Bee Poo

Healthy bees don't poo inside their hives which is just as well; imagine the mess 60,000 bees would make! Instead they fly off and rest somewhere to perform the business. The problem is that in winter they might not be able to leave the hive for weeks at a time. So they hold on, ... and on, ... and on.

My bees are lucky because in the this part of England cold snaps rarely last more than two weeks, but imagine what it must be like for the bees I saw in the Alps last week which have been cooped up for 3 months already with no hope of relief for at least another 6 weeks.

Fortunately bees don't make much poo because they dine mostly on honey. However, pollen grains floating around in the honey also get eaten, and those indigestible residues in the pollen need to be excreted. So as the days turn into weeks the bees rectum becomes more and more distended so that by the end of an alpine winter almost half the inside of a bee's body is filled by its rectum.

It has been cold here for the last week, but today was markedly warmer. You won't be surprised to learn that hundreds of bees were out and about. Many were foraging on the mahonia and winter-flowering heather, but others had something else in mind judging by the speed they left the hive!

Mead Survey Results

Many thanks to those of you that took part in the mead survey (see 20 December post in the 2012 Blog Archive). Here are the results:

• 7 respondents liked mead
• 2 didn't know because they had never tried it
• Nobody said they disliked mead!

Admittedly only nine people took part in the survey and I suspect there was some self-selection which introduced bias, but nevertheless I was surprised by the results which have me wondering why this drink isn't more widely available.

Not that I need to worry - I've just racked my 2012 vintage and took the opportunity to have a little taste... the flavour is good but not as sweet as the 2011 batch. I'll leave the must in a cooler spot to finish fermenting and when the liquor becomes crystal clear I'll rack it into bottles. That's the easy bit.

The hard bit is I should wait at least a year before drinking it. What do you think the chances are I'll have opened a bottle by next Christmas?

Use the comment facility below to let me know.

Marvellous Mahonia

It was mild for a few hours in the sunshine yesterday so I wasn't surprised to see plenty of activity around the  hives. Close inspection of some of the returning bees revealed small parcels of bright yellow pollen on their back legs; they had been foraging.
But what was the source of that precious pollen - nothing is in flower this time of year....except Mahonia. This pretty yellow evergreen shrub is non-native to Britain but is popular with gardeners because it  flowers in the winter and has a wonderful scent. I have one flowering in my garden so I set off to take a look. Sure enough, about 20 bees were diligently working the flowers. Here's one I took a picture of:

It's head was thrust deep into the flower suggesting that its not only getting pollen, but also nectar.
There are hundreds of Mahonia shrubs in the gardens of Windsor providing vital winter forage for honey bees. Perhaps that explains why suburban bees often fare better than those in remote rural areas.

Succession Planning

It's surprising what you can find out about your bees without opening up the hives. Take a look at these two photos that I've just taken of my hives in the snow. What do you notice?

You can see that the snow in the centre of the each roof has melted, but it remains around the edges. This is just what I wanted to see because a circle of melted snow means localised heat, and that heat is coming from the bees clustering together and vibrating their indirect flight muscles to keep warm. So I know my bees are alive... but take another look at the photos.

Notice how the hive on the left has a much larger area of melted snow. This hive is East hive, the one with the neurotic bees that are out and about as soon as the temperature gets above 7 C. Last week when it was mild they were bringing in pollen. That pollen and the large area of melted snow tells me that the queen is still laying, and the colony has a lot of brood to keep warm. This is not good because at this rate they are going to use up all their honey before spring and may starve unless I feed them.

West colony in contrast stays hunkered down and won't venture out unless its 10 C or more. It has no brood so the cluster of bees is tighter and the temperature of the cluster is lower. West colony's stores should easily last till spring. The only slight worry is that the reason they have no brood is because the queen has died - but I doubt it.

Contrary to what you might expect, bees survive quite well in cold snowy condition, provided they have enough honey. But the neurotic bees in East hive are not well suited for our climate so come the summer I'm thinking I might replace the queen with a young princess from West hive.

Do bees have personalities?

Most folk would find the idea of bees having different personalities as absurd, but I suspect most beekeepers would disagree.
To be fair it may be a bit of an exaggeration to talk about personalities, but bees certainly exhibit different behaviours. You can see this with individual bees, but it becomes more obvious when you look at the behaviour of the entire colony.
My two colonies are totally different. East colony is neurotic; as soon as the temperature is above 8 centigrade they start flying. It's been 10 degrees or more these last few days and there has been plenty of activity.
In contrast West colony spends most of the winter hunkered down. You won't see them for weeks at a time and the only sign of life is the slowly changing pattern of wax cappings on the ground as the bees gradually eat through their honey store.
But last week's 'no varroa' count on West colony had me worried. No varroa could mean no bees, so I decided to remove the entrance block at the bottom of the hive and take a peek.
Dead bees littered the floor. I scooped them out and had enough to fill a coffee mug.
Despair and confusion followed. Surely they hadn't all died. I hefted the hive; it certain felt heavy enough so lack of food wasn't a problem. There's been enough rain so lack of water wasn't an issue either. What to do?
If I opened the hive to investigate further the cold could kill the bees and would certainly stress them. But then I remembered these bees have different personalities to the others, so I decided to wait and see.
Yesterday the thermometer showed 12 degrees, warm enough to tempt even this colony outside. I watched and saw one, then two, then several more bees leave and return through the hive entrance. I took the block off for another peek. Thank goodness - no more dead bees.
It's normal for a proportion of the bees to die as the winter progresses; fewer bees means fewer mouths to feed so winter stores can be eked out. But if the colony gets too small it won't be able to keep warm so there's an optimal balance. My guess is that the bees that died sacrificed themselves for the sake of the colony - truly altruistic personalities.

Noah the Varroa

Here's something really gross: A live blood-sucking bee mite.

This little critter is magnified 80 times. It keeps moving it's front right leg upwards towards its mouth, which are the two smaller protuberances just above the moving leg. With each swing of its leg it's trying to hook onto a bee and stick its fangs into the bee's body. Yuck!
These little pests are called Varroa mites. I've called this one Noah the Varroa but it's not male, it's a female mite that is about 1.5 mm in diameter. She's just dropped off a bee and wants to climb back into the hive to continue feasting.
These little blood-suckers were originally pests of Asian honey bees but they hopped on to our honey bees a few decades ago and now they are endemic. Besides sucking the blood of adult bees they breed on the baby bees. Worse still they spread viruses that cause birth defects.
Left untreated Varroa mites kill bee colonies, so every few months I check my hives for mites. Over the last 10 days I've been collecting mites that drop off the bees on to a board under the hive. In winter a mite drop of more than 2 per day means treatment is necessary.
My two colonies dropped of 0.5 mites per day and zero mites per day respectively, so treatment is not indicated.
But that figure of zero has me worried. Either the bees have no mites, or I have no bees. I need to investigate further.

When penguins are like bees

With thanks to the folk at Inkscape for a great scalable vector graphics program.