Bees & Natural Beekeeping

Natural Beekeeping Notes

In September 2015 Melanie Fryer, a member of BUWG, shared her knowledge of bees and beekeeping, drawing on her long experience looking after bees.

Bees naturally live in hollow cavities in the centre of large trees. The wood of the tree is fairly thick to provide insulation and waterproofing for the colony. A small entrance to the hollow provides some (but not too much) ventilation, and bees alter the size of the hole as part of maintaining hive temperature at 35-36⁰C in the centre of the brood.

Other cavities, such as caves, are sometimes colonised by bees.

An unusual hive

The aim of “natural beekeepers” is to replicate the natural colony conditions.

Conventional beehives are made up of a stack of thin wooden boxes with an entrance slit at the base of the stack. Inserts of a wax base, on which the bees create wax cells to form the comb divide the space. Each insert has cells that are all the same size.

The honey box on top of the hive is regularly removed, dropping temperatures, and disturbing the bees.

Sugar solution is given to bees to push up honey production, and honey is regularly harvested.

The colony is limited to about 4% drones, rather than the 10-15% in natural conditions

Swarming is inhibited.

Bee comb

Natural beekeeping aims for as little disturbance to the colony as possible.

Wax inserts are not used.

The bees construct downward hanging combs in which cells vary in size, dependant on the type of bee produced.

Drones are viewed as useful additions to the colony, especially in winter when the large hairy drones are important in warming the brood.

Honey is only taken if it is surplus to the needs of the hive. In autumn the excess, not needed by the bees to survive winter, is taken. Honey is also taken in late spring, when honey stores are not needed as the bees are foraging again.

The Top Bar hive is frequently used. The lid is insulated - stuffed with fleece, rags or straw. Under this is a rack of wooden bars from which the bees build combs. Wooden separator blocks are used to control how much space the bees have - more in summer at times of high honey production and colony expansion. Less in winter when there is minimal productivity and the need of the colony is to stay warm.

The Warré method is similar It involves vertically stacked boxes of thick (cedar) wood. A quilt box on top contains a hessian sack filled with straw.

Underneath are a series of boxes with a top bar on which the bees produce a hanging honeycomb.

A small hole in a high-up box provides an entrance

When the colony requires more space, boxes are added below the existing boxes in order to retain heat.

A window may be fitted into the side of a box to allow viewing of the colony without disturbance.

Four seasons.

In Spring bees forage. The queen lays eggs starting in February and reaching a peak in June when she lays 2,000 eggs a day, and the colony is about 60,000 bees strong.

Bees produce royal jelly from glands on their heads. The eggs once hatched are feed on royal jelly for a length of time depending on the type of bee they will become.

A large 'queen cell', or a few queen cells are produced at the edge of a honeycomb. Queen cells are constantly filled with royal jelly.

Pollen feeds larvae. Nectar feeds the bees and is used to make honey.

In May/June, the colony may swarm. Up to 20,000 bees, including the original queen bee, fly away from the hive and look for a new home (often relatively nearby).

The remaining bees form a daughter colony in which a new queen is raised.

Summer is a time of frantic levels of activity. Bees emerging in Summer are small, with a lifespan of about 6 weeks.

Winter bees are larger with a slower metabolism and can survive the winter on smaller food reserves.

In August, the bees start making stores of honey to last the winter. Winter bees are reared, improving the colony’s survival chances.

There is no brood in winter and the bees huddle for insulation, regularly changing position so individuals to take it in turns to be cold. They maintain a temperature of 25⁰C inside the colony.

Honey

There is no truly “organic honey” produced in the UK because of the lack of sufficiently large areas of foraging land classed as organic.

Bees forage in a 3 mile radius from their hive, and so the organic status of UK honey cannot be assured.

Laverstoke Park may house the only organic UK apiary.

"Raw honey" has no 'chemicals' added, and none used on the bees. It is "Straight From The Hive" (and shows the bees have had no sugar syrup feeding.)

Threats:

Wasps raid bee colonies for honey often, and bees guard the hive entrance.

Other honeybees can rob a rival's hive for honey (which they can do by coating themselves in pollen as a disguise)

Distances: Beehives should be spread out to:

· reduce the spread of diseases (like varroa),

· widen the foraging area per hive (21 acres is needed, but 35 acres is ideal),

· discourage bees robbing each other

· prevent all the bees being exterminated if one hive does get a disease.

The minimum separation between hives should be 100m.

Varroa Destructor is a parasitic mite, originating in Asia. It was first found in Europe in the late 1970s, and was first found in England in 1992 in hives in the south-east.

It has 2 life-cycle phases:

1) Adult female mites attach themselves on adult bees to feed, and can be spread to new

colonies.

2) Within the brood chambers, adult female mites enter open brood cells burying themselves

in the food at the base of the cell.

They emerge once the cells are sealed to feed on the bee larvae and to reproduce, laying

eggs on the larvae.

The first egg always hatches as male. Subsequent eggs produced after mite- mating are

female.

Surviving females, usually 2 or 3 in each chamber, leave the brood cell on host bees as

they emerge.

Mites preferentially choose drone chambers, and nurse bees to parasitise. Swarm and foraging bees are less likely to be attacked.

Queens and queen chambers are avoided.

Melanie felt that swarming could be a way of breaking away from this infection which is mostly contained in the brood cells and thrives under low temperatures with moisture.

The British Beekeeping Association (BBKA) exterminated bees from an apiary at East Riddlesden in both 2013 and 2015 because of varroa. All hives in a 3km radius were inspected and the apiary put under quarantine.

In August, the BBKA published a report on the lack of forage for bees. Bees were starving in summer and so were clearly not going to survive the winter. This situation might have been caused by a cold spring which meant the bees were late to start foraging. Although the heather blooms were good, bad weather meant the bees could not harvest heather effectively.

To be healthy bees need forage throughout the brood rearing period. Ideally there would be a variety of nectar sources

48% of UK gardens are paved or gravelled which reduces foraging area for bees, and removes wildflowers.

We can help the bee population by:

· re-planting bee-friendly flowering plants in our gardens,

· retaining and managing roadside verges as wildlife corridors

· altering the farming practice which has removed hedges, and wildflower meadows.

· reducing and stopping the use of agricultural pesticides harmful to bees

Bumblebees are very different from Honey-Bees. They nest in spring, creating a small 'cup' shaped honeycomb, laying eggs here. They forage through the summer, and only make enough honey to feed the larvae. The bees die in winter, leaving only the the queen who retreats to an underground refuge (old mouse-holes are ideal). She then re-emerges in spring to start another colony.

Bradford Urban Wildlife Group