Beekeeping or also known as Apiculture is the maintenance of bee colonies, commonly in man-made beehives. Honeybees are the most kept species but other honey producing bees such as Melipona stingless bees are also kept. Beekeepers (or apiarists) keep bees to collect honey and other products of the hive such as beeswax, propolis, bee pollen and royal jelly. Other sources of beekeeping income include pollination of crops, raising queens also known as Queen rearing, and production of package bees for sale. Bee hives are kept in an apiary or “bee yard”.

In the modern era, beekeeping is often used for crop pollination and the collection of byproducts, such as wax and propolis. The largest beekeeping operations are agricultural businesses, but many small beekeeping operations are run as a hobby. As beekeeping technology has advanced, beekeeping has become more accessible.

Queen rearing is the process of inducing a colony to produce new queens by manipulating various colony attributes. This can be accomplished by any experienced beekeeper, though most beekeepers purchase new queens from well-established producers. Because queens’ mate with up to 15 drones, the distribution of genes in a honeybee hive is diverse. This diversity translates into desirable features like pest and disease resistance and optimal foraging strategies; however, it also makes the process of selecting desirable traits more complicated.