Male bees have a sweet but short life. If you are lucky you hang out in the hive for a couple of weeks being fed and pampered by the workers, and then, when the mood takes you, you fly off with some of your mates to a 'drone congregation area' and chillax. Before long a virgin queen on the pull arrives, flirts outrageously with you and your buddies, and then takes flight. She's fast in all senses of the word, and if you are quick enough to catch her, you will have sex that will blow your ... genitals off. Then you die.
I kid you not, successful copulation means loss of genitalia and death for male bees. It's brutal, but what an exit!
Pity the poor lads that don't get laid. They hang around the hive in a state of dysphoria, eating and putting on weight; life could be worse, and it is, in August.
Once the nectar flow stops in mid July the bees start making preparations for winter and forget all notions of swarming. They need to build up stores as quickly as possible and bring in lots of protein rich pollen raise the winter bees. Male bees that sulk around the hive eating stuff aren't wanted, so they get chucked out.
It's been a month since I looked at my bees. At the end of July there were lots of drones schmoozing around; yesterday there were none.
Which would you prefer - getting your tickle-tackle blown up, or being thrown out of the house by your sisters, and starving to death? Comments welcome!
Friday 30 August 2013
Sunday 18 August 2013
Honey? I sunk the quids!
Beekeeping is an expensive business. Here's what your average novice might expect to pay in our local beekeeping store for the absolute basics:
Add in a queen marking pen, queen cage, clearer board, Porter escapes, varroa treatment and feeder bucket and you are well on your way to spending £800 just to get started.
And here's the UK average honey yield per hive for last year (2012): 8 lb.
Yes, honey from your local small time beekeeper costs £100 jar to produce!
Okay, I exaggerate. To start with I'm mixing 'fixed' and 'variable' costs and there are economies of scale and if you shop around you can buy kit more cheaply, but on the other hand I haven't costed in the gloves, the jars, the labels and lids, the honey buckets, the honey extractor, the wax extractor, the wax moth treatment, the sieves, the uncapping knife.....and the time.
Still, some of us are better beekeepers than other, right? Last year I took 176 lb off my two hives versus 16 lb for your average Joe. Quids in,you might think.
So here are my results for 2013: Nothing, nada, rien, nichts, or diddly-squatum if you prefer Latin.
I predicted as much in my post of 13th June. My bees simply never got going. They've have ambled along all summer; good natured and healthy enough, but no honey.
- One colony of bees = £200
- Hive to keep bees in = £300
- Bee-suit, smoker, hive tool = £120
Add in a queen marking pen, queen cage, clearer board, Porter escapes, varroa treatment and feeder bucket and you are well on your way to spending £800 just to get started.
And here's the UK average honey yield per hive for last year (2012): 8 lb.
Yes, honey from your local small time beekeeper costs £100 jar to produce!
Okay, I exaggerate. To start with I'm mixing 'fixed' and 'variable' costs and there are economies of scale and if you shop around you can buy kit more cheaply, but on the other hand I haven't costed in the gloves, the jars, the labels and lids, the honey buckets, the honey extractor, the wax extractor, the wax moth treatment, the sieves, the uncapping knife.....and the time.
Still, some of us are better beekeepers than other, right? Last year I took 176 lb off my two hives versus 16 lb for your average Joe. Quids in,you might think.
So here are my results for 2013: Nothing, nada, rien, nichts, or diddly-squatum if you prefer Latin.
I predicted as much in my post of 13th June. My bees simply never got going. They've have ambled along all summer; good natured and healthy enough, but no honey.
Wednesday 7 August 2013
Wicked wasps
There's a wasp's nest in the wall of my neighbour's garden. Up until now they have been doing a good job foraging for insects to take back to their nest. They are not fussy; last year I watched them tucking into a slice of ham with each wasp carefully cutting a piece off with it's mandibles before airlifting it back to the nest. Usually however, they predate caterpillars and other pests, and occasionally a dead bee they have found near the hives.
It's a good system - the wasps take meat back to their nests to feed their grubs, and the grubs secrete a sugary solution to feed the wasps. Everybody was happy, until now...
The wasp nest is starting to die. In the last few weeks the virgin queens have hatched and got mated and will soon be looking for somewhere to shelter through the winter. The old wasp queen is no longer laying so many eggs and she will die shortly. Fewer eggs means fewer grubs, which means less sugary solution for the adult wasps, who are hungry.
So they start to look around for sugary food and anyone picnicking or enjoying a drink in a pub garden this time of year knows the consequences - wasps are a pest.
But if you think you have problems, pity the poor bees. Thus far they have been working hard bringing in nectar and making honey. They need that honey to see them through the winter and well into spring next year. Without that honey they will die.
The wasps will die soon anyway, but right now they are hungry and determined to steal the bee's honey. So all day long they probe the defences of the hive, trying to find a way in. If the colony is weak the wasps can soon over-power it; a wasp can sting many times but a bee can only sting once, so it doesn't take long for the wasps to kill the guard bees and in the course of a few days completely strip a colony of any honey.
It's a sorry sight - a pile of dead bees, no food and few house bees wandering around aimlessly.
To help my bees protect their precious honey I've narrowed down the hive entrance so that only one or two bees can get into the hive at a time. It means there's a bit of a queue at busy periods, but it also means the guard bees can easily challenge any wasp.
But it's tiresome with so many wasps from that nest just 20 meters away, so it's time to make some wasp traps.
It's a good system - the wasps take meat back to their nests to feed their grubs, and the grubs secrete a sugary solution to feed the wasps. Everybody was happy, until now...
The wasp nest is starting to die. In the last few weeks the virgin queens have hatched and got mated and will soon be looking for somewhere to shelter through the winter. The old wasp queen is no longer laying so many eggs and she will die shortly. Fewer eggs means fewer grubs, which means less sugary solution for the adult wasps, who are hungry.
So they start to look around for sugary food and anyone picnicking or enjoying a drink in a pub garden this time of year knows the consequences - wasps are a pest.
But if you think you have problems, pity the poor bees. Thus far they have been working hard bringing in nectar and making honey. They need that honey to see them through the winter and well into spring next year. Without that honey they will die.
The wasps will die soon anyway, but right now they are hungry and determined to steal the bee's honey. So all day long they probe the defences of the hive, trying to find a way in. If the colony is weak the wasps can soon over-power it; a wasp can sting many times but a bee can only sting once, so it doesn't take long for the wasps to kill the guard bees and in the course of a few days completely strip a colony of any honey.
It's a sorry sight - a pile of dead bees, no food and few house bees wandering around aimlessly.
To help my bees protect their precious honey I've narrowed down the hive entrance so that only one or two bees can get into the hive at a time. It means there's a bit of a queue at busy periods, but it also means the guard bees can easily challenge any wasp.
But it's tiresome with so many wasps from that nest just 20 meters away, so it's time to make some wasp traps.
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