Dividing the hive

Timothy Stevens the beekeeper came around do a very special procedure. I was quick with the sketchbook. Afterwards he send me this report: 'Today I was looking after the beehives I have in achill both on the mainland and on the island. Peti Buchel drew some wonderful drawings of some of my activities today. I have a beehive located at her house. Since losses were so high this winter I have been doing a few splits. A split is where you break a hive into two or more pieces. In this case I broke the hive into 3 peices. 1/3 of the hive stayed at the apiary(bee yard) and the other 2 parts went to another apiary a few miles away. A hive of bees normaly only has one queen so when they are split like this 2 of the 3 parts will have no queen. These two parts will know they don't have a queen after only half an hour or so and will begin the preparations to produce a new queen. this means picking a few very young larvae(baby bees) and feeding them a very rich diet of royal jelly(food like a mothers milk), this will allow the young larvae to become queens instead of workers. I am using this to increase my number of hives that i have. each split is a full brood box(bottom box of a hive) and is strong enough in bees and brood to be able to produce a few quality queen cells. It is important when doing something like this that everything is very strong and you have ample bees to feed the young queens. If you don't have enough bees to do the feeding the queens will be very poor quality called scrub queens and are unlikely to be able to mate and take over the hive. When I got to the next apiary i repeated the process on the strong hives there and the splits made in this apiary came back to Peti Buchel garden. Hopefully the weather stays as good as it has been the last month or more and I will have a wonderful season.' The sketch is of the original hive divided in three.(dividing the hive 27-05-16)

The weather

Finally the weather turned and the bees and I are out and about in the garden, And if that isn’t enough the flowers have joined us too. Everywhere things are in bloom. Not the planted variety but the things that grow in the grass whether you like it or not. According to Timothy the beekeeper worker bees visit around a 100 flowers a day. It would seem that there is enough for everybody. But after the cold spring the bees are in a feeding frenzy. They do not tolerate anybody else around and least of all me. I used to put one of those easy to fold chairs out in front of the hives about ten meters away and watch the activity as I would watch the tv: but not anymore. A defending bee is send out and first starts to annoy me and if I stay put to attack me. Now they even come after me as I’m weeding my veggie patch, well out of sight and the way. This picture of the new additions to the hives I took just before I was stung in the eyebrow. And me writing a blog about the little feckers… No gratitude!

The honey box that tops up the hive

In spite of Timothy the beekeeper’s dire predictions it was time to put a second storey on the one and the honey box on the other hive. How to get the worker bees to put the honey where you want it? It had puzzled me since starting this blog. The solution is quite simple really. A plastic screen is put between the third and second storey. The holes in the screen are big enough for the worker bees to creep through but too small for the drones and the Queen. That way the home staying workers oblivious of everything except the task at hand to continue storing supplies, can access the top floor. The drones however cannot avail themselves of those honey stores and the queen cannot lay eggs on the frames.

The shopping basket of the worker bee

The worker bee never leaves the hive without her shopping basket. Nature attached it permanently to her hind leg. When she sticks her head into the flower the pollen gets stuck to her head and thorax. With her front legs moistened with nectar, she gathers it up and brings it to the pollen comb. There the pollen is combed, pressed and put into the basket. The nectar gives the pollen in the basket its colour. That’s how the beekeeper knows from which flower or honey source the bee has been foraging from. Once the pollen is in the hive it’s gets stored by the home worker bees. They mix it with honey and pack it firmly into store cells. The mixing with honey has to do with keeping it safe from going off. Photo of the bee with pollen on her hind legs: Timothy Stevens. Drawing by me.

The life and times of worker bees Part 3 Foragers

After the learning stages in and close to the hive the worker bees venture out into the great big world to find the honey source and bring pollen and nectar home. As Timothy the beekeeper already said: the bee is stupid but the hive is clever. And so the worker bees dance the story of the best honey sources to each other generation after generation for tens of thousands of years. They perform tremble dances to let the home front know that foragers are returning with the goodies. Worker bees also scout the ‘nesting’ place for the swarm to go to when the time has come for the queen to leave the colony and start a new one. Photo Timothy Stevens

The life and times of worker bees Part 2 The Ottoman Empire

The next stage in a worker bee’s life is guarding the hive. They also take on the task of receiving pollen and nectar from foraging bees. The society of bees is both highly structured and well functioning. Even the occasional palace revolution is embedded into the structure of perpetual order. Few societies both in the animal and human world are like that. Most societies thrive on chaos both from within and from without. The Ottoman Empire is the only society comparable to that of the bees, to my mind. As in the hive in Ottoman society everybody knew his/her place and thrived in it. Individuality was not encouraged and justice didn’t mean in fairness and reasonability but in stability without change. No wonder the Empire lasted 450 years and only came to grief when the chaos around could no longer be kept out. The photo I took in 1966 in the Central Taurus Mountains of Turkey, home ground of the erstwhile Ottomans and famous for it’s honey. On a plateau stand about a hundred hives close together.

The life and times of worker bees Part 1 Carers

Worker bees, not surprisingly, do the work to keep the hive healthy and happy. As Timothy the beekeeper said: bees are stupid but the hive or colony is intelligent. And well organized. Worker bees don’t all do all the work all of the time. Worker bees start their working lives feeding the queen and larvae and doing cleaning duties. For the purpose they have Royal Jelly producing glands. But when they get older and the glands stop functioning they build comb cells for the eggs to be laid in. Photo Amanda Stevens

Virgin queens

Queens are raised in specially constructed queen cells that start out as queen cups. Queen cups are larger than the cells in a normal brood comb. Once the reigning queen lays eggs in the queen cups the worker bees start building it up. As the young queen larva pupates the workers cap the cell with beeswax. The new Virgin Queen lifts the cap off when she is ready to emerge. By then the reigning queen has usually left the colony in a huff with a swarm. As soon as the old queen has left the hive a palace revolution breaks out with different virgin queens vying for supremacy. During the revolution the virgin queens are all over the colony restlessly seeking out the competition. For the beekeeper it is a nightmare trying to find and isolate them before they sting each other to death. Nature has provided the virgin queens with a stinger without the usual barbs making it possible for them to sting more than once without dying. The colony remains in swarm mode till all but one virgin queen have left or are killed leaving the hive depleted. Again it is the movies that my imagination turns to: The Virgin Suicides (1999) by Sofia Coppola, but most of all Harem Suare (1999) by Ferzan Ozpetek (Polranny Pirates collection). It is not so much that the movies spin a similar tale, but that the world of the bees is still completely unreal to me. I take to anything that even vaguely puts me on firm ground.

Larvae and the making of the queen

The creature that comes out of the egg is the larva. Before becoming proper bees larvae undergo moultings and spin a cocoon within the cell in the comb and pupate. All larvae are first fed on Royal Jelly which is produced by a gland of the worker bees. Later they get fed on honey and pollen except for the future and reigning queen, she’ll gets always fed on Royal Jelly, hence its name. The worker bees decide who is going to be queen when the old one is either weakening or dead. To do so they choose several small larvae and make special royal cells or queen cups where they feed them a lot of Royal Jelly. This type of feeding triggers the development of the queen’s long abdomen with fully developed ovaries and spermatheca. Collecting these data from the Internet I immediately get associations with costume dramas like the gloomy and fateful Elisabeth (1998) by Shekhar Kapur (part of the Polranny Pirates' film collection). I’m sure others will spring to mind as the kingdom of the bees is like a matriarchy.