Murdering beekeeper gets caught out by honey trap

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/murdering-beekeeper-gets-caught-out-by-honey-trap-1654289.html

Now work that one out!

My two WBC hives stand in the same apiary, around 2m apart, facing the same way, with bees split* from the same original colony in May 2008.

Hive Alpha (the original) has a brood/half, and four supers. Two supers are full and capped, and the other two are about half full each.

Hive Beta has exactly the same layout. No supers are full, and there are fewer bees than in Alpha - at a guess, half the number - and the bees are smaller.

Now work that one out!


*I avoid the 'artificial swarm' term. It was more like 'incompetent jumbling.' See entry

“Incompetence - When you earnestly believe you can compensate for a lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there's no end to what you can't do.”

Plight of the bumblebee

In the garden this afternoon, I noticed that on a single plant there were six bumblebees. On a nearby flowering redcurrant, ditto.

Though these were not the big fat fellers, they were definitely bees of the bumble kind, and plenty of them.

No honeybees, though.

Apitherapy

Found this on http://www.apitherapy.biz/home.html :

"The law requires that we make no health claims, whether true, supported by scientific research or not, for the remedies we make and sell. Supporting scientific research is available elsewhere on the internet and we are always happy to answer your queries or problems either by email or on the telephone. This is a free advisory service."

And on the same page, this:

"Royal Jelly - nature’s rejuvenator may help in the relief of symptoms of ailments such as PMT and arthritis, may encourage healthy skin, hair and nails and may help with the promotion of overall wellbeing. This product is shipped in a cold pack to ensure maximum freshness on receipt."

By the way, Royal Jelly retails at £10 per 50g (that's £200/kg, or about £50/lb).

Why become a beekeeper?

Small section of an article in http://www.theecologist.org/pages/archive_detail.asp?content_id=2468 about Tony Spacey, ex-paratrooper now beekeeper:


‘I got into bee farming because my hands won’t fit up their arse,’ Tony tells me by way of introduction. ‘I come from a farming background in southern Africa. When I was four I saw my grandfather’s arm well and truly buried in an uncomfortable place in a cow and the old boy turned and smiled at me and said, “One day, you can do this.” From then on I decided to become a soldier.’ He spent 18 years as a paratrooper, leading bayonet charges in Angola, winning several medals and generally being ‘not really a pacifist’.

Find Littleover Apiaries at http://www.littleoverapiaries.com/

The site is full of cobblers about 'active honey' and general pseduoscience, but Tony S is obviously a successful and (I guess) very good beekeeper.

Yet another excellent bee blog

Try out http://muratakin26.blogspot.com/

I am embarrassed even more than usual to say that the language is entirely foreign to me; I'm guessing at Turkish...

I often intend to post explanatory pictures about the techniques of beekeeping, but the pictures on http://muratakin26.blogspot.com are waaaaay better than I could hope to produce.

C'mon, Colin

Disappointingly, Colin (who commented on my rude remarks about pseudoscience at www.yourhealthfoodstore.co.uk) has not yet sent me the research that backs his claims about the antibacterial and other properties of propolis.

Dettol, I understand, is antibacterial, but you won't catch me drinking it. Ditto propolis.

Top-bar hive: diary of a novice beekeeper

I particularly like this blog, for its incompetent sub-text... "So I have built the top bar hive to his design + a few deliberate changes and few inadvertant modifications."

Visit http://novice-beekeeper.blogspot.com/

Great photos, and here's an example: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN1PTq_p-IF3GEuCOTJ7vETtmOimPIPEe8aaam1KzjhFMQ6qJZNtTF84uOKuR51pay7zuzNJqIKX_46LVO3ovEfIo1v_N2z9eqU_gO6l1-PyBO3efBUZD6l3_f0flOc3NTl69j/s1600-h/IMG_7107.JPG

What has happened to Turlough?

The best bee blogger on earth has stopped blogging. What has happened to Turlough?

News, please.

Fears of global decline in bees dismissed as demand for honey grows

The Times Online 8 May 2009 reports: "While bees have been dying out in Britain, Europe and the US, managed bee numbers worldwide having been thriving because of global demand for honey, biologists suggest in the journal Current Biology. They also say that the bulk of agriculture, including wheat and rice, does not rely on pollination."

The article is based on an academic study, titled "Global Stock of Domesticated Honey Bees Is Growing Slower Than Agricultural Demand for Pollination."

Summary [from the article]

The prospect that a global pollination crisis currently threatens agricultural productivity has drawn intense recent interest among scientists, politicians, and the general public [1], [2], [3], [4] and [5]. To date, evidence for a global crisis has been drawn from regional or local declines in pollinators themselves [6], [7], [8] and [9] or insufficient pollination for particular crops [9] and [10]. In contrast, our analysis of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) [11] data reveals that the global population of managed honey-bee hives has increased 45% during the last half century and suggests that economic globalization, rather than biological factors, drives both the dynamics of the global managed honey-bee population and increasing demands for agricultural pollination services [12]. Nevertheless, available data also reveal a much more rapid (>300%) increase in the fraction of agriculture that depends on animal pollination during the last half century, which may be stressing global pollination capacity. Although the primary cause of the accelerating increase of the pollinator dependence of commercial agriculture seems to be economic and political and not biological, the rapid expansion of cultivation of many pollinator-dependent crops has the potential to trigger future pollination problems for both these crops and native species in neighboring areas. Such environmental costs merit consideration during the development of agriculture and conservation policies.

Credit: Tara C found this article for me!

Sources
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6244317.ece
www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(09)00982-8
www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VRT-4W7JNHK-3&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=ca95e58953bcaebe5348ee378d597620

How much honey will I get this year?

Currently I have two WBC hives, with a total of seven supers. Last year, one hive with three supers produced about 25kg of honey, and I still have masses of it yet to give away (~not for sale at any price~).

A) How much honey will I get this year? (10 marks)
B) What the devil am I going to do with it? (90 marks)

Answers, please. Additional marks for use of English and clarity of expression.

Fruity-Sweet Hilltop Beekeeper

Nice story from http://hilltopbeekeeper.blogspot.com/2008/12/solstice-in-bee-yard.html

So making it to late December with six of my seven hives still alive and kicking is pretty good. I pulled the top cover from the dead hive, popped off the inner cover and peered inside. There was no cluster of bees to obscure my view through the three boxes to the bottom. But strangely, the bottom of the hive had very few dead bees. I had a bad thought: colony collapse disorder? A lifeless hive mostly free of dead bees is one of the signs.

I started taking the hive apart so I could clean it up for spring and store it. I removed the top box. Then the second.

In the bottom box: a tiny cluster of live bees, tucked away in the rear left quadrant of the hive.

I was happy (an understatement) to see them, but of course they weren't glad at all. In a flash, a few of the bees were up in my face and tangled up in my hair. I was able to swat most of them away, but a couple caught me in the hand. In another second, I could smell the fruity-sweet scent of their sting pheremone.


Neat blog, http://hilltopbeekeeper.blogspot.com/

Opening the doors to Iraq's students

Among bad news, we find some good: the Brits are offering beekeeping courses to Iraqi students.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/may/05/iraqi-students

This you have to see...

This you have to see: http://azizler.blogspot.com/ with some tremendous links to other sites.

Turlough, are you watching? (http://turlough.blogspot.com/2007/09/bell-jar-bees-slide-show.html)

Regina Mortuous Est? Vivat Regina!

Despite my reshuffle of the boxes on my last visit, I discovered that there are still larvae above the queen excluder in Hive Bravo.

(See http://mellifera.blogspot.com/2008/06/time-will-tell.html and following. Do you ever get the feeling that history is repeating itself?)

Owing to stupendous incompetence, my last visit (see http://mellifera.blogspot.com/2009/04/chancing-it-yet-again.html) failed to solve the problem. On today's visit, in effect I moved the excluder rather than messing about with individual boxes, and swapped everything top to bottom. I am fairly confident that her majesty is now below the excluder.

Incompetent coda: Though these are WBC hives, I have a couple of second-hand National boxes (they kind-of fit) with no castellation lugs and the frames to not have spacer tabs, either. When I picked up the first box the loose frames all slid down together, concertina-style, squishing lots of bees and, possibly killing the queen, too.

If that's the case, let's trust in good weather and the bees' instinct to re-queen. Regina Mortuous Est? Vivat Regina!

Super photo from http://www.beemaster.com/site/honeybee/qpage.htm a really useful site.

Decimation, NZ-style

Reasonably current summary of the plight of bees in New Zealand, written by Sue Kedgley, the NZ Green Party spokeswoman on food safety and the environment.

See it here: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10570113&pnum=0

Sue, if I may be so familiar, says "But sharp declines in populations in the US, Canada and Europe have sparked global concern about bees, and the future of the world's food supplies if they continue to be decimated, as bees are essential to pollination and food production."

Besides the loose syntax of the sub-clause, I really dislike use of the verb 'to decimate' to refer to something that is clearly not decimation.

How fogeyish I am become.

Colin

Thank you, Colin, for the comment on yesterday's post (http://mellifera.blogspot.com/2009/04/propolis-and-other-sticky-topics.html):

"The fact is Toby, that without PROPOLIS there would be no bees, no hives and no honey.
It has been proved to be a natural antibacterial agent, it strengthens the immune system, and moreover acts as a protection against the flu virus.
All proved in research."

You may well be right , though I question your grasp of cause and effect. I suspect it runs more like bees then honey and propolis. Regardless, you still won't catch me eating propolis (which, let's face it, is "No More Nails" for bees.)

Let's have the links to the research, then.

Pic from http://www.makingdiyeasier.co.uk/unibond/nomorenails.html

Propolis and other sticky topics

Personally I find propolis to be a monumental embuggerance, and the last thing I would do is drink it, eat it or rub it on me.

More pseudo food science can be found at yourhealthfoodstore.co.uk

Accuracy not a strong point in BBC bee report

The announcement of a new beekeeping course also contains the usual hand-wringing about bee decline. The report includes the following:

"A decline in the number of flowers as food sources has led to a poorer environment for honeybees and is likely to have been a major factor in the 75% decrease in the number of hives over the past 100 years."
and

"The number of bees has decreased by 75% over the past 100 years."

Well, which is it? Were all bees in hives in past 100 years? Or perhaps the 75% of hives that went were the only full hives, and the remaining 25% devoid of bees?

None of the statements are sourced. For example, has the number of flowers (how do you count 'em?) declined? What about the vast fields of oilseed rape?

Box-switch-queen-excluder escapade (cont.)

Max, the apiary warden, has been kind enough to check on the bees while I child-wrangle our latest arrival. Max wrote: "If you are working as hard as your bees the wife should be happy. The top super is untouched but they are filling the next one down. If this weather continues it will be fine."

Yes, providing my box-switch-queen-excluder escapade in Hive Bravo actually worked...

Pic from http://www.beesource.com/pov/hayes/abjaug85.htm, well worth a visit

Who killed the honey bee... Martha Kearney?

Quite a good film on BBC4 "Who killed the honey bee" by Martha Kearney.

The odd part was, having not seen the intro titles, I was convinced that it was by Alison Benjamin and Brian McAllum, who wrote "A world without bees." In many ways, it was a televised version of their book.

www.amazon.co.uk/World-Without-Bees-Alison-Benjamin/dp/0852650922
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jzjys/Who_Killed_the_Honey_Bee

Publish Post

Chancing it, yet again!

Checked the two hives today, and found that both are busy and have active queens.... except that in one hive she is above the excluder.

With limited time - my excuse is the arrival of a new daughter, 23 March - I reshuffled the supers and trust to luck that I have moved the queen below the excluder in the process.

Time will tell.

Image from http://www.brown.edu/Courses/BI0032/partheno/beelink.htm

MEΛΙΣΣΟΚΟΜΙΑ ΜΑΡΑΘΩΝΑ

No idea what's going on here, but it looks pretty interesting. See http://marathon-honey.blogspot.com/

MEΛΙΣΣΟΚΟΜΙΑ ΜΑΡΑΘΩΝΑ

Timbals, stridulation and Scrabble

Well here's an oddity - which I forgot to report: when opened, I can hear a distinct, low thrumming from inside one of the hives!

The sound is similar-ish to the sound of a dove, but faster and lower.

Could it be a mouse? There is no sign of mice, and the anti-mouse bars were closed all winter (and still are).

Could it be the queen? Various bee books refer to the queen making cicada-like sounds. Do queens have timbals? Can they stridulate?

Competitive Scrabble, anyone?

Pic from wikipedia, more about Scrabble at http://www.scrabble.com/

Famous beekeepers

Came across this list of famous beekeepers at http://www.badbeekeeping.com/fame.htm

Buzzy Bees, Sasha Felix and The Beverley Sisters

OK, possibly not the most germane link ... Sasha Felix, who created Sing & Sign (http://www.singandsign.com/) which features the 'Buzzy Bee' song, is the daughter of Teddie Beverley of The Beverley Sisters, as featured on this blog at http://mellifera.blogspot.com/2008/10/limited-intelligence-beverly-or.html.

(Next stops will be Kevin Bacon and Paul Erdos...)

Don't blame amateur keepers for declining bees

If you can read past the chronically poor sub-editing, this article (below) may be of interest. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/05/beekeepers-endangered-bees)

Alison Benjamin co-wrote "A world without bees." (http://mellifera.blogspot.com/2008/07/world-without-bees.html)

Don't blame amateur keepers for declining bees

Bees at the hive & woodpecker damage

Woodpecker damage, top left above the porch

Woodpeckers and other varmints

Dang! A woodpecker has been having a go at one of the hives. Minimal damage so far.

Because the lifts (the outer coverings of a WBC hive) are somewhat thicker than the walls of a National or similar hive, it looks as if the bird gave up before breaking through.

I will post a video of the hive front, where you can see the damage, later on. Mean-time, enjoy the very fine highbrow Woody Woodpecker intro, or visit the Universal Site for a proper clip.

The Woody Woodpecker & Friends Cartoon Collection DVD Volume 2 Available April 15, 2008 From Universal Studios

We have a very fine new web site

http://www.wimbledonbeekeepers.co.uk/

Varroa Destructor

Not, I suspect, an Oscar winner.

Don't panic!

Visited the apiary yesterday, in cool weather, and was surprised to find bees flying. With little time available, I opened up the hive lids without bothering to put on the bee suit - no veil, no gloves, nothing.

The bees were not particularly pleased. Fortunately, only the sky and the girls witnessed my rapid and disorderly retreat. Capt. Mainwaring would have been most disappointed.

The good news, apart from not being stung, is that there are bees.

Pic stolen from http://home.btconnect.com/howejam/dadsarmy.htm

CNN picks up bee story

Found this on CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/tech/2009/02/19/clarke.uk.bees.vanish.itn

Hive Mind

http://www.hive-mind.com/bee/blog/

Bumblebees

Worth a read: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5604401.ece

Incipient Granulation

Entered two jars into the Wimbledon Beekeeper's Association Annual Honey Show.

It might be fair to say that I came last. "Incipient Granulation" were the killer words - especially the capitalisation.

Never mind. I forecast an entry into the "Set Honey" category next year...

Smokers in Whitehall

Oh yes, that protest in Whitehall...http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/beekeepers-protest-over-hive-deaths-992276.html

Christmas Calendar

This is from Nancy Candlin, Riverford Home Delivery, 1 The Mission Hall, 49 The Grove, Crouch End, N8 8ST, 020 8341 3039:

"As you may have read, bees, and in particular the honey bee, are under serious threat from pests and diseases, and are dying out at a frightening rate.

Without the honey bee, our crops won’t be pollinated and thus our food supply reduced radically. As a farm, we owe an enormous amount to this tiny busy insect, and are completely reliant on it.

With this in mind, I am giving all the profits from every Riverford calendar I sell to the British Bee Keepers’ Association which are funding research into saving the bee. The calendars make a great and colourful gift so buy more than one and rest assured that you are helping the bee!

Please pass the word around. If you are a regular customer, just add the calendar(s) to your order and I will arrange the rest. If you aren’t a customer or don’t wish to buy anything else, simply send a cheque for £6.35 made payable to Riverford Home Delivery, including your own name and address, and I will post out the calendar(s)."

Poor journalism, good news

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/09/apiculture-hygienic-bees-francis-ratnieks

Sheakleyville bees

Honored as I am, I can only assume that this blog reader became diverted for 29 minutes before jumping to http://www.beeculture.com/!


View Larger Map

Sheakleyville bees

Limited intelligence... Beverly or Beverley?

Rather a good site, http://www.beverleybeekeepers.co.uk/, with good links to other sites and films on beekeeping. All somewhat spoiled by Beverly Sisters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverley_Sisters popping into my head.

Bees will always have Paris, and Bloomberg will always have Casablanca

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aUzPpUDCkSKM&refer=europe

Oscar Wetterblad

In case you were wondering, the "Death by Sting" data was found by Oscar Wetterblad, who is Swedish and has his own web site, http://www.wetterblad.com/oscar.html

The Secret Life of Bees

A short history of robbing

Went to check the hives, add anti-varroa treatments, remove the feeders and settle the bees for the winter.

As I packed up, carelessly as it turned out, a great gob of sugar solution dropped out of a feeder, SPLAT, on top of the frames and dribbled right through down to the floor.

Within moments, the air was FULL of robbers, with a no-holds-barred wrestling free-for-all at the hive entrance.

So, all things considered, preparing for winter went, er, well...

What the bees know and what they do not know

Much as I admire L. Fejes Tóth, bees do not build hexagonal cells. They build tubular cells of circular cross-section, and follow closest hexagonal packing (with some clever rhomboid-stuff at the base).

So http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS/Repository/1.0/Disseminate?view=body&id=pdf_1&handle=euclid.bams/1183526078 there.

Death by Sting (bee, not Gordon Sumner)

http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=7933596&story_id=12079086

Gordon Sumner's nickname, Sting, came about because he wore a stripey black-and-yellow jumper that made him look like a bumblebee.

Bee visitors

Daily Mail Online gets in on the bee act...

No honey at Christmas?

Initial estimates show that English hives produced just 6,000 tons of honey this year - half the usual annual level.

Stuart Bailey, chairman of Rowse honey, which supplies several major supermarket chains, said the company has been able to source just 125 tons of English honey this year forcing it to rely more heavily on foreign suppliers despite rocketing prices.

"We will be out by Christmas there is no doubt about that," he said.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/02/eahoney102.xml

Parasites Are Killing Off Honeybees

Catherine Jacobs, Environment Correspondent at Sky News, makes a splash with "Parasites Are Killing Off Honeybees."

Sadly, her own story makes the point that this is probably not true. I might also criticise the subs for a dreadful headline.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/British-Honey-Bees-In-Rapid-Decline-By-Virus-As-Experts-Call-For-Research-Funds/Article/200808415088927?lpos=UK%2BNews_4&lid=ARTICLE_15088927_British%2BHoney%2BBees%2BIn%2BRapid%2BDecline%2BBy%2BVirus%2BAs%2BExperts%2BCall%2BFor%2BResearch%2BFunds

A trail of freshly ground pepper

Possibly one of the least likely beekeeping gadgets: an electric peppermill with integrated LED torch...

I wanted to check the shed for bee disasters, and the only opportunity was after dark. With no torch handy, the best I could do was the peppermill.

At around 22:30, I crept around the shed looking for angry or dying bees, making whirring noises and leaving a trail of freshly ground pepper.


www.peppermills.com/

The Polish for 'bee' is 'pszczoły'

Collected seventeen frames of honey - all from one hive. Sweet.

All went well - I simply brushed the bees off the frames - until I parked the loaded frames in the shed, back home. It was a hot day, and other bees caught a whiff and started to pile into the shed.

Unfortunately, the shed is being used by half-a-dozen Polish builders during our house renovations. The Polish for 'bee' is 'pszczoły,' though that's certainly not the word the builders were using.

Colony nutritional status modulates worker responses

And here is that paper in full: http://www.springerlink.com/content/e051wn16651434w7/fulltext.pdf

Computer model of bees probes the hive mind

Extract from New Scientist 16 August 2008:

"GIVEN a choice between two different flower beds, how can honeybees hunting for nectar be sure they've chosen the best patch? A new computer model may provide the answer, as well as insights into the workings of a "hive mind" that could be used to guide swarms of robots.

To test this hypothesis, Ronald Thenius of the University of Graz in Austria built a computer simulation of a hive containing 5000 independent virtual bees. Each forager started out visiting one of two different flower patches, but would switch destinations if it had to wait too long to be unloaded or was being serviced by too many receivers.

The results, presented at the Artificial Life IX conference in Winchester, UK, last week were promising. The virtual bees moved to the better nectar source at similar rates and in similar proportions to those observed for real bees. "It's like a new pub has opened with cheap beer: everyone's trying to find it," says Thenius. "The hive can gain up to 20 per cent more nectar this way."

Read the full article at http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19926696.200-computer-model-of-bees-probes-the-hive-mind.html and visit http://www.newscientist.com/

A single hive with its bees and full combs of honey can easily be worth a thousand dollars

The recent outbreak of hive theft is not new, it seems. This clip from The Independent online is from 2002 (good to know I'm right up there and current, eh?).

"Angry as the buzzing hives they carried in protest, dozens of Israeli beekeepers lined a road with burning tyres today to demonstrate against the thefts of thousands of their beehives.

Wearing protective work suits and net masks, the beekeepers demanded that Israel and the Palestinian Authority stop what they said was the theft of their beehives by Palestinians in the West Bank.

The demonstrators at Jalameh Checkpoint near the West Bank town of Jenin had planned to release the bees they brought with him as a protest, but police stopped them.

The beekeepers suspect Palestinians are entering Israel by night from the West Bank and making off with the hives, since most of the thefts have taken place in areas near the border between Israel and the West Bank.

"I have nothing against the Palestinians," beekeeper Roni Feldman said. "But Israeli agricultural workers are paying the highest price for peace."

According to Feldman, 2,600 hives were stolen in 1999. A single hive with its bees and full combs of honey can easily be worth a thousand dollars."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/beekeepers-protest-at-hive-thefts-724851.html

London Beekeepers' Association

Isn't this logo beautiful?

http://www.lbka.org.uk

High-rise honey

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7552005.stm Collecting honey in Nepal, the hard way

Bees on Bloomberg

Would you believe it, even Bloomberg is up in arms about bees: "Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- John Chapple stands among a hum of honeybees flying in and out of 10 hives in the gardens of Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury's London residence by the River Thames. The insects are buzzing. For now.
Eighteen months ago about two-thirds of the 40 hives that Chapple keeps across the capital died off, including all 12 in his own back yard. London's beekeepers collectively lost half of their colonies in the past two years. During last winter alone, almost a third of hives across the U.K. lost their bees."

"http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=alwcaI.KfB9I&refer=uk