5 basic knowledge points of Yunnan wild honey, remember these 5 points congratulations on getting started

Yunnan wild honey related concepts

Yunnan: Geographical location: Yunnan, referred to as Yunnan or Yunnan, is a provincial-level administrative region of the People's Republic of China. Kunming, the capital of the province, is located in the southwest border of China, bounded by latitude 21 ° 8 '-29 ° 15 ', east longitude 97 ° 31 '-106 ° 11 ', east of Guizhou, Guangxi as the neighbor, north of Sichuan, northwest of Tibet, west of Myanmar, south of Laos, Vietnam adjacent, Yunnan Province with a total area of 394,000 square kilometers.

Climatic conditions: Yunnan climate basically belongs to the subtropical and tropical monsoon climate, and northwest Yunnan belongs to the plateau mountain climate.

Natural resources: Yunnan is the province with the largest number of plant species in the country and is known as the plant kingdom. Tropical, subtropical, temperate, cold temperate and other plant types are distributed, and there are many ancient, derived, and exotic plant species and taxa. Among the 30,000 species of higher plants in the country, Yunnan accounts for more than 60%, and there are more than 150 kinds of tree species listed in the national key protection and development at the first, second and third levels. There are 162 nature reserves, including 16 national nature reserves and 44 provincial nature reserves. The area of nature reserves is 2,955,600 hectares, of which 142,700 hectares are national nature reserves and 883,100 hectares are provincial nature reserves. Yunnan has a wide variety of tree species, diverse types, excellent, fast-growing, precious tree species, medicinal plants, spice plants, ornamental plants and other varieties are distributed throughout the province, so Yunnan has a treasure house of medicine, the hometown of spices, and a natural garden.

The number of animal species in Yunnan is the highest in the country and is known as the animal kingdom. There are 1737 species of vertebrates, accounting for 58.9% of the country. Among them, 793 species of birds, accounting for 63.7%,; 300 species of mammals, accounting for 51.1%,; 366 species of fish, accounting for 45.7%,; 143 species of reptiles, accounting for 37.6%,; 102 species of amphibians, accounting for 46.4%. Of the 25,000 species of insects found on the national list, yunnan has more than 10,000 species. There are many rare and protected animals in Yunnan, and many animals are only distributed in Yunnan in China.

Ethnic humanities: 26 ethnic groups live in large and small settlements

Wild: Refers to all animals and plants that grow outdoors or people who are not close to each other. Chivalry, untamed and domesticated by humans, creatures that thrive on their own in the wild.

Bees: Bees (Bee/Honey bee) are taxonomically a collective name for insects of the order Hymenoptera, Suborder Slender-waisted, Pintail, Bee Family, and Bee Family, and are important taxa of Hymenoptera. Known as resource insects. The most familiar are the Italian bees and oriental bees that are domesticated to make honey [1]. The most familiar are the Italian bees and oriental bees that are domesticated to make honey.

The bee family can be divided into three subfamilies, and the six families of the bee subfamily: Ahntophorini, the long-whiskered bee family Eueerini, the ctenopleetrini of the ctenopleetrini, the api family, the wheat bee tribe Meliponini and the bumblebee tribe Bombini are all distributed in China [1]. Thornless bee-wheat bee family, the genus is distributed in the tropics [1].

Honey: Bees fly at a speed of 20-40 km/h, an altitude of less than 1 km, and an effective range of activity within 2.5 km from the nest. All bees feed on pollen and nectar, collecting nectar is a very hard job, bees interview 1100-1446 flowers to get 1 honey sac nectar, during the honey flow period 1 bee collected an average of 10 times a day, each honey load averaged half of its body weight, a lifetime can only provide 0.6 grams of honey for humans. When the nectar is sucked into the honey sac by the bees, it is mixed with the secretion of the upper jaw glands - invertase, and the transformation of sucrose begins from here, evaporating the water by repeatedly brewing the honey juice and constantly fanning, accelerating the transformation and concentration until the honey is fully mature. Bees live entirely on flowers, including pollen and nectar, and are sometimes brewed and stored as honey.

There are several wild bee species in Yunnan, what are they:

(1) Little bees

(Apis florea Fabricius, 1787) is a small and medium-sized insect family, the bee genus, often nesting in grass or bushes, so Yunnan commonly known as the small grass bee. The distribution of small bees in the world is concentrated in Nepal, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, Java, Borneo (Indonesia), Palawan (Philippines), Saudi Arabia, eastern Oman, southern Iran, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India and other regions, in China in a large area south of 26° 40 ′  south of the Yunnan North and South Latitude, and in Longzhou, Shangsi and other places in southern Guangxi (Hepburnand Sarah, 2011). Its natural habitats are secondary shrubs and weeds at altitudes below 1900 m above sea level, with an average annual temperature of 15-22 °C in river valleys, mid-mountain slopes at the edge of the basin, arable land areas and villages.

A small bee nesting on the branches of the coffee tree in my house

Fresh grass honey is very appetizing

(2) Medium bee

Medium bee (earth bee)

Apis cerana, also known as Chinese bee, chinese bee, earth bee, is a subspecies of oriental honey bee, belongs to the unique Chinese bee species, is a forest community dominated by miscellaneous trees and the main pollinators of traditional agriculture. The Chinese honey bee has a small body, a black head and thorax, a yellowish-black abdomen, and a yellowish-brown fluff all over its body. In 2006, the Chinese honey bee was listed as a national-level protected breed of livestock and poultry genetic resources of the Ministry of Agriculture.

Wild bees in forest tree holes

Honey in the hive of the bee

(3) Big Bee:

The image comes from the Internet

The great apis dorsata Fabricius (1793) is a large species of bee genus, with a single spleen in rows, commonly known as row bees. It is found in South Asia, Southeast Asia and southern Yunnan, southern Guangxi and Hainan. Large bees are wild bees and are more ferocious. The habitat has migratory habits depending on the season; due to its wild state, there are many natural enemies. The habitat has a migratory habit depending on the season, from May to August in the tall tree nest breeding, offspring bees out of the nest, due to the wasp and other natural enemies, but in the forest flow. After September, it moved to the rocks and dense shrublands of the lower river valleys to build nests and store honey for the winter. Generally at an altitude of about 2500m, (to be further examined, the most densely distributed Xishuangbanna area average altitude is not 2500, in the altitude of 2500 meters above sea level has not found a trace of large bees) Nests are built at a fork of the tree more than 10 meters above the ground, and there are 1 to 1 group or even 100 groups of bees on a tree. The nest spleen is a single vertical orientation.

(4) Big black bee

Image from Bee Magazine

The Great Black Bee, Apis laboriosa (Smith, 1871) is the largest species of bee in the genus Apis laboriosa . Because the main production area is under the snow-capped mountains around the Himalayas, rock-dwelling, it is also commonly known as himalayan row bees.

Rock bees like to live in groups, and usually several groups or more than ten groups live in crevices or protruding rocks on the steep walls of the same overhanging rock, 30-40m from the ground.

The nest spleen is single vertical, about 0.3-1.5 m long and about 5 to 12 cm wide, with the upper part of the honey storage area and the lower part of the breeding area. Wild bees are fierce and have the ability to attack actively [1]. It is found in Nepal, Bhutan, northeastern India, and southern Tibet, western and southern Yunnan in China [2]

Cliff Rock Hive

(5) No stinging bees

Black-legged stingless bees

Stingless Bee (StinglessBee), also known as ant bee, small acid wasp, stingless wasp, belongs to the bee family (Apoidea), apidae, apinae, trigona, mainly distributed in the tropics, is one of the pollinators of tropical plants. There are more than 10 species of spineless bees recorded in China, mainly distributed in southern Yunnan, Hainan and Taiwan. [1]

Nest in tree holes, wall crevices, rock gaps, the nest door has a horn tube made of wax secreted by worker bees and collected gum, the hive is composed of three parts: spawning area, powder storage area and honey storage area, the nest of insect breeding is small, the nest of honey and powder is larger, and the worker bee and male bees can go out to collect honey, powder and gum.

Soil acid hive

Where is the precious soil sour honey?

A: The Bee Products Symposium held in Mexico in July 1999 kicked off research on the application of thornless honey. After research found that the ethyl acetate extract of thornless honey contains the highest flavonoids, can effectively scavenge free radicals, higher than the flavonoids in Western honey, has a stronger anti-inflammatory antibacterial antioxidant and anti-cancer ability, after which the extracts in the honey, propolis, pollen of the stingless bee are often used in the medical field, which involves the digestive system, gynecology, reproductive system, respiratory system, etc. In Australia, stingless wasps are kept as family pets, in Brazil and Malaysia and other places. Thornless honey also has a mature commercial value,

Domestic research on thornless honey is still in its infancy, wild thornless bees are only distributed in a small number of areas in southern Yunnan, breeding technology is extremely immature, each group of bees can only produce 1-2 kg of honey per year, and mining is difficult, can not form a large-scale industrialization, and in the thornless honey origin of southern Yunnan tropical rainforest living in the ethnic minorities, but for thousands of years to enjoy the benefits of this unknown precious wild honey, southern Yunnan Xishuang version, Pu'er and other ethnic minorities, before modern medical treatment is not popularized, Soil acid honey is used as a good medicine for wound healing, cataracts, and maternal postpartum recovery. In recent years, due to the increasing attention and recognition of wild honey by honey and the hype of many merchants, the living environment of the origin has deteriorated day by day, and wild bees are also facing increasingly difficult survival difficulties. Therefore, when developing and utilizing wild honey resources, sustainable development should be taken as the core purpose, and sufficient honey should be reserved for wild bee colonies when collecting honey, so as to improve the environmental protection awareness of honey pickers and merchants, rationally develop and utilize them, and increase the economic income of farmers without affecting the survival of wild bees.