1900s, cars and roads evolved technologically.
These days, migratory beekeepers are mostly in California and Washington State. These states have a lot of orchards that need pollinating, and they hire bees to do it for them.
At night, the beekeepers ‘pack’ (package) up their 4,000 or so hives. These hives are then stacked onto wooden pallets, back-to-back in sets of four, and lifted onto a truck. This can take up to seven nights.