|
HOME |
Bees & Beekeeping The ancient art of keeping bees dates back many thousands of years and historically in the Wey Valley provided a living for professional beekeepers who supplied the big estates and local population with honey and other hive-related products. Today beekeeping, or apiary, is alive and well in the hands of enthusiastic groups of apiarists who conduct their hazardous skill largely for the joy of being able to produce their own honey. |
"But the bee takes the middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own." |
|||
|
The Honeybee There are around 20,000 species of bees scattered across every continent of the world, with the exception of Antarctica. Bees feed on nectar and pollen, with nectar acting as an energy source and pollen primarily for protein. Most pollen that the bees gather is used for food for the brood.
A bee’s long proboscis allows it to obtain nectar from flowers, and whilst doing so plays an important part in pollinating the plants it visits. As pollinators bees are the major contributors to the estimated third of all food humans consume. The bee collects pollen by grooming themselves to pack the pollen that has collected on the hairs of its body into pollen baskets on their legs. An electrostatic charge carried by the bees helps to ensure that the pollen clings to their body hairs. Bees may be solitary or may group together to live in a community, or eusocial colony. The most advanced of these communities are found in the honeybees and it is this community spirit that apiarists take advantage of in encouraging the bees to colonise the apiarists’ hives to allow ease of harvesting the honey they produce. Commercial beekeepers can also earn a significant income in providing a crop pollination service. Apart from honey, hives can produce wax that is used in candle making, cosmetics, wood polish and modeling. The modern use of hive products has changed very little since ancient times. A hive can typically contain up to 40,000 bees at their annual peak which usually occurs in spring. The apparent relaxed visits by honeybees to flowers around the hive is actually part of a frenetic activity to benefit the colony and also results in a high mortality rate. Bees fall prey to predators including bugs, spiders and birds. Insecticides also kill large numbers of bees either by direct poisoning or by contaminating their food supply. Bees & Hives A queen honeybee can lay up to 2,000 eggs per day during the build-up in spring, and a large proportion of this during the foraging season is simply to replace casualties.
Unlike bumblebees which build far smaller colonies, honeybees survive throughout the winter within their colony. Prompted by lengthening daylight hours the queen will usually start laying eggs in mid to late winter in preparation for the spring. The queen is the only fertile female in the colony and is responsible for producing all of the bees within the hive. The queen rarely leaves the hive after the larvae have grown into bees, with any departure related to leaving the hive with a swarm to start a new colony or for a brief mating period when she make several flights to mate with drones.
The eggs, which are deposited individually into cells prepared by the worker bees, hatch into small larvae which are fed by nurse bees. Nurse bees, unlike worker bees, never leave the colony. Workers are fed royal jelly during the first three days of the larval stage, with their diet being switched to pollen, nectar or diluted honey. This feeding regime ensures that the larva develop to the pupa stage quickly. Depending upon the specie of bee the nurse bees seal up the larva inside its cell after about a week of feeding at which point the pupal stage starts. Morphing into an adult bee will take a similar length of time. The queen cell is specially constructed to be larger and can protrude from the comb. The larvae and pupae reside in a frame of vertical honeycomb which are referred to as frames of brood, and in a beekeepers hive these frames are slotted together in the brood box which is at the base of the hive beneath the frames of honey-bearing combs which act as food storage for the hive. It is these brood frames which can be transferred fully populated to other hives to start a new colony. Beekeepers will also stock an empty hive with swarms they have been alerted to by local people concerned for their safety. Worker bees are infertile females and usually only live for a few months. They secrete the wax used to build the hive. Their responsibility is to clean and maintain the hive, raise the young, guard the hive and forage for nectar and pollen. The workers also have a stinger which they can use to defend the hive. Drone bees are the colony’s male bees and do not have stingers, neither do they forage for food. Their primary purpose is to fertilise the queen, which is carried out in flight, and after which the drone immediately dies. The queen is exclusively fed royal jelly throughout her life which often can last for up to three years. Royal jelly is manufactured by young worker bees by secretion through their heads. Royal jelly is highly regarded as having benefits to humans and is harvested by fitting a device to the hive entrance which scrapes the secretions from the workers as they enter. The jelly is made up of 60% water, 15% protein, 15% sugars, 3% fats with the remainder providing a wide range of vitamins, minerals, enzymes and antibacterial and antibiotic components. Benefits in human consumption apparently include immunity enhancement, treatment of arthritis, MS and asthma as well as enhancing sexual performance and reducing the symptoms of menopause. The queen regulates the activity within the hive by releasing pheromones, which are a specific set of chemicals that can stimulate different behavioural responses. Workers also use pheromones to communicate with each other.
Honey Honey is produced by bees from nectar collected from flowers. Honey is a clear liquid made up of 80% water with complex sugars. The nectar is stored by the worker bee in a second stomach where the raw nectar is digested for about 30 minutes using enzymes to break down the complex sugars into usable varieties. This raw honey is then exuded into empty honeycomb cells and allowed to dry down to a sticky substance with less than a 20% water content. This drying process is aided by workers fanning their wings within the hide to create air movement. Once the honey has dried the cells of honeycomb are capped with wax in order to preserve the honey. Beekeepers aren't restricted to keeping hives in rural areas. Many parts of the wey Valley are built-up, especially as the valley approaches the metropolis of London with its sprawling suburbs spilling over the Thames beyond Weybridge and on into Addlestone, Byfleet and Woking. It is estimated for example that over 2,000 apiarists operate within the M25 (2006), which represents a doubling of registered beekeepers since 1999. The chairman of the London Beekeepers' Association (LBA), John Chapple, has operated up to 40 beehives spread across various allotments and at is home in London. "What other kind of animal can you keep in two square feet of space?" he points out. Hives are sited in all manner of locations in urban areas. A past governor of the Bank of England kept hives on top of the bank's building in the centre of London. The LBA even maintains hives within the grounds of Lambeth Palace to supply the Archbishop of Canterbury with fresh honey. LBA members also maintain hives in sites as unlikely as the Natural History Museum and on the roof of Fortnum & Mason.
City gardens, parks and allotments provide a wider variety of flowers than is found in the countryside, and the LBA claim that their bees provide purer honey than those produced by apiarists in rural locations. A beekeepers' association operating in France, UNAF, published a survey (2005) which claims that urban bees are healthier and more productive than their country cousins, avoiding the ill-effects of pesticides used in agriculture.
Source: Honeybees in Serious Decline Diseases foreign to Britain and a gradual increase in drug resistance among infectious agents is leading to a dramatic decline in the wild population of honeybee, and domestic hives are under increasing threat. (May 2006)
The crisis facing British apiarists goes back to the 1990s when hives were first struck by the parasitic varroa mite which feeds on bee larvae and adults. Bee populations were devastated and wild swarms have all but disappeared. New feral colonies do get going but without a human keeper often succumb again to disease.
Apiarists over the past year have reported a decline in honey production with the appearance of new strains of varroa that are proving resistant to treatments previously applied. The knock-on effect goes beyond honey production as fewer bees means less pollination of everything from wild flowers, trees like the willow, and fruit trees.
Apiarists are extremely angry with moves made by the government to cut back on projects that could aid the British honeybee. For example the government has axed its contribution to a public-private project that that was focused on developing biological agents that could fight varroa in hives. It also threatened last year to reduce funds spent on the nation's bee inspection service which monitors disease prevalence in hives throughout the country. The government backed down after an outcry by beekeepers and farmers.
Apiarists are also horrified with the relaxation of rules on importing bees from other countries. The change has dramatically increased the risk of new diseases entering the country. American Foul Brood and the Small Hive Beetle are a particular threat.
Source: A scientific paper published (July 2006) in the journal Science confirms fears that intensive farming, pesticide use and the loss of habitats may be contributing to the fall in the diversity of bees and wildflowers. Scientists examined hundreds of wildflower sites in Britain, and across the Netherlands and Germany, discovered that the diversity of bees had declined in 80% of the sites over the past 25 years. A knock-on effect has been species of wildflowers suffering from the lack of specialist bees to provide pollination.
Bees and other nectar-loving insects such as hoverflies are essential for pollinating many plants, including commercially important crops. In Britain bee diversity has fallen, although hoverfly numbers have remained constant. As a result wildflowers that require insects for pollination has declined by 70% with wind-pollinated and self-pollinating species filling the void showing increases. Another bee under threat is the field scabious bee (Andrena hattorfiana) which raises its young on the pollen of the field scabious flower. Both bees and the flower have gone into joint decline which scientists believe may be partly caused by grazing and early cutting of hay meadows which prevent the plant from flowering. Similarly the longhorn bee has all but diasappeared in Britain.
Source: Sniffer Dogs to Help Protect The honeybee's much larger cousin, the bumbleebee, is similarly threatened by environmental changes. Three of the 25 species found in Britain are now extinct, and conservationists fear (May 2006) that many more will follow. A brand new trust, the Bumble Bee Conservation Trust (BBCT) has been set up to help monitor the bumblebee and its natural habitats.
BBCT has come up with an innovative new way of extending their ability to research the habitats of bumblebees to find ways of helping to protect them. Using the skills of the Defence Animal Centre in Leicestershire a 'bumblebee dog' has been trained to sniff out the nests of bumblebees in their natural habitats. Quin the springer uses his incredibly sensitive sense of smell to sniff out the nests which are extremely difficult to find. Unlike honey bees with their obvious hives wild bumblebees tend to nest in the ground with access via small holes often hidden beneath vegetation. Quin, who is rewarded everytime he locates a nest, is enthusiastic at his job and has quickly proven his worth. BBCT have had huge problems in trying to determine the extent of the difficulties being faced by our native bumblebees without being able to easily locate their nests. Now with the help of Quin they can start to build up a database from field observations with which to analyse problems and find solutions. Wild bumblebees in Britain and in the Wey Valley have been in serious decline due to pesticide use, the degradation of their traditional habitats including hay meadows, and the growing popularity of non-native plant species into gardens.
Oh, and in case you were wondering. Apparently a bumblebee nest emits a smell not unlike Christmas cake. Source: A university professor has drawn attention via a paper in the Journal of Applied Ecology to the threat that bumblebees imported by commercial growers to undertake pollination in their glasshouses have over our native species. His concern is that escaping foreign bees will rapidly breed in the wild and decimate the natural populations.
The problem on the ground is that the imported commercial varieties will be competing for food and being larger and more skilled at foraging for nectar are likely to overwhelm their British cousins. The foreign bees also produce more queens and so nests are quickly established. Japan has had the same experience and has imposed harsh restrictions on bee importation. The UK government has yet to act. Source: A British company, Inscentinel, has developed a device to detect explosives at airports with the help of specially trained honey bees. Scientists have taken advantage of the insect's powerful sense of smell to identify samples of TNT, Semtex and gunpowder concealed in shipments passing through cargo processing areas. The prototype now being trialled following five years of government-funded research by scientists at the Rothamsted Research Centre in Hertfordshire, is a shoebox-sized device they've nicknamed the 'buzz box'. The bee is mounted in a cradle which is loaded into the 'buzz box' alongside other bees. If traces of explosives are detected the bee extends its tongue-like proboscis, and this movement is caught on a video camera triggering an alarm on the handler's laptop. The bees are able to detect the scent of explosives at levels as low as two parts per trillion.
Unlike dogs, bees are quick to learn and cheap to maintain. They also do not need a dedicated handler and cannot be distracted from the job in hand. The company is confident that the technique could be adapted to include searching for drugs and contraband tobacco, monitoring food quality or even to detect changes in the blood or urine caused by illness. The International Bee Research Association however is not impressed expressing concerns over the behaviour of bees strapped into a box.
Source: Import of Bees Blamed The response to a written parliamentary question published in Hansard on the 14th July (2006) has revealed that the number of people admitted to hospital due to wasp, bee and hornet stings has more than doubled. Eight poor souls also died from insect stings over the same period. In 2004-05 843 people were admitted for medical care compared with only 369 in the previous twelve month period. Millions of bumblebees are imported into Britain every year to be put to work pollinating in commercial glasshouses, and these are believed to be partly responsible for the increase.
Source: Mobile Phones Threaten British beekepers have reported (April 2007) that their hives are being mysteriously abandoned and this relatively new phenomenon, dubbed 'electrosmog', is now being linked to radiation from mobile phones. Coined 'Colony Collapse Disorder' (CCD) in the United States, where half of all states have reported severe hive losses, bee colonies suddenly abandon areas where there is high mobile phone transmissions. A major London beekeeper, John Chapple, reported that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned. Although the link with mobile phone radiation has yet to be scientifically proven, a limited study at Landau University in Germany demonstrated the refusal of bees to return to their hives when mobile handsets were placed nearby. Current theory is that the radiation interferes with the bees' navigation systems. Another study showed that incredibly parasites, wildlife and other bees that would normally raid an abandoned hive for its honey refuse to approach it. The implications to the countryside are alarming as bees are responsible for pollinating a great many species of plants, both wild and cultivated. If the phenomenon spreads it could spell disaster for the agricultural and horticultural communities. It is also thought that birds and other insects are similarly affected. Source: Honeybees in Serious Decline The British Beekeeper's Association (BBKA) continues to raise the worsening plight of our native honey bee (April 2008) and estimate that within a decade the species involved will become extinct. The deadly parasitic varroa mite continues to devastate both wild colonies and managed hives and pressure continues to be put on the government to fund a research project to protect the bees. Bees contribute to the economy by pollinating fruit trees and other crops, and the horticultural industry will be seriously compromised. In May 2008 the BBKA announced that it will be launching a new campaign to shake the government into action against their warning that the 'nation's honeybees could be wiped out within 10 years'.
The warning comes against a backdrop of a BBKA valuation that the commercial value of bees to pollination in England is £165m (revised from a 2001 figure of £120m). Funding for bee research by the government has remained static at £200,000 for the past five years with a total of £1.2m spent by the government on bee health, most of which is used to fund bee inspectors. The Observer newspaper published (25th May 2008) an account of a clash between Defra's permanent secretary, their most senior civil servant, and an MP during a parliamentary select committee determining Defra's priorities:
Defra later explained the permanent secretary's comment by suggesting that she may have been under-briefed but went on to defend the government's current level of funding. The BBKA is campaigning for £8m to be spent on bee research over the next five years saying that this is a small sum compared to the £800m that bees will contribute to the economy over the same period.
A critic of the BBKA, who lost half of his hives to disease over the winter, believes that the association has contributed to the decline of bees by endorsing the use of pesticides which are killing bees in large numbers.
At the National Honey Show, which is this year (October 2008) being hosted at St George's School in Weybridge, many of the efforts of British apiarists will be on show. In 2007 British bees produced 4,000 tons, a reduction on the previouis year, against a national appetite for 30,000 tons with the balance being imported. WANT TO FIND OUT MORE Meon Valley Bee Keeper's Association The British Bee Keeper's Association |
BEE FACTUAL Bees figure more prominently in myth than any other insect. Bee stings have been reputed to help alleviate the associated symptoms of Multiple sclerosis, arthritis, and other autoimmune diseases. Honey is so sweet that bacteria cannot grow on it, and dry enough that it does not support yeasts. Bees are capable of perceiving the polarization of light. They use this information to orient their communicative dances. An image of honey-collecting by humans was painted on the wall of a limestone cave in Valencia 8,000 years ago. The painting shows the hunter hanging from a rope and reaching into a rock cleft with one hand while the other hand holds a collecting-pot. Around him swarm the bees. The ancient Egyptians used beeswax in hairdressing and to style elaborate wigs. They also used honey, which in those times was an extremely expensive commodity, in lotions. Honey was beneficial in the healing of wounds, a practice that is still effective todayThe Egyptians used long clay cylinders as hives for their bees. Illustrations made 4,000 years ago show Egyptian bee-keepers subduing bees, using smoke, and packing honey into jars. Bees have been producing honey for 150 million years. Honey is 25% sweeter than table sugar due to its high level of fructose. Honey varies in flavour and colour according to the location and kinds of flowers the bees visit. In 50 BC the Romans painted pictures with melted dyed beeswax.The earliest illustration we have of honey being gathered is around 15,000 years old and appears in a painting on the walls of a rock shelter in eastern Spain. Bees were regarded with such awe by the ancient Greeks that they minted coins with images of bees on them. Of the more than 900 known medical remedies used by the ancient Egyptians more than 500 were honey based. Napoleon used the bee as a symbol of his empire after his coronation in 1804. It stood for industry, efficiency and productivity. In 1984, honeybees constructed a honeycomb in zero gravity as part of an experiment on a space shuttle. The honeybee's wings stroke 11,400 times per minute, thus making their distinctive buzz A bee flies at a rate of about 12 miles per hour. Honey bees communicate with one another by "dancing". It takes 35 pounds of honey to provide enough energy for a small colony of bees to survive the winter. Honeybee colonies have unique odours. All the individual bees in a colony carry this identifying smell which ensures intruders are detected. A honeybee visits between 50 and 100 flowers during one collection flight from the hive. A hive of bees flies an average of 55,000 miles to produce a pound of honey. The antioxidant called pinocembrin is only found in honey. Honey is the only foodstuff that naturally contains all the substances necessary to sustain life, including water. Honey provides two distinct levels of energy. The glucose in honey is quickly absorbed by the body and so gives an immediate energy boost. The fructose is absorbed more slowly providing sustained energy over long periods. In the Roman Empire honey was used to pay taxes. 11th century Germany also saw the introduction of feudal taxes being paid to the ruling lords in honey. Apiary was introduced to North America by European settlers. The first hives of European bees were established in New England in 1638. The native population referred to the bees as the 'white man's flies'. These early settlers also used their honey in cement production and to preserve fruit and make furniture polish. In this century nearly one million tonnes of honey are produced worldwide annually. In May 2006 a British Airways jet had to make an emergency landing in Kazakhstan after fire hazard lights triggered the response. Later investigation revealed that the warning system had been triggered by an escaped swarm of honeybees being imported into Britain in the hold of the aircraft. Pollen grains vary in size from 5 - 200 micrometres in diameter. It wasn't until the 1680s that scientists formally described pollen for the first time. However, it was as long ago as the fifth century that a documented Greek traveller by the name of Herodotus observed that the date palm had two sexes, and that the female flowers when coated with a yellow dust from the male parts of the plant increased the yield of the fruit. Palynology is the study of pollen, spores and other acid-resistant microscopic plant bodies collectivelly called palynomorphs. Forensic palynology is the use of pollen and fungal or plant spores to aid in bagging criminals. Pollen is a very useful mechanism in this context because it is found everywhere and can help provide an extremely accurate floral footprint that is unique to a particular area. Pollen also can be preserved for years by its tough coat of exine, and pollen from different species is entirely unique with no two kinds of pollen grain looking exactly alike. The first example of forensic palynology led to the conviction of a murderer in Vienna in 1959. In the UK today scene of crime officers have forensic palynology procedures imbedded into their investigation techniques at the sites of serious crimes.
|
||||
| NEXT | |||||
| Suggest a topic for another Wey River photo-essay |
|||||
