Swarming and the rubbish newspapers print

Its started. The swarming season
The three readers of this blog will know I collected a ridiculously early swarm a couple of weeks ago and other swarms are appearing locally.

Queens start laying eggs in March/April and the colony builds up rapidly to about 50,0000 bees at the height of Summer reducing to a few thousand in winter.
The colony itself reproduces and does this through a process called swarming. The swarming season starts in May and can go on until July and essentially the colony splits in two.
For bee keepers it can be a stressful time. Losing half of a colony affects the honey production [assuming they are interested in that, I'm not] and also its considered good practice to try and manage swarming so neighbours don't find a clump of bees hanging from a tree in their garden and have a nervous breakdown.
A colony can swarm many times during the season and late season swarms have little chance of surviving.

Swarming has become a fertile source of 'news' for hack journalists writing for rags like the Mail, Mirror, Sun etc. and the ill informed rubbishy articles are beginning to appear.
This is particularly true of the online editions. Here the function of journalism is to trigger as many 'clicks' as possible as clicks mean advertising revenue. So the headline is crucial to make someone click the article. Whether the article is accurate or actually read is unimportant - its the click that counts.

In the same ways its impossible for anything to be written/or broadcast about motorbikes without some reference to this, its impossible for hacks to write anything about bees without one or more of the following ingredients.

The Pun

When writing about bees journalists have to comply with the Wildlife Reporting Regulations 2010. This places a statutory obligation on them to include one or more childish pun.
To include the words 'buzz' and 'buzzin' [the 'g' must be missing under the Regulations] is considered the minimum acceptable standard under the regulations.

One of the unexpected consequences of this barrage of comedy gold is that A&E departments all over the country have to deal with a sudden influx of people who have been laughing so much at the puns, their sides have split and they need emergency surgery.

The Swarm

Often reference is made to the '80's cult classic The Swarm'
Despite being directed by Irwin Allen ['Poseidon Adventure and Towering Inferno] and having a roll call of Hollywood A-Listers ['Michael Caine, Richard Widmark, Olivier de Haveland, Katherine Ross, Henry Fonda, Richard Chamberlain] it was in fact an absolute stinker, losing millions and considered one of the worst films ever made Its thought by Michael Caine to be one of the worst films he has been in.

Wrong picture

As most people cannot identify honey bees, expect to see pictures that are wrong.
Last year I particularly enjoyed the photograph of the honey bee in the Express. Its either hand knitted or only available from Toy'R'Us.

How crazy can things get when the Police try to deal with them using POLICE TAPE? - everybody know bees can't read POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.
Also there is no nationally organised count of swarms.

Although not about swarming the picture below is typical of the care journalists take.

An article about honey harvests. With a picture of a bumble bee.

Recently Wales on Line had an article about swarms but showed a picture of a bumble bee. Bumble bees don't swarm. I left a comment and they changed it but left my comment there
Power to the people.

Ludicrous scare mongering

As people seem to like to be scared, articles about swarms are routinely packed full of hysterical nonsense. Again the Regulations operate here and hacks are encouraged to use use words like 'apocalypse', 'biblical', 'terror'.
Here's a slide I use in the talk I give on bees.

As you can see the bees in Ormskirk are so violent these angry, tattooed, baseball wielding stinging insects are even involved in bank robbery.
But by far and away the most disgusting piece of junk journalism has been produced by the Star.

Difficult to know where to start. 'Killer bees' is a favourite of the Star, Sun and other cat litter substitutes.'Killer bees' if they exist at all, are an American phenomenon and not found over here.

If I can be bothered I might do a blog on them.

'Barricades', 'deadly', beasts'. Emotive? Click bait.

I'm always impressed by the hacks ability to judge the size of a swarm. I expect this skill with big numbers comes from having to deal with their bar bills.

The 'And Finally' bit

After the hysterical puns, misleading photos and silly inaccurate scare mongering, the hacks normally finish up with a 'and a local beekeeper came to the rescue.....' paragraph.
Here a local bee keeper risks the wrath of the angry, biblical, apocalyptic, terror bringing, bank robbing killer bees to save the local community. By putting the bees in a box.
Usually there are photos of our hero such as:-

Although the three at the top are all suited up, none of them are wearing gloves and the one in the middle is wearing flip flops.
None of the three at the bottom are wearing any protective clothing at all and the old boy on the left is putting handfuls of bees in a box.I risked instant death from my swarm without gloves or my hood up.
In the right hand photo you can see how classy honey bees are as they are outside Pizza Express and not Pizzahut.

But aren't  bees ' angry, biblical, apocalyptic, terror bringing, bank robbing killer bees.....'?
Here is a video of someone handling ' angry, biblical, apocalyptic, terror bringing, bank robbing killer bees'

Even I have handled swarms without gloves if they are clustered. I do suite up if they are flying as I don't want them flying up my nose or into my mouth.

So what is happening?

Essentially its a simple process. The bees are aware the hive is becoming overcrowded and start making queen cells, where new potential queens develop. A new queen emerges and flies away to mate and returns to the hive

The old queen has been starved, losing up to half her weight, to get her down to a flying weight and she leaves the hive with half of the colony.

The Queen possibly hasn't flow for a couple of years and she won't go far [in my swarms case about a yard!]. The swarm settles down while scout bees look for a new home. When they have found something suitable the swarm moves in so one colony has become two.
The way the bees decide on where to go is an extraordinary process based on the Waggle Dance and possibly the subject of a future blog.

When the bees leave the original hive they are aware it will take time to build comb to store honey in their new home so gorge themselves on honey which they store in their honey stomach.
They become drowsy and increase their weight by about a third, making flying more difficult.
When a bee stings you the stinger is in its 'tail' which curls under to sting you. However the bees are now so large they probably can't bend their abdomen.
Also bees are only defensive when they are protecting their hive and are very docile when swarming. However if people try to set fire to them, spray them with water or attack them [as they do], they may get a little bit irritable. So would I.

So swarms are not dangerous, the bees are not violent, killing psychopaths/ Undeniably when a swarm is flying it can be slightly intimidating and a couple of years ago there was  a huge swarm flying around the road where I live. I suggested, in a Michael Caine voice 'Everyone get inside!'

When I was a wage slave some of us tried to alleviate the boredom of meetings by playing Bullshit Bingo as we would try to spot bits of silly jargon, tired cliches etc.
This Summer amuse yourself by playing Beeshit Bingo with this cut out and keep bingo card.

Today the Express produced this