Ravensden Swarm 15 5 2020

What to do if you have a swarm

Bees are a Super organism

If you look at bees flying around its reasonable to assume each bee is leading its own separate life  albeit in the company of other bees, like fish swimming in shoals, flocks of birds.and herds of cattle.
However things are more complicated than that.

The queen only leaves the hive twice. Once to mate and then when the colony swarms.
I'm often asked why she doesn't leave the hive like the other bees and the answer is because its not in her job description. She is an egg machine that the colony depends on and if she left without a replacement the colony could die, so she doesn't leave. She lays eggs and does nothing else and she doesn't even feed or clean herself, this is the job of other bees.
Also, I have been asked if the the queen is the 'leader' of the colony but she isn't. In fact her brain is smaller than that of a worker bee.

Honey  bees live extremely ordered lives and the female worker bees have specific jobs depending on their age.

1 – 2 days	Cleans cells and keeps brood warm
3 – 5 days	Feeds older larvae
6 – 11 days	Feeds youngest larvae
12-17 days	Produces wax, builds comb, carries food
18-21 days	Guards hive entrance
22+ days	Flying from hive, pollinates plants, collects pollen, nectar and water

There is no deviation from this. A 3 day old bee cannot decide it fancies a go at making wax, its not her job, and won't happen for another couple of weeks.

The male bees, drones, have only one function and that is to mate and don't make honey or do of the above jobs

The female bees collect nectar and produce honey not for themselves but the whole colony.

Although new bees are produced to maintain the colony the bee colony reproduces itself by swarming.

This collective functioning led the German bee keeper Johannes Mehring in the early nineteen hundreds to suggest that bees colonies were not collections of individuals but  a single animal with similarities to vertebrates and mammals.

Johannes Mehring

About a hundred years later the American biologist A M Wheeler coined the word 'superorganism' where the whole consists of parts that are physically separate but functionally integrated.

The Oxford Dictionary defines a super organism as

A group or association of organisms which behaves in some respect like a single organism; a complex system consisting of a large number of organisms which itself behaves as if it were an organic whole, as human society, an ecosystem, etc.

This was taken further by Jurgen Tautz in his appallingly title book 'The Buzz about bees'.
Here he suggested that honey bees were 'honorary mammals' as they shared many similar attributes, such as:-
 - mammals and honey bees have a very low rate of reproduction
 - female mammals produce nourishment for their young in special glands. Honeybees produce nourishment [Royal Jelly] for their young from special glands.
 - the uterus of mammals provide a precisely controlled and protective environment for their young. Honey bees do the same thing with their comb in which bees develop.
 - mammals have a body temperature of ~36C. Honeybees maintain the internal temperature of the hive at 35C
 - mammals have the highest learning and cognitive abilities of all invertebrates, Honey bees have learning abilities above that of some invertebrates.

And finally.........

When I started selling honey at markets I was encouraged by other stall holders to do various things not least to do a lot of advertising. 'You've got to be on Facebook' everyone told me.
Despite my loathing off  Facebook I did so.
I also set up a website  here and did this blog.

The problem with the blog software I use is that it limits the size of videos you can embed in it, so I increasingly had to put them on YouTube and have a link to it from the blog.
This meant I had to:-
 - do the blog and publish it
 - put the video on YouTube and link the blog to it.
 - Put the blog on Facebook.

As I have now virtually stopped doing markets I finally have the chance to dump Arsebook.
I can do virtually the same blog but put it directly on YouTube and I will suspend the blog and delete the Facebook account.

So, if you want to continue to see the blogs please go to here
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As time went o

The Swarming Season is over

The Swarming Season is over. Its been much busier than last year and again about half the calls were about bumblebees, wasps or solitary bees.
I think the main feature of the season has been the number of times the swarm swarmed again and not all were captured.
I will do a few things differently to try and prevent this happening next year.

As I was warned it's not easy to home the swarms so I have added more colonies to my collection.
It takes time for a swarm to get to a viable size and I have checked them all to see how prepared they are for surviving the winter.

Click the button to see the video.

Wasp attack

Wasps are the pantomime villain of the insect world and I did a blog about them last year - here.

This evening I took some stuff over to the apiary ready for a visit tomorrow and one of the hives was under attack from wasps.
Wasps had been building up over the last weekand decided to have a go at a small nuc colony that I had set up.

Click the button to see what happened

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg7nPuD5d6M&feature=youtu.be

Biddenham Swarm

Although I collect swarms, a friend had collected a swarm from Biddenham, didn't want it and asked me if I wanted it. He had already put it in a skep and all I had to do was pick it up.
Tough decision.

Click the button to see the video.

Strawberry Grove Honey

Nearly a year ago I was asked by Fliss and Sam if I would attend an Open Day they were running on their farm in Granesden.

I did a blog about it here.

The nuc was installed and was joined by a colony I transferred from Scald End.

In the previous blog I said:-

'All being well Fliss and Sam will be able to offer Strawberry Grove honey for their customers next year.'

I didn't have too high expectations for the nuc and expected the other colony to produce the goods. However being the perverse creatures they are, the nuc has flourished and produced the first Strawberry Grove honey.
The honey has been extracted  - click the button to see how this was done.

We expect the other colony to produce a super of honey very soon.