Date: Wednesday
12 July 2006
Venue: The Little Village Hall, Bell Bank, Blockley
Martyn is a
gardener and horticulturalist as well as a beekeeper. He has run training
courses for people taking up beekeeping. Consequently he has quite a few hives
in his garden (17 at the moment, with approximately 55,000 bees in each at this
time of year). When you open up a hive with beginners, there is lots to see so
the hive is open for a long time. He needs a large number so that the same hive
is not regularly disturbed and opened.
Bees belong to
a group of insects called the Hymenoptera. They share this position with wasps
and ants. The common feature is that they all sting. It is always the female
that stings.
People often
confuse honey bees with wasps. They are wasp-shaped. It is their colour, and
the way that they behave that differentiates between them.
The most
primitive of the bees are the non-social, solitary bees.
You will
notice them in the garden in March/April. The bees will be excavating a hole
and developing a little cone of excavated earth. People often think that they
have a swarm when they arrive. This is because the lawn environment is just
right for them. Consequently, you get 40-50 bees excavating in a single lawn so
when people are picnic-ing, they are alarmed.
The Tawny
Burrowing Bee is capable of stinging, but the sting cannot penetrate human
skin. Martyn just recommends that people ignore them.
During the
winter, these bees are in a little burrow. They are left as an egg furnished
with a supply of pollen. The egg hatches and forms a grub which eats the pollen.
This happens underground, during the summer, then the bee overwinters and burrows
out in March on a warm day. It flies around, visiting early flowers e.g.
snowdrops, crocus etc. It finds a mate and a single mating takes place. The
mating is aggressive-more like a fight. The male dies after mating and the
female burrows down into the lawn to lay an egg, adds a blob of pollen and
abandons it. She does this half-a-dozen times then the female dies. The whole
life history takes place between March-April.
The other bee that gardeners often find is the Leaf Cutter Bee. This likes to burrow into soft surfaces like garden compost. These soft surfaces are likely to collapse so the bees line the surface with leaf cuttings, sewn together like a “hollow cigar”. Here, they lay an egg. It is a remarkable sight when you see a Leaf Cutter Beeflying, holding a huge circular leaf segment.
Mason Bees burrow into soft mortar e.g. Sandstone cliffs and between bricks. On old buildings, they make a tube and lay an egg and then they build a wall across the face of the tube with mud, lay another egg and build another wall etc until the tube is full. The curious feature is that the oldest egg is laid the furthest in but, although laid at different times, they all hatch together. There is a synchronicity in the hatching.
How do the
bees know which way to escape from the tube? When the bee lays the egg and
makes the wall, they make one face of the wall rough and the other face of the
wall smooth. The newly hatched bees excavate their way out through the rough
surface so they are all burrowing in the same direction. In this way, they all
make their exit the right way and open the tube ahead of each other!
Many people
try to provide opportunities for bees to nest in their gardens. There are all
sorts of bee nesting boxes you can buy. Martyn uses pieces of “leaky pipe” for
garden irrigation. He cuts them up into short lengths and sticks them into
clay-pipe tile drains. They are all occupied by bees. He also uses the stems of
cow parsley. He gets a bundle, chops it up and stuffs it into an old “cut in
half” pop bottle. If you provide the space, the bees will occupy it.
There are also
solitary wasps that live in a similar way, but instead of leaving a drop of
pollen, wasps are carnivorous so they will paralyse a caterpillar or similar
creature and leave the egg with that.
The Bumble Bees or Humble Bees are the familiar, big hairy buzzy creatures. Apart from the Queens, they all die out in the winter and start from scratch every Spring. They have a strange, symbiotic relationship with mice.
The Bumble Bee
nest is the size of a grapefruit.
Over the
winter, the mated females hide in crevices, nooks and crannies. E.g. In a Dry-stone
Wall, under a hedge. They emerge on a warm day in spring, taking nectar but
also smelling, sniffing for mice. When they find a mouse hole, they go into it.
By now the mouse brood will have vacated the chamber. The chamber has a soft
lining of fur and straw. The Queen has to do everything – make wax cells, lay
eggs, guard the nest, find pollen. This is a time of short days and cold
nights. As a result, the first bees to hatch are very small. As the season goes
on, the grubs are fed better and so the emerging bees are bigger and healthier.
As the colony gains strength, each generation gets bigger and stronger. When
the colony reaches its’ peak at this time of year (mid-July), it starts to
produce drones and virgin Queens. Between the end of July and September, the
virgin Queens mate and fly off to discover a site to over-winter.
By the end of
September, the colony is static at approximately 50 bees. The Queen and workers
die. Then a mouse, looking for somewhere to over-winter, will come in and eat
the dead Queens, Workers, wax, pollen and parasites.
So the circle
turns and there is an alternation between Bumble Bees and mice. It works very
well for both, being hygienic and providing nesting material.
A lovely book
on Bumble Bees is F.Sladen’s “The Humble Bee: Its’ life history and how to
domesticate it” (1892).
If you find a Bumble Bee nest, it is likely to be an orange-tailed Bumble Bee or one with a yellow band. But there are also Cuckoo Bees that look like Bumble Bees. They lay an egg at the nest entrance, crawl in and the bee gets raised in the Bumble Bee nest.
Bumble Bees only
produce a tea spoon of honey. So many images of bee-keeping show images of
Bumble Bees living in hives! Martyn shows us a tea towel depicting this.
One
fascinating feature is that an un-mated Queen is incapable of over-wintering.
Only mated Queens survive but no-one knows why.
Wasps are
social animals. The whole colony dies out over the winter, except the Queen.
She over-winters in crevices and dry spaces then emerges on a warm day in the
spring. Like the Bumble Bee Queen, she initially does all the work herself,
finding a nest site in an open space e.g. Lofts, cavity walls, sheds etc. At
first, the Queen eats greenfly, aphids etc. She also chews wood to make paper.
Wasps can’t make wax so they build their nests out of paper. The nest contains
galleries of hexagonal cells. These are vertical, with open ends hanging down.
The grubs hold on inside and get fed on demand. They scratch the surface of the
cell to make a noise to get fed. Wasps are useful to gardeners in the
spring-time as they clean up a lot of pests to feed their grubs.
The Tree Wasp
is a Southern European wasp and is becoming a bit of a nuisance. It often nests
in hedges and gets disturbed. People are coming into contact with it more
often. It is probably premature to say that there has been a steady expansion
in the wasp population due to global warming. It is just coming into more
contact with us.
Wasps are
distinctly black and yellow, except for the Hornet which is brown and yellow.
These produce a hexagonal comb structure and have the capacity to survive over the winter. They produce a nest which accommodates c. 55,000 bees by mid-July. They also produce stores to see them over the winter.
Honey bees are
no longer kept in straw skeps as beekeepers need to check the health of the
colony, assess the queen and perform manipulations within the colony. So
moveable frame hives are used.
The
traditional stereotype of a hive is the WBC, named after the Revd. W.B.Carr who
designed it for use in windswept parts of Scotland. It is a double-walled hive
and quite awkward to use.
When the
beekeeper first approaches the hive, it is prudent to apply a little smoke.
Smoke doesn’t calm the bees down, it frightens them. Cool, gentle smoking takes
place along the entrance to the hive. Then wait! The bees rush into the hive and stick their heads into the honey
and start feeding.
Bee colonies
vary in their temperament. The beekeeper shouldn’t really need gloves and gauntlets
but they do need a veil. Some years ago, Martyn lost 7 of his 9 colonies to
varroa. As a result, he had a row of empty hives in his front garden. One day a swarm flew in and took up
residency. They were so gentle! Martyn bred Queens from this colony and now all
his bees are from this stock.
The hive is
smoked through the Crown Board. This is then removed, and the Supers checked
for honey. Above the Brood Chamber is a Queen excluder. This is a metal grid.
The Queen is fatter than the other bees in the colony so she cannot get through
the grid but the Workers can. So the Workers store honey in the clean frames of
wax up top with no contamination from grubs or pollen.
The Beekeeper
examines the Brood Chamber for health, stores, the presence of the Queen, and
space. The Queen lays eggs on their ends. If you have eggs, then you know you
have a fertile Queen. After a few days, the egg falls on its’ side and becomes
a grub.
Once you know
you have eggs, check for the health of the colony. The grubs are fed on a
mixture of pollen and honey. If the bees decide they want a new Queen, they
will place an egg in a special cell and feed it Royal Jelly. When the grubs are
nice and fat and “pearly white”, they are capped over with wax. The next time
you see it is when the bee eats its’ way out.
If a bee has
big eyes and a blunt, hairy tail, it is a male Drone. These are usually only
seen from April onwards. Their only job is to mate with the Queen. They can
move between hives. In the autumn, they are thrown out to die of cold.
When the
virgin Queen flies, she secretes pheromones. This attracts drones. She mates
between 6-8 times on her mating flight
then returns to the hive. This sperm lasts the Queen for about 2 years.
After this time she starts to produce more and more eggs that are not
fertilised and so the number of drones increases. The rest of the colony
recognises this and raises Queen Cells. The bees then swarm.