FANNING BEES

Well, what a summer we have had.  I hope you have managed to stay nice and cool during the heatwave.  It somehow seems a distant memory as I sit here at my laptop tapping away. However, let me tell you about the incredible fanning bees.

The honeybees are very efficient at controlling the temperature in their hives. From the day they are born to the day they die they have certain jobs they have to fulfill.  One of those jobs is that of the ‘fanning bee’.   On a hot day she can be seen outside the entrance of the hive with her head down and bottom in the air - facing inward - fanning her wings at approximately 180 beats per second to bring fresh air into the hive. She’s also inside the hive, and with the help of the bees bringing in the water, cooling down the brood.  They place droplets of water on the backs of the fanning bees and smear it over the covered brood and the effect of their fanning works like a fridge; it evaporates the water which takes the heat from the surrounding air which in turn creates a cooling effect.  So, they understood air conditioning before we did… clever girls!  I said bottoms facing inward because you can also see the fanning bees with their bottoms facing out.  These girls bend their abdomens in a certain way to expose a gland that releases the Nasonov pheromone that guides the forager bees back to their hive.  And, one more thing the fanning bees do; they use their wings to evaporate the water from the nectar to create honey.  Once they have reduced it to 18% moisture they cover it in a fine layer of wax which they can then safely store and use during the late autumn and winter months ahead. What amazing creatures the honeybees are.

HONEY EXTRACTION

Talking about storing honey, I’ve just removed the supers from my hives and have extracted the honey and now have lots of jars, stored away, underneath the stairs.  My girls have done me proud this year - 170 lb’s.  Do I feel guilty?  Gosh yes.  When I see all that honey and think that in her lifetime a honeybee only makes 1/12th of a teaspoon and to produce a single jar of honey the bees have visited two million flowers and flown fifty-five thousand miles, yes I feel very guilty. But then, I remind myself, we keep honeybees in hives and honeybees produce wax and make honey.  They never get to a point when they think they have enough, which is why we give them the supers, so they have somewhere to store the excess. By the end of the season they have far more than they could possibly use.  If we didn’t take it, it would go to waste and here we have to think like a bee; they don’t waste anything and nor should we. 

Honey extraction is quite a performance.  First you have to clear the bees out of the supers.  Some beekeepers shake them off the frames.  I think this is too distressing for them.  I use crown boards with Rhombus Clearers, which you place between the supers and the brood box.   It’s a one-way trip down to the brood box!  Thus, when you return 24 hours later, the supers are free of bees and no bees have been harmed by the manoevre.  I always spin on the same day as removing the supers so I can return them back to the bees asap to clean out, and, they make a thorough job of it.  The frames are frozen for 48 hours to rid them of any diseases and stored safely, ready for re-use next year.  I also give them back wax cappings that have been removed from the stores prior spinning, which are full of honey and this too they clean up beautifully, turning the gooey wax into wonderful dry flakes which are then ready for recycling.  This should give them enough stores to see them through to the Autumn - when the ivy comes into flower - and they have their final feast which they keep for themselves.  If they seem a little light, you can feed them with sugar syrup. Some beekeepers keep back a full super and put it underneath the hive for the bees to use throughout the colder months ahead.  I don’t do this as I’ve seen bees starve using this method.  If it gets too cold they won’t leave their huddle around the queen to go down to get the food.  I feel better knowing the stores are in the brood box with them.  It’s all a matter of personal preference.  Every beekeeper uses a method that suits them most, you just have to work it out as you go along.

LONG LIVE THE QUEEN

For those of you who follow my blog, you will be aware that I’ve had a battle with my queens this year. It’s been a case of “now you see me, now you don’t.” It’s nye on driven me crazy, I’ve never had a year like it. Well, the queen that I found, against all odds, and put back in her brood box, (see last months blog), has gone missing again. A week after I’d popped her back, I looked at my notes and it said she was laying like crazy and at the next inspection… nothing. Seriously, what’s wrong with her? At first I thought she might be a ‘skinny minnie’ and escaped up to the supers again, but no, she had not. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and thought, perhaps, she might have just stopped laying due to the change in weather conditions, they can do that. It had been very hot and then started pouring with rain, so I left her for a week to sort herself out. Nothing. No brood, no eggs, the bees were filling all the free comb with nectar. I stole a frame of eggs from my strongest hive, thinking they might make queen cells if their queen had disappeared, but when I looked a week later they hadn’t. Not really surprising on the grounds that hardly any drones are around as the girls are chucking them out in preparation for the autumn and winter months ahead. I put out an SOS to surrounding beekeepers asking if anyone had a spare laying queen they wanted to find a good home for but sadly no-one had so I had to buy one. Northumberland Honey. Lovely people. In spite of the postal strike and a Bank Holiday Monday they managed to get one to me within 3 days. This wonderful envelope arrived with a queen and a few workers in a cage. If you look carefully at the image above you will see a yellow dot and you will be able to make out the long slender shape of the queen. Thank you Northumberland Honey you are stars. Below is a link to a wee video I made of me introducing the queen to her new hive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcuiUiALEsI

BILL TURNBULL ((25 January 1956 – 31 August 2022)

Finally, I cannot leave this month’s blog without paying tribute to Bill Turnbull, who sadly died today.

I am deeply saddened by the announcement of his passing. He was an extremely charming and witty man, who I had the good fortune to meet a few times at The National Honey Show where he hosted, together with Bees For Development a fun quiz evening. He was a massive Wycombe Wanderers FC fan and gave a brilliantly entertaining speech at Cameron's graduation from Buckinghamshire New University. And, of course, he was well known for his beekeeping, having written the very funny book “The Bad Beekeepers Book” to whom I think - some days - I should belong!

“Warm, wise, professional and caring.”

Tim Davie -director-general of the BBC wrote: