THE BEES’ PLEAS Beekeeping in

THE BEES’ THE BEES’ PLEAS PLEAS

Lincolnshire’s bees – and our beekeepers – need our support. These plucky pollinators and Lincolnshire’s bees – and our beekeepers – need our support. These plucky pollinators and their custodians are rallying against a drop in bee populations and the use of neonicotinoids. their custodians are rallying against a drop in bee populations and the use of neonicotinoids. Lose our bee population, and the pollination of our crops will suffer, to say nothing Lose our bee population, and the pollination of our crops will suffer, to say nothing of the fact that we’ll lose out on the chance to enjoy delicious honey such of the fact that we’ll lose out on the chance to enjoy delicious honey such as that produced by Ian and Blaga Peters of Stickford-based CosyBees... as that produced by Ian and Blaga Peters of Stickford-based CosyBees...

Words: Rob Davis.

‘ISN’T IT FUNNY, HOW A BEE LOVES HONEY,’ to quote A A Milne’s teddy bear, Winnie the Pooh. ‘Buzz, buzz, buzz, I wonder why he does.’ An easy one to postulate upon in our opinion; it’s sweet, delicious and of course, natural. But what of the bees themselves, why do they cause such a buzz among beekeepers like Stickford-based Cosy Bees – Ian and Blaga Peters – tending to their eight hives with such diligence? “It’s a subject that you can never quite say with any confidence that you’ve mastered in its entirety,” says Ian. “Just when you think you’ve seen it all, just when you think you know most of what you need to know, they can still surprise you. And every hive, every colony is different.” Beekeeping is a ridiculously complex subject, about which entire libraries and periodicals have been written. So, please excuse this article being rudely brief. The societal structure of a bee colony; the politics in and between hives; the way they make honey; the intricate dance they perform to communicate to one another the location of pollen, and even their housekeeping – perhaps that should be hive-keeping – habits, and the way bees raise their children… they’re all topics in their own right. Happily, there could be no better guides on the subject than Ian and Blaga, and no better day to visit their 1.6 acre garden with its eight hives, than when we turned up to see for ourselves why keeping bees is such a buzz. If you remember, just before Easter when temperatures plummeted, there were a few days with respectable temperatures and a bit of sunshine. The girls, Ian reassured me, were in a good mood, and so was I. The Background… Ian and Blaga are from Hertfordshire and Macedonia respectively. Ian is the son of a farmer and so grew up with a limitless respect for, and an enduring love of, the countryside. Blaga’s home country, meanwhile, has what she describes as four proper seasons, enabling her to enjoy each and every month of the year in the natural world. Both worked in administration in the public sector, and settled in the unquestionably pretty Welwyn Garden City, pursuing not just their careers but also their interests, beekeeping – which they discovered in 2015 after embarking on an introductory course – and for Ian, astronomy. He created his own 9ft revolving observatory and became a part of the local community of likeminded stargazers. Ian also worked for a very good retailer of telescopes and associated equipment, but describes the job as almost wage-neutral, since being surrounded by potential purchases often proved too tempting.

Latterly in Hertfordshire, their bees were kept on land owned by a big player in the pharma-sector, Smith, Kline & French, which afforded them the opportunity to join the local beekeeping community and develop their interest further by adding more hives.

The couple relocated to Lincolnshire in 2017, drawn to the area by the prospect of a better lifestyle, a larger garden and also, a lack of light pollution. Lincolnshire of course enjoys big, dark skies, particularly when you’re situated just eight miles from the coast.

I am possessed of proper property envy by the couple’s plot, in a lovely peaceful location near Stickford, with its lake that not only affords a chance to enjoy wildlife and great views, but also provides the ideal backdrop for their colonies… not that there will be much time to enjoy the view this month, because we’re just coming up to the busiest (buzziest?) time in a beekeeper’s calendar.

The Bee Year… Over winter, it’s important to leave about a third of the honey the bees produce for them to consume. During the winter, the population of a hive will reduce from around 60,000-80,000 to just 2,000-6,000 bees; a sort of skeleton staff.

During this time, the queen will be less active, having laid most of her eggs in the summer months in cells which are then sealed up by worker bees.

In spring, the bees begin their epic six-month production cycle. Beekeepers derive two crops of honey; one in May/June – which tends to be more suited to producing set honey, the bees having harvested crops like oilseed rape, resulting in

Above: Ian and Blaga Peters are based in Stickford where they enjoy the company of about half a million of their closest friends... their honey bee colonies.

“It’s rare to encounter a tense beekeeper, since the craft is naturally quite peaceful once you’re used the presence of the bees and visa versa...”

a slightly different sugar content. There’s also a main crop in mid-summer. The latter harvest is usually runnier and typically yields a more floral honey thanks to the greater diversity of flowers, shrubs and trees available to the bees to forage on.

That means Ian and Blaga have two particularly busy periods when they extract the frames on which the bees deposit their honey by scraping off the wax cappings they secrete to seal it in, and use an electric centrifuge to spin out their crop.

Once their honey is harvested, though, there’s still plenty of work for Ian and Blaga to do, cleaning and then freezing the extracted frames, to kill off any wax moths which are the nemesis of the beekeeper.

Hive Minded… A bee hive’s structure is brilliantly designed for the benefit of both beekeeper and the colony itself. The main body of the hive is called a ‘brood box’ where the bees live most of the time.

The top part where most of the honey is stored is called a ‘super’ from which the bee keeper extracts the honey. Around their hives, Ian and Blaga have installed roofing insulation panels, helping the bees to keep their hives at a cosy 35°c, and keep the East Coast breeze off… hence the name of their operation; Cosy Bees.

The brood box in which the queen lives, contains up to eleven frames of wax comb in which she lays her eggs – about 2,000 a day – in the cells in this area. Female worker bees seal in the larvae, known as brood, and cap them with wax – secreted from a gland on their abdomen – to keep them safe and sound and tend to them until they hatch out.

The male bees or drones, meanwhile, mate with the queen bee, then pretty much just sit around doing nothing aside from getting under their females’ feet. Good job human males aren’t like that(!).

Above the brood box is a horizontal panel known as a queen excluder, which does rather what its name suggests. The queen can’t get above this excluder and thus cannot lay eggs in the super where the worker bees store most of the honey crop.

As the brood box is mainly full of bee larvae the worker bees instinctively fill up the cells on the super frames with honey and seal them up. These are intended as the food stores for the hive over the winter. When extracting the honey the beekeeper ensures that enough stores remain for the hive for the winter.

Winter stores... During a hard winter and if it is particularly wet and cold the bees can starve if there is not enough stores. Just under the hive’s lid, Ian and Blaga can place containers of fondant or ambrosia – sugar syrup – to ensure the bees are well-fed during the lean winter months.

Early in spring, each hive’s frames are placed back into their supers for the spring crop of honey. Frames will last a few years but Ian and Blaga reckon they replace a third of their frames each year with fresh new ones. These have single sheets of wax on them, with a slight honeycomb pattern, which the workers will use as a base on which to build up a quarter-inch thick series of cells, ready to be filled with honey and youngsters.

Bee Politically Aware... To get started in beekeeping, a beginner will purchase a nucleus of bees with a queen bee. If they are lucky they may acquire a swarm of bees during the spring or summer instead. Whilst your average worker bee will live for about six weeks, the queen bee usually lives around three years but becomes less productive after about two years. When the hive sense that the queen is less productive or if the hive becomes over populated they will produce queen cells, raising a new queen as quickly as possible by feeding larvae in the dedicated queen cells with royal jelly.

One occurrence Ian and Blaga are always keeping an eye on is the emergence of two queens. If a hive is becoming a little crowded, or if there are multiple queens, there’s a danger of swarming. Essentially this is a division of the colony into two, with the emerging colony leaving the hive with its queen to set up afresh. Pre-emptive action can manage a swarming, to ensure they can be relocated in a hive rather than flying off to make their own way in the world.

A canny – or at least proficient – beekeeper can therefore create multiple hives or colonies from their original swarm. That’s how Ian and Blaga turned one hive into two, then four, and finally their current eight hives.

Bee Realistic... Hopefully few people would read the above and think that keeping bees is a cinch.

Nor is it a license to jar-up cash. As Ian and Blaga point out, it’s about half a day’s work each week just to inspect and check on their colonies, plus a great deal of work in the summer when harvesting each of the two honey crops. There’s also a steep learning curve when it comes to beekeeping and indeed there are entire degree courses dedicated to the subject.

Financially there’s the matter of the cost of each hive; about £300 plus the ongoing cost of replacing frames and repairing damage, plus if you need to purchase new bees – about £300, which is soul-destroying if you’re unfortunate to lose your colony and need to replace it.

Then there are bee suits (about £100 - £150); honey centrifuges (about £1,000 for a decent electric one) and the ongoing cost of jars and labels etc. It’s not all bad news; there is a DIY option for those who fancy building their own from a kit, plus your local bee association may help out new beekeepers undertaking their training courses.

So those with the time and patience to invest won’t find themselves alone. It’s a proper community, with Ian and Blaga active members of the Horncastle division of the Lincolnshire Beekeepers’ Association, a group which in turn belongs to the British Beekeepers’ Association. >>

Lincolnshire Pride’s Executive Editor Rob Davis discovers what’s buzzing in the world of beekeeping.

DECODING A HONEY BEE’S DANCE MOVES...

Female worker bees perform a series of movements, often referred to as the ‘waggle dance,’ to teach other workers the location of food sources which can be located anything from three to six miles from the hive. Returning to the hive, the honey bee first walks straight ahead, vigorously shaking its abdomen and producing a buzzing sound with the beat of its wings. The distance and speed of this movement communicates the distance of the foraging site to the others. Communicating direction becomes more complex, as the dancing bee aligns her body in the direction of the food, relative to the sun. The entire dance pattern is a figure-eight, with the bee repeating the straight portion of the movement each time it circles to the center again. Honey bees also use two variations of the waggle dance to direct others to food sources closer to home; the round dance, and the crescentshaped ‘sickle dance.’ The honey bee dance was observed and noted by Aristotle as early as 330 BC. Karl von Frisch, a professor of zoology in Munich, Germany, earned the Nobel Prize in 1973 for his work to decode this dance language. n

Bee Cautious... One of the most common questions a beekeeper is asked is whether they still get stung. Yes, occasionally; it’s a sort of occupational hazard – it’s not an inevitability as long as you are gentle with them, although bees do sometimes have a (hive) mind of their own. It’s rare to encounter a tense beekeeper, since the craft is naturally quite peaceful, once you’re used the presence of the bees and visa versa. Being slow, deliberate and calm will minimise the risk. Bees like routine, methodical beekeepers and those they’re familiar with. Conversely, they dislike vibrations, thunderstorms and sudden movements. It’s testimony to Ian and Blaga’s temperament, though, that they don’t even use smokers to lull their bees into drowsiness; their calm personalities are sufficient to keep on their bees’ good side. The worst thing people can do is spot a bee and being tensing up or flailing about. Bees only sting as a last resort as doing so ruptures the poor creatures’ abdomens. If you are unfortunate enough to be stung, resist the temptation to brush at the site, or try to pinch out the sting, instead, carefully scrape the sting off the skin with something like a credit card, parallel to the skin. It’s actually the pumping of bee venom from the gland sack sticking out of the skin, rather than the prick itself, which causes the pain, so leaving the venom sac as intact as possible will minimise its effect. Bee Thankful... Ultimately, the reward of the beekeeper is that glossy, amber-coloured nectar, which makes the whole venture worthwhile. Honey really is remarkable stuff, used in savoury dishes like honey and wholegrain mustard chicken and pork chops, or to create honey cake, to slather on toast or over porridge in the morning… or simply as a substitute for refined sugar. With around 100lbs from each hive per harvest, Ian and Blaga produce around 1,000 jars a year, and with only a finite capacity for personal consumption, have begin to offer their honey for sale via Yummy, which provides fresh local food delivered to your door. Another reward for the couple’s hard work is the knowledge that bees are exceptional pollinators and keep the natural world ticking over. The beekeeping community isn’t keen on farmers’ use of neonicotinoids, as these kill bees along with other pollinators and the chemicals can remain in the soil for around five years, meaning that just one year’s treatment can harm bee populations for years. Since 1930, over 97% of the UK’s flower-rich grassland has been eradicated and today, 35 of the UK’s 250 bee species are under threat of extinction. Bees pollinate a third of our food crops like apples, tomatoes, cucumbers and 90% of our wild plants. Greenpeace reports that yields of our crops will suffer serious damage if a further decline in bees and other pollinators is allowed to continue. Mercifully at least, Lincolnshire is currently devoid of the nefarious Asian hornet, an aggressive species seen to have decimated bee populations in places like Jersey and the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately, that makes the biggest threat to bee populations… us. Bee Optimistic… Happily though, Lincolnshire in particular has an affinity and a respect for the plucky pollinators propping up our plant life. Thanks to beekeepers like Ian and Blaga – and about half a million of their close friends – the countryside has a very good ally in Apis mellifera. More of us should support these remarkable creatures and if, as an additional consequence, we can also enjoy the great taste of honey too… well, that’s certainly something that should leave us positively buzzing. n

Find Out More: Ian and Blaga Peters are the founders of Lincolnshire based Cosy Bees. The couple’s runny and set honey is available now on Yummy (www.yummy.co.uk), which delivers fresh local food right to your door! £6.00/454g jar.

BEE FACTS & FIGURES

There are around 260,268 honey bee hives in the UK, with 44,000 amateur beekeepers. Each hive or colony has an average of 60,000 bees which puts the UK bee population at around 15,616,080,000 at the height of summer – the bee population drops significantly during the winter months. It takes the nectar from two million flowers for honey bees to make just 450g of honey. To be properly classified as honey, the stuff must reach a composition of 80% sugars and 20% water. A single hive can produce anywhere from 27-45kg of honey every year. The queen bee is the only bee that lays worker eggs and can live up to five years. The summer months, when the hive needs to be at its maximum strength, are her ‘buzziest’ period, where she can lay up to 2,500 eggs per day. Bees have existed for around 130,000,000 years and have four life stages: egg, larvae, pupae, and adult. Honey bees have 170 odorant receptors, which gives them a sense of smell 50x more powerful than a dog’s. They can even be trained to locate buried land mines... and bees hate the smell of human breath! Hives produce five distinct substances: honey, beeswax, propolis (bee glue, used in the hive), pollen, and royal jelly.