Honey, get back..

I'm all right Jack keep your paws off of my stack!

There’s quite a stack of honey in the hives right now, thanks to a long warm autumn. Most of it is ivy honey which doesn’t taste very nice and has crystallised in the comb. But the bees like it, so they guard it jealously because it’s their only source of food for next 3 months.

The problem is that as it gets colder the bees huddle closer together to keep warm, so they are not so vigilant. Mice know this!

So they creep into the hive and dine on the honey and wax and any dead bees lying on the hive floor. Sometimes they even move in! It makes sense – the hive is dry and kept warm by the bees vibrating their bodies, and the mouse is surrounded by lots of food.

The trick is to move gently so as not attract too much attention. Sleeping helps - you don’t want to upset 8,000 bees when you are the size of mouse.

Usually beekeepers stop mice getting into their hives by making the entrance very small – too small even for a mouse. I had done just that in October, but the warm weather meant the bees were still very active bringing in lots of pollen, which was then being knocked off their back legs as they scrambled through the narrow hive entrance. So I removed the block and forgot about it.

Just before Christmas I was checking the hives when I noticed an unusual pattern of debris underneath one. Careful inspection confirmed my suspicions – a mouse was getting in because I’d left the entrance block off. Inserting the block is simple enough, but what if the mouse was still inside the hive? I needed to be sure it was mouse-free. There was one way to be certain – kick the hive!

Well, not so much a kick as a good bump on the ground to make the bees angry and startle any mouse. The culprit would then sprint out of the hive with a dozen or so bees on its tail.

In the event no mouse appeared. I wasn’t surprised. Day time temperatures had been relatively high and the bees were actively guarding their honey. It was only at night when the temperatures dropped and the bees were in a huddle that the mouse slipped in ....

Bees support BKIP

My bees have decided to vote BKIP in next year’s election.

I was astonished, “Surely you‘re not worried about over-population. Aren't honey bees in decline?”

There was a hollow laugh from inside the hive, “That’s just propaganda put out by the eco-warriors and bee-huggers!”

It turns out my bees were right. UK honey bee colonies fell steadily from 1957 to 2005 as beekeeping declined in popularity, but since 2007 the number of beekeepers has more than doubled from 11,000 to 24,000 today. More beekeepers mean more hives, which means more honey bees.

I was still sceptical, “What about all those headlines we read about bees dying out?” I asked.

“They’re muddling up honey bees and bumblebees,” explained a worker.  “And they are confusing the position elsewhere with the situation in England,” added another.

So it's bumblebees, butterflies and other insects that are in decline. It’s hardly surprising. Since the Second World War we have lost over 95% of our wild flower meadows. Hedgerows have been ripped out and vast tracts of our countryside are now barren monoculture.

 But it still didn't explain why my bees are planning to vote BKIP.

“It’s the housing,” said one.

“What, not enough housing?” I queried.

“No, too much!” came the exasperated reply.

All over the Thames Valley gardens are being lost due to in-fill development. Food is becoming scarcer for the honey bees at a time when the population of has doubled. Competition with other pollinators is tough so during the summer months the bees have to fly even greater distances to find food.

“We don’t need more honey bees – we need more flowers,” was the unanimous view.

“Yes, but they have to be the right type of flowers. Seventy-five percent of garden flowers are either useless or of little use to pollinators. What we need are insect friendly flowers that can feed all sorts of insects including butterflies, hover flies, bumblebees and honey bees.”

I realised my bees weren’t being ‘bee-ist’; they simply wanted to help all pollinators. It got me wondering. “What does BKIP stand for?” I asked.

“Be Kind to Insect Pollinators!” they roared in unison.

Someone who is being kind to pollinators is James Headington of Paley Street Farm near Maidenhead. Take a look at this video clip of his field margins this summer.

You could do something similar. Please support the National Pollinator Strategy by planting insect friendly plants in your gardens, window boxes and school fields.

Resources:

The RHS provide a list of plants perfect for pollinators:

https://www.rhs.org.uk/science/conservation-biodiversity/wildlife/encourage-wildlife-to-your-garden/plants-for-pollinators

Natural England also explains how to make a wild flower meadow in your garden in this document:

http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/file/98029

You can find out more about the National Pollinator Strategy here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-pollinator-strategy-for-bees-and-other-pollinators-in-england

The workers and the shirkers

Busy bees – they work all day long for the good of the hive.

It’s hardly surprising that sociologists have long considered honey bee colonies to be a perfect example of collectivism; comrades living in a higher phase of a communist society, in which Marx would expect ‘From each according to her ability, to each according to her needs.’

But there’s a problem with this analogy because whenever I open up my hives it seems to me that only half the bees are actually working.

Now admittedly they could be having a tea break, but I’m beginning to suspect there is more than a grain of truth in the old joke about communist economics:  They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work!

For sure worker bees don’t earn much (see Worker’s Wages) but could it really be that some socialist workers are really lazy shirkers? The answer seems to be.... yes!

Scientists attached radio-frequency identification tags to hundreds of individual honey bees and tracked their activity for several weeks to discover that over half of all the nectar and honey bought into the hive came from just 20% of the foraging work force. It seems the bees know that hard work kills, so most of them opt for a life of indolence.

It makes sense. The hard working bees provide more than enough food for the colonies needs so the shirkers only pull their weight if they have to.

On reflection it seems that bees provide a pretty good model of socialism.....

I've embedded a video clip about the research below:

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Wannabees

Even in a strong healthy hive there are wannabe queens. These pretenders to the throne are kept in check by loyal workers and a chemical cosh in the form of pheromones released by the queen. Revolution and anarchy are kept at bay..... until the queen dies.

Usually the colony quickly raises a new queen, but sometimes the anarchists get the upper hand. It doesn't end well because, put simply, the wannabes lack breeding.

Queens are carefully cultivated and well bred. As larvae they receive a superior diet of royal jelly and live in spacious queen cells. When they come of age they earn their right to the 'throne' by killing any challengers. Once secure in their position they mate with only the best suitors.

Pretenders on the other hand lack class. They were fed standard worker's rations so they are scrawny with under-developed ovaries. They never fought for anything nor have they ever loved, but they still wannabe queen! Beekeepers show them no deference and disparagingly refer to them as 'laying workers'.

The problem with laying workers is that their eggs aren't fertilised which means they can only create male bees. Moreover, they have no sense of order so they lay eggs in a random fashion, often 2 or 3 to a cell. Most larvae perish but those that survive develop into stunted drones. It's a disaster for the colony which will die out within a month or so.

The obvious thing to do is introduce a new queen, but the pretenders, having tasted power, won't give it up, so gang-up together to kill her.

Today I found one of my colonies had laying workers. There was only one thing to do. I shook all the bees out onto the grass in front of a strong healthy hive. The workers will probably be accepted by the strong colony without too much of a fight, but the pretenders will be refused entry and will crawl off to die.

There have been several pretenders to the Scottish throne, and all have failed. But I suspect whatever the outcome of tomorrow's referendum on independence, Alex will be the new 'King' of Scotland.

He has a tough act to follow; the  'Last King of Scotland' was Idi Amin!

Too fat to fly?

I should have known something was up last week; there were no eggs in one of the hives - so either the queen was dead, or she had stopped laying.

I assumed she'd stopped laying. It was the convenient option - I didn't want to hunt through the colony to find the queen because it was hot and the bees were irritable, and anyway I had a simple explanation; the hive reeks!

The pong was coming from a thymol and eucalyptus treatment I had used to kill varroa mites (see Noah the varroa). It's one of the few 'organic' treatments against varroa and is surprisingly effective, but it stinks of Vick's VapoRub. The bees hate it so much that they would rather sit on the outside of the hive than put up with the stench within.

No wonder then that the queen stops laying, and a quick check on the internet confirmed my suspicions. As events proved, I was right.... but for the wrong reason, as I found out yesterday lunch time when I suddenly noticed a lot of bees flying around the garden.

There were hundreds circling around; far too many for the play flights of young bees (see Biggles learns to fly). It looked like they were swarming which left me astonished because it's very late in the year for swarms. For a moment I wondered whether the bees had finally had enough of the 'VapoRub' and simple absconded!

I watched expecting them to disappear over the horizon but instead within 10 minutes they had settled on a nearby fence. As you can see, it's a small swarm and within the hour it was safely housed in a little 'nuc' box.

I doubted they would stay and sure enough within two hours the sky was once again full of bees, only this time they settled in a nearby tree, fifteen feet above the ground.

Queuing to get back in the 'nuc'

"Blow it!" I said, "I'm not clambering up a ladder to re-home them so that they can just fly off again. It's going to rain tomorrow so getting cold and wet should teach them a lesson."

I think they heard me because within half an hour they had returned to the 'nuc' box and were lining up to get back inside. It was a good decision because it's been raining all day!


If the queen starts laying again they'll remain in the box, but why did she stop laying in the first place?

Well it wasn't the 'VapoRub'. Instead it was a strict diet that the bees had put the queen on so that she could lose weight and be able to fly.

I wonder whether Michael O'Leary has contemplated a similar strategy for those wanting fly Ryanair?

Show me the honey!

This year's summer honey is good - really good.

I knew it was going to be particularly tasty when I saw what the bees were foraging on: White clover - which gives the honey a wonderful floral aroma; lime blossom - which provides a hint of mint; and small quantities of lavender, oregano, verbena, veronica and countless other flowers, including knapweed.

Honey fresh from the comb

Knapweed makes a dark-coloured honey which has a taste reminiscent liquorice, and when first saw the honey in the honey buckets I was concerned it would taste like a well-known brand from Bassett's!

However, the hay in Stag Meadow was cut earlier than normal this year, just as the knapweed was in flower. Besides killing a thousand or more foraging bees with the grass-cutters, the loss of forage resulted in a smaller honey crop.

But what was lost in quantity has been made up for in quality because there is just enough knapweed in the honey to give it a rich golden colour with a nuance of liquorice, but not enough to detract from the other flavours.

Special Reserve Honey

Better still, there's no bitter after-taste which seemed to mar much of the local honey last year. This year's crop looks good, and tastes even better.

Talking of Tastes - I'll suggest to Karen that she keeps this honey as a 'Special Reserve' for those who really appreciate great local food.

Not that the less discerning should worry; it's been a good year for the bees and I'm sure there will be plenty of other local honey available - just not as good as mine!

Housing the homeless

Bees take a very pragmatic approach to housing the younger generation; Mum simply moves out leaving a perfectly good home for the kids to raise a family.

This makes sense. The youngsters are strong and virile, so providing a home in a desirable location helps ensure survival of the next generation. But it does leave Mum with a problem - she finds herself homeless.

Not that she's on her own. Usually when she leaves the hive the old queen takes about 10,000 workers with her in a swarm. Initially the swarm rests somewhere before sending out scout bees to find new lodgings. However, this lack of forward planning means that the bees can be homeless for days. Sometimes they die, especially if they are a small swarm, but mostly they find new accommodation  in someone's house or garden shed, which is when the trouble really starts.

If they're lucky a beekeeper will coax the bees out of their newly found cavity and into a hive, but often times swarms are a nuisance and are destroyed by pest control companies.

So you will understand the sense of urgency we had earlier this week when we went to collect a swarm that had settled on an old apple tree.

The swarm had arrived that afternoon, but by the time we got there it was raining and getting dark. In the gloaming we could make out the bees on the trunk of the tree ... and on a branch .... and on another branch ... and on another branch. This swarm was huge; probably 30,000 bees!

Catching 30,000 bees in the pouring rain at dusk is not easy, but two hours later we had most of them inside a small box (called a nuc), with a thousand still queuing to get in. The nuc was evidently too small, but by carefully wrapping the box and remaining bees in a sheet we managed to safely get them into the car.

These bees really needed a full size hive, but because there have been so many swarms this year there is no spare kit available, which is causing a housing crisis. With a bit of juggling the bees could be re-homed in a day or two, but in the meantime there was a risk they might decide to decamp to somewhere better.

My worst fears were confirmed that evening - the nuc box was empty!

I was gutted - until I noticed that the hive next door was over-flowing with bees.

It seems the swarm had simply decided to squat in their neighbour's hive, and the incumbents accepted them willingly rather than leave them homeless.

I think we could learn something from bees. What do you think?