Bees are thieving blighters. Given the choice between visiting flowers and collecting nectar to make honey, or simply stealing someone else's, they'll opt for thieving every time.
Sometimes a little colony of bees can be completely overpowered by robbers who will take every last drop of honey and leave the small colony to starve. In strong colonies guard bees will fight off potential robbers but in a little colony there may be insufficient guards, especially if the entrance hole is too wide. So beekeepers keep the entrance to small colonies very narrow so that potential intruders can be more easily challenged.
However sometimes robbers just get lucky and they find an abandoned hive where a colony has died out leaving lots of unguarded honey. Never creatures to miss a free lunch, the robbers generously sample the bounty before returning home to tell their friends and relations.The news about the 'free honey' causes huge excitement in the colony and within 20 minutes 100's of bees will have descended on the source and will be busy carrying the booty home.
All of which goes to explain those bees swarming around that bait hive in my last post.There must have been traces of honey in the comb used to make up the bait hive so when the scout bees reported back to base about a potential new residence nobody paid attention (as usual) until someone mentioned the free honey...
I got some more bees nevertheless. My beekeeping buddy was so embarrassed about mistaking robbers for a natural swarm that he gave me some of his!
Sunday 30 June 2013
Wednesday 26 June 2013
Plan B - how to catch bees
Bees swarm. If it's a primary swarm around 10,000 bees pour out of the hive together with the queen and take to the skies, but not for long. They normally fly just a few minutes before resting on a nearby tree or wall. Then they hang in a big cluster and wait ... and debate ... for hours ... sometimes days .... until all 10,000 reach agreement on where they are going and how they are going to get there!
You would think a more sensible approach to moving home would be to agree all this before leaving the hive, but the old foragers are too set in their ways and the baby bees are too young to fly, making sensible discussion of relocation plans nigh on impossible.
So instead all those in favour of relocation leave in a swarm and then hang together somewhere trying to agree where they are going to live.
Fortunately not all the bees have a des res in mind otherwise they would never reach agreement. Instead dedicated scout bees scour the neighbourhood looking for a suitable home. This process probably starts days before the colony actually swarms, but nobody pays attention. Now the bees are homeless they are eager to learn what the scouts have found, and slowly, as more scouts return with enthusiastic reports about a potential new home, the bees reach a consensus.
Ideally, bees want a dry, airy cavity above the ground. If it has previously been occupied by bees, even better - which leads me to Plan B - Bait hives.
By placing empty hives containing old honeycomb around the locale beekeepers can reasonably expect to catch a swarm of bees. 'Catch' is a bit of an exaggeration because the bees simply walk in; one moment the hive is empty, the next moment thousands of bees have taken up residence.
I'm excited. My bee-buddy tells me one of my bait hives has hundreds of bees buzzing around the entrance. This could be it, more bees at last....
You would think a more sensible approach to moving home would be to agree all this before leaving the hive, but the old foragers are too set in their ways and the baby bees are too young to fly, making sensible discussion of relocation plans nigh on impossible.
So instead all those in favour of relocation leave in a swarm and then hang together somewhere trying to agree where they are going to live.
Fortunately not all the bees have a des res in mind otherwise they would never reach agreement. Instead dedicated scout bees scour the neighbourhood looking for a suitable home. This process probably starts days before the colony actually swarms, but nobody pays attention. Now the bees are homeless they are eager to learn what the scouts have found, and slowly, as more scouts return with enthusiastic reports about a potential new home, the bees reach a consensus.
Ideally, bees want a dry, airy cavity above the ground. If it has previously been occupied by bees, even better - which leads me to Plan B - Bait hives.
By placing empty hives containing old honeycomb around the locale beekeepers can reasonably expect to catch a swarm of bees. 'Catch' is a bit of an exaggeration because the bees simply walk in; one moment the hive is empty, the next moment thousands of bees have taken up residence.
I'm excited. My bee-buddy tells me one of my bait hives has hundreds of bees buzzing around the entrance. This could be it, more bees at last....
Thursday 13 June 2013
Decimate - Terciamate - Exterminate!
Around 93,000 colonies of bees in the UK died last winter. That's one third of our entire honey bee population! This isn't decimation, it's three times more, it's tertiamation!
But it's worse than that. The British Beekeepers Association's survey only monitored winter losses to the end of March 2013, but many more colonies died in the really cold April/May period, including one of mine.
It's a disaster and more worrying still is that the surviving colonies are not building up fast enough. The peak nectar flow around here is between 21st June and 14th July when the bees forage on white clover and blackberry. It takes at least 4 weeks to get from egg to foraging bee. It's simple mathematics - there's no way there will be enough bees to get a honey crop this summer.
Instead I need to focus is on building the colony up so that it's strong enough to survive next winter. That, and obtaining more bees. There's the rub; colonies are so weak that we are not seeing as much swarming this year so there's little chance of picking up some free-bees. I need to have a plan B(ee)....
More of which later.
But it's worse than that. The British Beekeepers Association's survey only monitored winter losses to the end of March 2013, but many more colonies died in the really cold April/May period, including one of mine.
It's a disaster and more worrying still is that the surviving colonies are not building up fast enough. The peak nectar flow around here is between 21st June and 14th July when the bees forage on white clover and blackberry. It takes at least 4 weeks to get from egg to foraging bee. It's simple mathematics - there's no way there will be enough bees to get a honey crop this summer.
Instead I need to focus is on building the colony up so that it's strong enough to survive next winter. That, and obtaining more bees. There's the rub; colonies are so weak that we are not seeing as much swarming this year so there's little chance of picking up some free-bees. I need to have a plan B(ee)....
More of which later.
Sunday 2 June 2013
The water carriers
Well spring turned out to be the coldest in 50 years according to the London Times but with the switch to 'meteorological summer time' on the 1st June the temperature has been above 15 C for the last 2 days; we are having a heatwave! So as you would expect the bees have been busy foraging and bring in....water.
When it's warm the bees know that a good source of water is the damp soil in the plant pots on our patio, because the warmer it gets, the more we water. Sometimes we leave it a day or two and the soil surface dries out, but that doesn't deter the bees; they simple drink the water from the tap!
Consequently, on a warm day before turning on the outside water tap its wise to check that there isn't a bee or two up the spout sipping on a residual drop.
Collecting water can be dangerous for bees. The bourne that runs along the edge of the fields has water all year long, but it is flowing too fast for bees to risk approaching. Muddy puddles soon dry up and those that don't contain unhealthy stagnant water that can make bees ill. Early rising bumble bees can take advantage of the morning dew, but my teenage honey bees wont stir until the sun is long up and the dew all gone. So getting water can be a challenge, which is why many beekeepers provide their bees with a water source such as bowl full of small pebbles that is regularly topped up with tap water.
Most of the water is used to cool the hives by dampening the comb which the bees then fan with their wings. On a hot day up to 80 or so bees can be tasked with carrying almost a litre of water back to the hive. It's thirsty work.
When it's warm the bees know that a good source of water is the damp soil in the plant pots on our patio, because the warmer it gets, the more we water. Sometimes we leave it a day or two and the soil surface dries out, but that doesn't deter the bees; they simple drink the water from the tap!
Consequently, on a warm day before turning on the outside water tap its wise to check that there isn't a bee or two up the spout sipping on a residual drop.
Collecting water can be dangerous for bees. The bourne that runs along the edge of the fields has water all year long, but it is flowing too fast for bees to risk approaching. Muddy puddles soon dry up and those that don't contain unhealthy stagnant water that can make bees ill. Early rising bumble bees can take advantage of the morning dew, but my teenage honey bees wont stir until the sun is long up and the dew all gone. So getting water can be a challenge, which is why many beekeepers provide their bees with a water source such as bowl full of small pebbles that is regularly topped up with tap water.
Most of the water is used to cool the hives by dampening the comb which the bees then fan with their wings. On a hot day up to 80 or so bees can be tasked with carrying almost a litre of water back to the hive. It's thirsty work.
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