Bee Wisdom

A bee settling on a flower has stung a child.  And the child is afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people.

A poet admires the bee sucking from the chalice of a flower and says it exists to suck the fragrance of flowers.

A beekeeper, seeing the bee collect pollen from flowers and carry it to the hive, says that it exists to gather honey.  Another beekeeper who has studied the life of the hive more closely says that the bee gathers pollen dust to feed the young bees and rear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate its race.

A botanist notices that the bee flying with the pollen of a male flower to a pistil fertilises the latter, and sees in this the purpose of the bee's existence.  Another, observing the migration of plants, notices that the bee helps in this work, and may say that in this lies the purpose of the bee.

But the ultimate purpose of the bee is not exhausted by the first, the second, or any of the processes the human mind can discern.  The higher the human intellect rises in the discover of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes, that the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension.

Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace

Glum

On Friday, our house was burgled.

On Saturday, I checked the hive and found a rotted, soaked, smelly black clump of bee corpses. I think what happened was that, about 5 or 6 weeks ago, I got worried about the dropping temperature and wrapped a Space Blanket around the woodpecker cage, thinking that would add a layer of insulation. In effect, what I did was insulate the hive so well I didn't allow for sufficient ventilation and the inside of the hive developed condensation which soaked through the colony and effectively killed them.

What a tragic waste.

Today I am very glum.

The Fashion Issue

Check out the fashionable new Anti-Woodpecker-Cage!

I love the fact that it's recycled; it was made out of the remains of a table that we salvaged from a pavement in Finchley - which saw lots of good use as a hobbycraft table in our garden in Rosemary Avenue before it came with us to Slough, where it was used till it literally fell apart, and now it will live on for so much longer, put to good use in protecting our bees.

The bees themselves seemed a bit disconcerted initially - they have been flying long into the autumn afternoons, and they've been bringing back huge wads of pollen, some of it bright neon yellow slapdashed in messy piles against their legs and some of it, whiter and packed neatly. I do wonder if She is still laying - a bit of a nerve-wracking thought at this late stage of the year. I do also worry that some of the pollen is ivy and will be packed into honey stores that become as thick, solid and inedible as concrete. A pity to waste space on such useless stuff!

As I sat and watched one afternoon, the bees drifted in and out past the chickenwire, taking a few moments each way to align themselves between gaps and sometimes alighting on the wire to wait or preen or just - I suspect - to look back at me. They have accepted the wire and carry on regardless.

It's only just in the last day or so that they have "shut up shop" and gone deep into the hive.

I am hoping for one last sunny warm afternoon as an opportunity to pop a new block of baker's fondant inside to see them through to Christmas. Then, just before I leave for Africa, they will get their Christmas gift, and I will not see them again till spring.

As always, half my heart is down there at the bottom of the garden with them, seeing them through the winter cold. Hope they survive!

All tucked up

I took the day off work on Friday to visit the National Honey Show. I'm glad I did because these three days seem to have calmed my soul a bit; I've been able to do things at leisure, spend time at home and with friends without that sense of frantic rush that follows me everywhere at work.

The Show was grand. I had submitted an entry into the Photo Category but didn't win anything. I don't mind; it was a first attempt and I learned, from visiting, what I'm up against for next year. Viewing the honey classes was awe-inspiring, because the competition was fierce and there was just so much stunning looking honey. There were over 50 entries in the Light colour honey alone. In the Middlesex classes, Enfield did well - I am so glad! And it was fascinating to finally see and understand the Ling Heather Honey - considered the absolute epitome of best honey by all beekeepers in Britain. It looks thick, and loaded with particulate - which is actually air bubbles trapped in the honey as it takes on its unique jelly-like consistency. Lovely stuff!

I spent hours simply scrutinising jars of honey; some so light and clear and colourless they took on an almost pale green glow; others dark and black and juicy looking; ling heather like toffee. Oh, honey is an absorbing topic!

Then I meandered on to the Trade Hall, where I was immediately sucked into buying some useful-looking tiny jars, browsing through books, fascinated by the new plastic hive innovations, and meeting fellow beekeepers, some of them fellow South Africans too.

Of course, I went home afterwards and immediately rushed into my bee suit and down to the hive. My bees look so happy. I have kept them down to three frames, between two wooden dummy boards to keep the size small for winter. Then the rest of the standard brood box I've filled with slabs of insulating wood on either side. The entrance will be confined to a mouse guard soon, the varroa board floor will go in intermittently as I keep checking through winter for varroa mite levels, and the crownboard is sealed with a porter escape and the second hole is now covered over with a pack of thick candy - the start of the feeding regime I will keep up throughout the winter to see them through.

Of course there are worries. There always are, aren't there?! Should I keep the porter escape in? Or leave it off for ventilation? I don't know; I guess I'll do what I always do, follow my instinct, muddle through and hope for the best.

Because it was warm enough, I opened the box up for 5 minutes, sans smoker, and checked the comb. Yes, the Queen is still there. That dab of white paint is exceptionally useful!

Then, having made sure they have a new crownboard, I placed the new, deeper roof on top. Because I have a feeder on top of the crownboard, the old roof didn't reach far down enough to cover the crownboard from the effects of the outside weather, so the edges were damp. The dreaded damp! Wetness, not the cold, kills bees in winter. Even the right sort of insulation is an issue here, because bees keep it warm within, thus creating condensation - and wetness. I've found that heavy outer insulation, such as thinsulate or similar, is worthy but probably not wise, because I suspect it increases the level of condensation within. So extra wood lining inside the walls is the new tack, for my little nuc-within-a-hive-box.

I have developed the beekeeper's dread of being fleeced while buying things for the hive, and a deepsided rooftop to buy is quite expensive, so Guy helped me convert one of my standard ones into a deepsided one. This new roof has now gone on, and it covers the crownboard safely, so it won't get wet anymore. I am pleased - thank you, Guy!

I stopped off this morning, with my little cat Phoebe (who is recovering from a severely bitten foot - That Bloody Stray!), and we watched the bees for a while.

They are happy.

And so am I.

The Bond Between Us

When you start out in beekeeping, you think in terms of weeks and months. You think you'll get bees within weeks, honey within months, and lots of other immediate results. As you go along all your time horizons change as you begin to realise (sometimes with a bit of a sinking heart, other times with a joyful sense of lifelong commitment) "oh my god, this is going to take years!"

In general it takes 18 months to 2 years' working with your first colony before you can expect to harvest honey. It takes at least 3 years before you have experienced a single full cycle in the life of a bee farm. It takes a decade before you can truly say you have some knowledge and experience as a beekeeper (well, that's my perspective - from where I stand, after nearly 3 years of this stuff). And there are people I've met who have been beekeepers for thirty years and say they still have things to learn about bees.

So as a novice, part of your learning is the acquisition of patience. When I lost my bees earlier this summer, I truly expected I would not have bees again until next year. But I reckoned a year of waiting would be only a blip in the life of this beekeeper. I was resigned to waiting; content to work on cleaning up the gear, restoring a bit of order to my equipment, realigning the space I work in - my "bee space".

But once again I have been confounded by the magic.

Off I went, four weeks ago, to do my bit as a volunteer in the Bee Hut. This is where we gather once a month in the summer - ostensibly to stock up on supplies - but actually to get together and have a good old anorak-y sort of catch-up, like a bunch of gleeful trainspotters in green overcoats with grubby notepads firmly clutched in soiled paws. When beekeepers get together we just can't stop talking.

Because beekeeping can be a solitary old sort of activity, when you get two or more beeks together in a room, you'd be hard put to get a word in edgewise. My LSOH (long-suffering-other-half) says we remind him of a bunch of "high country farmers who've been snowed in on their mountain farms for the winter, and just got together down in town for a catch-up". Good one, that!

So there we all were, all the old friends from Enfield, seeing each other again after quite an absence (on my part, anyway, being so far out in Slough now). The volume of chatter completely overwhelmed the lovely low warm buzz of bees just outside. It was marvellous! I do miss them ...

What I love the most about beeks are the stories they bring to the gatherings. Each one has a wondrous new tale about the amazing things their bees have done (or not done). I follow the narrative of each beek's travails - successes and failures, losses and gains - with real pleasure. You kind of lose something of your own ego in your wishes and hopes for other people's successes. Definitely a bit of Hive Culture rubbing off from the bees :)

So it's been great to learn that - where last year I had bees and P had none, this year he has three (three!) hives while I have none. Last year I had honey to bring to the Country Show, this year it's his turn. I'm heading off tomorrow to go and see how he has fared; whether he wins the Cup this year. I do hope so!

And when M heard I had no bees, he told me he had a spare nuc; a tiny little start-up hive that he had split off from one of his larger ones, where he'd found a beautiful extra Queen Cell and didn't want to waste it. So he'd taken the QC, and some bees, and set them up away from their original colony in a new little box, to try and make a go of starting up a new colony.

A nuc is a miniature colony - the nucleus of a new one. This one has been created very late in the summer season, and is very small - only established on two frames. So it will have to fight very bravely to be able to survive all the way through winter and begin to thrive again in the summer. It will be a real gamble. "But take it" said M, "take the box and the frames, and only make sure you return my box to me, because I made it myself and it's sturdy and useful."

The generosity of the gift has taken my breath away. If you non-beeks only knew the size of the gift, and the value!

He took me to his secret hideaway, his apiary, and we looked through the nuc. And it is more than I could ever have hoped for. He has marked his Queen - a rare prize for a new beek. This means she has a dab of white paint on her which makes her much easier to spot, and therefore less difficult to kill. Useful for old Regicide-Me! She is marked, clipped (so she can't fly away, either), mated and a proven layer-of-eggs. A gift worth more than gold.

How does one repay something like this? Hard to say, other than to understand one's own role or purpose in the colony - which is to be there the next time someone else needs help, so that I can offer my own resources back to "the colony". I truly hope I'm able to do that, one day.

So the nuc came home with me - there are bees back in my garden, a whole year before I expected it to happen again.

My time horizons have changed once more, and only the Wheel of Fortune can tell whether the bees, well-looked after, will survive the winter; whether P wins the prize; whose colonies will thrive or die in the spring.

Fortunes change as the wheel turns. The only constants are the bees and the beeks, and the bond between us.

Gone

Every evening, I've been walking the narrow pathway down to the bottom of my garden in companiable silence with my cat, Bumble. We walk together because he and little Phoebe are under threat from a large stray tom whose territory includes this garden. He bullies them, he hits on Phoebe, he's torn a hole in the throat of our big cat and nearly killed him. Until Guy intervened he was coming into the house every day through the catflap, stealing food and causing mayhem.

I tried trapping him; leaving out food and sweet-talking him into a cage. He wanted to come; you could see that he loved the sound of my voice - he used to be someone's cat and now he's surviving alone. So in a way I felt sorry for him - until I saw the gigantic bloody hole in Bumble's throat and paid the vet bills. Guy bought an expensive, and very clever cat-flap, one that is programmed to read the microchips inside the cats and allow in only our cats. The stray can't get in anymore so the cats have a safe house - but outside, it's still a war zone.

So I walk down with the cats to the end of the garden every night and watch over them while they mosey around for a while. I sit in my chair, and I look at my bee hive.

Sadly, it has become a mausoleum.

I left it alone for a few weeks after the last quick inspection, then I went in for a look a while ago. It was the hardest thing to see - that the small numbers of brood had tried to emerge from their cells and died halfway out. I don't know why. Perhaps the number of housekeeping bees just wasn't enough to support and feed them. The numbers have dwindled to almost nothing.

And there's no trace of the Queen at all.

I don't know if the one that was there for a short while absconded; took some of the bees with her, or just died.

All I know is that the brood hasn't survived and the few bees that are left are valiantly doing what they always do - foraging and working as a colony until they die, and then there will be nothing.

I sit in my chair in the shortening evenings of summer - a summer I'd hoped would be filled with bees and honey - and now I only see wasps gaining free entry into the hive.

I could vest all of this with emotion and tragedy; I could be completely objective about it and consider it a hard lesson learned - look after your Queen in the early spring. I'm sort of somewhere in between. I'm really, really sad and I feel guilty for being complicit in their destruction.

However I've gone and put my name down on the Swarm List of the local beekeeping association. I hope that maybe next summer I get lucky again.

For now, it seems, I'm taking a sabbatical from being a beekeeper. But I hope I get to be one again soon.

Where is She?

A friend came to dinner on Thursday evening. We sat out on deckchairs in the evening warmth and contemplated sipping champagne. I had to ask though, if she would mind me doing some beekeeping before we started drinking ...

Because it was hot, and relatively still, and the weather forecast has been predicting a cooler spell, I knew it had to be Thursday night.

She was happy to watch, and help where she could. So I togged up and went to have a look.

I didn't hold out much hope. I go down to the hive every evening with the cats, but I just feel sad when I look at it. It's mid-summer and it should be humming with activity, bursting with bees carrying pollen, wafting smells of honey, bulging at the seams. But it's not. I've felt like it's dying and it's all my fault.

But it was such a perfect beekeeping evening, you see, that I just had to go for a look.

Each time I go in there now, I can feel that I am becoming more and more gentle and careful in my handling; I feel so responsible for these creatures and so aware that the direness of their situation is because of my ignorance and poor handling.

The numbers were very, very low in there, and I could see straight away the bees were clustering around frames 4 and 5, very tight and close together. Nevertheless I started from Frame 1 and worked through each frame, quickly and with as little disruption as possible.

And it was on Frame 4 that I spotted what I never thought I'd see again - brood. Sealed brood. I just felt so disbelieving I had to use my tool to scrape the top off one to prove it to myself. Yes, baby bees in there.

There were three things that worried me:

1. So little of it - spread only over quarter of two adjoining frames. Why? Is it possible that She's only laying limited quantities because there are so few house bees left to look after the babies when they're born? She has to lay limited quantities to start off the hive again, building slowly over a season?

2. The brood I saw was sealed, with only a few fat white larvae at 7 days old. There were no 3-day brand new rice grain eggs. No recent sign of the Queen.

3. There were so few bees, I should've been able to see the Queen. But I didn't, though I looked and looked.

Where is She?

I replaced everything carefully, stripped off my suit, and retired to the deckchair in the sun to share a glass of champagne with Foxxxy. We toasted the advent of the baby bees, and I was happy.

But I am too uncertain to show Joy Unconfined. I do not know where She is, and also, more than anything I wonder - can She do enough to have them ready and strong to survive the Winter?