‘I'm not surprised’ I thought. ‘Monty Don’s encouraging folk
to keep bees in their gardens without any thought to disease management and
swarm prevention. We don’t need more beekeepers, we need more forage.’
Trendy? More like grumpy .... and just a tiny bit smug. I’d already swarm-controlled one of my hives a few
weeks earlier, and I was counting down the days to sorting out another hive
when my neighbour mentioned that ‘thousands of bees were flying around this
afternoon.’
Impossible! I had it under control, or so I thought. But a
quick check of my hive records revealed my error- I was a day out. It takes 8
days for bees to produce a sealed queen cell which then matures for another 8
days before the new queen emerges. Swarming
takes place any time between day 8 and 16, and usually depends upon the weather.
It had been a fine day after a period of blustery weather and the bees had
swarmed.
I was embarrassed and annoyed. Swarms frighten some people
and can be disruptive, although they seldom harm anyone. Responsible beekeepers
certainly try to prevent swarming.
With ‘more enthusiasm
than expertise’ still ringing in my ears I spoke to two of my most
experienced colleagues. They were sympathetic; ‘It’s happened to me too’, and ‘It’s
been a funny year for swarms,’ they said.
Some consolation, but I know I should really have paid closer
attention to the calendar and counted the days.
Of course for the numerically challenged there is another solution:
Clip the queen’s wing, and then she won’t be able to fly anywhere.
This is a tricky operation and some beekeepers develop this ‘skill’
by cutting the wings off drones. They say the bees feel no pain but I'm not so
sure. Regardless, I find the notion of mutilating bees to prevent them swarming
somewhat disquieting.
So it seems I'm not only trendy, I'm sentimental too!
What do you think?
I saw the same article but the whole thing is just FUD.
ReplyDeleteIf you start at the beginning and analyse it then the whole piece is just a shoddy unsubstantiated piece of journalism that any real journalist would die in shame if they put their name from it.
The article starts by quoting "Experts".. except they're not named, therefore their expertise cannot be judged, ergo somebody said something that the author thought might be good for a laugh.
Next "swarms from novice bee keepers", hmm so which study can shed any light on this. None that I know of, and short of DNA analysis of every swarm against every hive in a mile radius of it's location the hive which swarmed and hence the bee keeper to whom it belongs can't be determined, hence just another piece of unsubstantiated FUD.
And lastly "the rise in novice beekeepers". Well that's easy to disprove, all you need to do is lookup Decline of Managed Honey Bees and Bee Keepers in Europe Potts et al Reading University 2010. In 1955 there were approx 283,000 hive in England. By 1965 it had reduced to 180,000, and by 2005 to less than 80,0000, yet the decline in actually bee keepers is substantially less approx 80,000 to 30,000 over the same period, with largest fall in the first 10 years of the period, remaining at approx 50000 bee keepers until the early 90s before falling.
Even allowing for the resurgence in bee keeping since 2010, we're still nowhere near even the level of the early 90s, so another nail in the coffin of the piece.