Winter studies: Social organisation of a honeybee colony and worker policing

Posted on January 13, 2013 by Emma Maund

A worker honeybee is patrolling the hive. She walks around the colony watching her sisters clean cells, nurse brood, build comb and fan nectar. She sees drones being pushed aside by returning foragers impatient to unload heavy baskets of pollen. She turns as the queen walks past looking for suitable cells to lay eggs.

Such is the constant activity of the hive that it almost causes her to miss a haphazardly laid egg. Almost. She pauses. The egg lies lopsided along the wall of the cell, not neatly deposited at the bottom. The queen, a precise egg-layer, is never so careless, so the worker climbs in the cell to investigate. Every egg laid by the queen has a signature scent (pheromone) but this egg does not have her mother’s tag – it has been laid by one of her sisters, a rebellious laying worker.

The queen does not need to fear insurrection because her daughters are very efficient at policing themselves. Without hesitation, our worker eats her sister’s egg and if she happens to catch her sister laying more eggs, she will not treat her kindly.

My fourth winter study post discusses the social organisation of the honeybee colony as a well-structured and highly hierarchical community. My post is summarised and illustrated by beautiful infographics created for my blog by designer Keith Whitlock.

The social organisation of the honeybee colony including worker policing.

The honeybee is a eusocial insect, which describes an advanced level of social organisation. The most familiar examples of eusocial insects are bees, ants and wasps, which all belong to the insect order Hymenoptera.

Eusociality is demonstrated by:

colony of overlapping generations from eggs and larvae to young and fully mature adults
caste system that divides labour between reproductive individuals (queen) and sterile individuals (workers)
responsibility for rearing young shared by large numbers of sterile individuals on behalf of the reproductives

The organisation of a honeybee colony revealing a eusocial society is given below:

Now that’s understood, here’s how the bees get organised inside the hive.

The queen
(diploid, fertile reproductive individual)
The queen is the most important bee in the colony. She lays eggs, providing a constant supply of new bees, and produces queen substance to control the workers and keep the colony working together as a cohesive whole.

Egg layer
The queen fulfils the role of egg-layer thanks to the royal jelly that she is continually fed in copious amounts as a young larva, thus ensuring she has fully developed ovaries and is able to mate. It is only the queen who can lay both fertilised eggs (which become female workers or potential new queens) and unfertilised eggs (which become male drones).

The queen mates not long after hatching and lays around 1,500 eggs per day; she may live between 3–5 years. She is not only a prolific egg-layer, she is also precise. With her long abdomen, she carefully deposits one egg, placed neatly in the centre, at the bottom of a cell (fertilised with a single sperm or left unfertilised) and marked by a pheromone so that the workers can recognise eggs laid by the queen.

Queen substance
The queen secretes a substance from her mandibular glands called queen substance – a heady mix of chemicals of which the main component is the pheromone 9-oxodec-2-enoic acid (9-ODA). The queen substance is constantly spread throughout the hive as workers lick the queen and then pass the chemicals to other bees. Queen substance, combined with a pheromone given off by her own brood, inhibits the development of the workers’ ovaries – effectively it acts as a natural contraceptive! It is quite effective as normally only 0.01% of workers can produce full-sized eggs and only 0.1% of drones in a hive are the sons of laying workers.

Queen substance modifies worker behaviour in other ways:

inhibits building of new queen cells
stimulates foraging activities for nectar and pollen
encourages workers to build honeycomb

The pheromone 9-ODA is also released by the queen as a scent to attract male drones during her mating flight.

As the queen gets older her queen substance becomes weaker, and her egg-laying decreases, so that she has less control over her workers. They will eventually build queen cells to replace her.

Workers and worker policing
(diploid, infertile non-reproductive individual)
If you see a honeybee foraging on a flower in spring and summer she is likely to be a female worker. Almost every bee inside the hive is a worker and female.

Workers are the worker caste and carry out all the tasks for the colony. They live for around 40 days in spring and summer and between 5–6 months over autumn and winter.

Development of infertile females
After hatching, all young larvae are fed royal jelly for three days and then put on a diet of brood food, unless specially selected to become queens. Larvae who are continually fed royal jelly become queens with fully developed ovaries and are able to mate. Worker larvae are not fed royal jelly after day three of their development, have under-developed ovaries and are not able to mate. Their ovaries are unlikely to develop as adult bees due to the pheromones given off by the queen substance and the brood.

Worker policing
However, some workers may produce full-size eggs in their ovaries and become laying workers. Their progeny are destined to become drone because they cannot mate and have no sperm to fertilise their eggs.

Laying workers are quite careless. They may lay more than one egg per cell and because their abdomens are shorter than the queen’s the eggs are often laid haphazardly against the cell wall. They do not differentiate between worker-sized and drone-sized cells, laying drone eggs in worker-sized cells that hatch as drones with stunted growth.

Most importantly, worker-laid eggs are not marked by the queen’s pheromone, which helps other workers to police their illegal egg-laying activities. Worker-laid eggs are usually removed from cells and eaten by other workers (a practice known as oophagy).

Drones
(haploid, fertile reproductive individual)
Drones are the male bees of the colony and it is thought that their only role is to mate with virgin queens. A drone hatches from an unfertilised egg and inherits one set of chromosomes from his mother, the queen; for this reason, a queen cannot mate with drones from her own colony due to the risks of inbreeding.

Drones that mate with a virgin queen on her mating flight will die in the act, and drones that don’t mate but live to the end of the summer will eventually outlive their usefulness to the colony and be evicted by their sisters.

Drones do no work inside the hive, although beekeepers have observed in spring and summer that colonies with fewer drones can be bad tempered. Perhaps drones fulfil another purpose not yet discovered.

I’m looking forward to exploring the next item on the syllabus – dancing bees!

Related links

Visit my blog index for more winter study posts.

A great revision post from Emily Heath of Adventures in Beeland: 4th Honeybee behaviour revision post: social organisation of the colony

Mid Buck Beekeepers Association Blog’s excellent revision notes for BBKA module 6

Recommended reading

Celia F Davis. The Honey Bee Inside Out. Bee Craft Ltd, ISBN-10: 0900147075
Ted Hooper. Guide to Bees and Honey. Northern Bee Books, ISBN-10: 1904846513

Winter watch for bees

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Emma Maund

‘Do they ever do any beekeeping at this cafe?’ asked someone while we sat around the apiary table on Saturday afternoon. The first weekend after new year and Ealing’s beekeepers had made no resolutions to give up tea and cake.

Luckily, Pat had brought something to show why bees need keeping in winter – a feeder tray with a hole bored in the side of the wood by a woodpecker. Woodpecker damage to bee hives is not common in West London, but this case of break-and-entry shows why we should keep watch. The woodpecker had attacked Pat’s hive at Osterley first by boring a hole into the top of the feeder tray, where it wouldn’t have found anything interesting, next drilling the wood below before getting fed up or disturbed and flying off. ‘It must have been very disappointed,’ said Pat.

Bee larvae can make tasty treats for hungry woodpeckers in cold weather, and maybe bees too, while causing considerable damage to the brood nest. However, Ted Hooper says that woodpecker damage to bee hives is a learned behaviour:

‘Woodpeckers learn that they can find a good meal in a beehive much in the way that bluetits learn to open milk bottles for the cream. You may keep bees in an apiary for years with lots of green woodpeckers about without any damage and then suddenly they learn the trick and through the hive wall they go, leaving behind a dead colony and several 3 inch holes. Whether all the damage is done by the woodpeckers or whether rats finish the job off I am not sure, but I have seen brood chambers in which the frames have been turned into a pile of wooden splinters, no piece being larger than a match. Covering the hive with wire netting or fish netting before the first frosts is the usual remedy.’
Ted Hooper. Guide to Bees and Honey.

The chicken wire is on order for the Osterley hives.

EDIT: Pat kindly let me use this photo of his hive at Osterley now safely protected by wire netting. He advises using chicken wire wrapped around the whole hive to keep woodpeckers off and to ‘make sure there’s a good clearance all the way round so they can’t peck through it’.

Image © Pat Turner

A walk around our apiary showed that the woodpeckers haven’t learned about the delicious morsels inside our hives – yet.

I carried out a few other winter checks including:

hefting the hive to check the weight of stores – it’s heavy
lifting the roof to look at the fondant – the bees are tucking in greedily and the hole in the fondant (a ‘window’ into the winter hive) suggests the cluster inside is loose
observing the entrance – foragers are flying home with bright yellow pollen suggesting that the queen has started laying.

Overall, the signs indicate that our bees are well and active, perhaps because of the mild weather, although in January they should be conserving energy. All that flying means eating a lot of honey, but at this time of year there won’t be much nectar about to replace it. We’ll need to keep a close eye on the hive’s weight and amount of fondant between now and spring.

I went back to the apiary table to report my findings. John agreed: ‘It’s much easier to get a hive through a very cold winter than a mild one, because they don’t fly about as much.’ I asked where the bees might be finding the yellow pollen and Pat thought it was from mahonia. There wasn’t much else to be done except have another cup of tea and try Cliff’s culinary invention – the ‘pake’.

It’s a mix between a cake and a pie, explained Cliff. ‘The top half is a raspberry muffin and the bottom half is a mince pie.’ I wasn’t entirely convinced but the men beekeepers were thrilled to find the mince pie half-way inside. A pake was left on the table for the apiary’s family of robins who swooped down as we left. Hopefully, it will satisfy any peckish woodpeckers too.

Rain or shine, the otters like it fine

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Emma Maund

With the passing of the winter solstice and the lengthening of days, the bees are too busy preparing for spring for us to visit. Otters, on the other hand, are always happy to entertain their guests.

WWT London Wetland Centre is a popular nature reserve close to the heart of the city and described as a ‘haven for birds, wildlife and people’. Considering how close I live to the reserve it was the ideal place to enjoy a day out with my mum and walk-off recent over-indulgences.

It was a cold, grey Sunday with rain threatening in every cloud, but there was plenty of winter wildlife to see. The courtyard’s main glass observatory offered incredible views of the reedy lake, with ducks, geese and wading birds, against the misty, yet familiar, skyline of the BT Tower, London Eye and the Shard.

After bird watching – my mum’s a bit of a twitcher – and a walk around the lagoons, we went to see the otters being fed.

The wetland is home to a family of Asian short-clawed otters who live in a specially designed holt where visitors can watch them swim, play and feed. In the wild, Asian otters are threatened by habitat loss and hunting, so this family is part of a breeding and conservation programme. Why not the European otter? The keeper explained that the Asian otter provides better opportunities for observation and entertainment. ‘We know from experience that the Asian short-clawed otter exhibits well, whereas the European ones tend to be more solitary, more shy. If we had six or seven European otters, they would probably be at the back, drinking wine.’

The otters were fun to watch, but I’m not sure that they found us very entertaining. When they realised we didn’t have any food, they soon grew bored of us.

The sleepy otters yawned and dipped their tails in water until the keeper arrived for the daily feed. They watched him with intent as he entered the holt and chased him across the rocks till he stopped to throw pieces of meat.

What followed can only be described as an otter feeding frenzy. With tiger-like teeth, they easily tore and ripped apart chunks of meat, gulping and swallowing greedily.

While the otters enjoyed their meal, the keeper apologised to the crowd for making a quick exit. ‘They only tolerate me when I have food, but once they know it’s gone then my ankle might look tasty,’ he explained. ‘Not that I’m scared or anything’ as he cautiously backed away from the pool. As if on cue, the otters paused tearing chunks of meat to watch his hasty retreat behind the trees at the top of the holt. They looked at each other with narrowly slit eyes, then ran across the rocks and up the hill to cut him off. There was a commotion in the bushes, but to everyone’s relief the keeper ran out with both his ankles.

These otters will eat almost anything, apparently, which made me think that this morehen was braver than the keeper as he waded in their pool.

The otters were not the only wildlife devising plans. I saw this plotting pigeon sitting on a bridge, until he caught me watching and purposefully looked like a pigeon again.

The ducks and geese were more relaxed and happily enjoying swimming in the lagoons as the rain began to fall. I’m not sure what type of duck this green-eyed beauty is, but the exotic-looking goose is Egyptian.

At 3pm it was the bird feed with the warden. So we watched as the geese eagerly waddled up and the children threw feed in the water. By this time we were getting cold so it was time to leave, but I look forward to returning in spring to see more wetland wildlife including slow worms, dragonflies and bats.

I really recommend a visit to WWT London Wetland Centre. Rain, wind or shine – the animals don’t mind. There is lots to see in all seasons, although for me the highlight was the otter feed.

A very Happy New Year everyone and may 2013 bring luck, love, prosperity and good fortune!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Related links

WWT London Wetland Centre
Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT)
Nothing hotter than an otter – Emily Heath of Adventures in Beeland writes about her visit to WWT London Wetland Centre
ZSL London Zoo ‘Keeper for a Day’: dreams do come true – my favourite animal adventure of 2012, being a zoo keeper at London Zoo for the day

Merry Christmas Queen Myrtle and her bees!

Posted on December 22, 2012 by Emma Maund

Not to be outdone by the elder beekeepers reading books to bees, this afternoon Emily and I made sure our hive was the most festive at the apiary. A Christmas card to ‘Queen Myrtle and bees’ was also slipped under the roof.

However, if it sounds like we were having too much fun, there was some proper beekeeping to be done: giving the bees oxalic acid.

Oxalic acid is a winter treatment for bees. Above, you can see Pat treating his hive with Emily looking on.

Oxalic acid burns the feet and tongues of varroa mites so they fall off bees. The treatment is particularly effective in winter when the mites are living on adult bees, because there is little or no capped brood for them to hide inside.

Our apiary uses a pre-mixed solution of 3% oxalic acid in sugar syrup and about 5ml is dribbled on each ‘seam of bees’, that is the gap between each frame which has bees. It is important to get the dosage right as over-dosing may be harmful. Last year I took this video of Giving the bees oxalic acid.

The British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) has a good advisory leaflet on oxalic acid. Not all beekeepers like to use this treatment for a number of reasons, such as: it is not ‘natural’ (although oxalic acid is a naturally occurring substance; although cyanide is naturally occurring too, so this might not say much!); accumulative effects of annual treatments may harm the queen (I haven’t read enough to know if this is a risk); it may harm the bees (the winter workers will die in spring to be replaced by new bees so its effects on the colony may not be long-lasting). I think it is advisable to treat hives in an apiary environment in a city, because disease may spread more easily.

After a challenging year for our bees, it was great to see them alive and well for their midwinter oxalic acid ‘gift’. When we lifted the roof they were happily tucking into the bag of sugar fondant, although the hive is quite heavy with honey stores. They should be tightly clustered inside the hive, but today was quite mild and the cluster had become loose.

Above, Emily treats our bees with oxalic acid. They were much better behaved than last year and didn’t make much fuss. Myrtle must be a gentle-natured queen.

There was a small crowd led by Pat and John to treat all the hives at the apiary and after all that hard work it was time for tea with homemade mince pies and a generous-sized apple pie! There was also honey mead so the banter was quite lively. Yet another exposé on what Ealing beekeepers really get up to!

Soon it will be January and we will be looking for the first signs of spring when we can see our bees again. Merry Christmas everyone from Queen Myrtle and her bees!

Winter studies: A honeybee year

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Emma Maund

In this winter study post, I look at the honeybee colony throughout the seasons.

Winter to spring
In winter when the days are short and the nights are long, frost bites the air and snow covers the ground, the bees cluster together inside the hive to stay warm. As outside temperatures reach around 18°C the bees begin to huddle and as temperatures continue to fall the colony forms a small, tight ball around the queen. She may have stopped egg-laying completely, but there are still tasks for her workers in a broodless hive.

At the centre of the broodless cluster the bees vibrate their flight muscles to maintain a core temperature of around 21–24°C, while the outer edges are insulated by a layer of resting bees. The bees at the centre of the cluster take turns in changing places with the bees at the edges of the cluster, so everyone has a chance to stay warm! However, many bees will freeze to death during the coldest months of winter; 8°C is thought to be the lower lethal temperature at which a bee will die. Occasionally, on a clear, mild day, the bees will venture outside on a ‘cleansing flight’ to avoid defaecating inside the hive.

The bees tuck into their honey stores, because generating all that heat requires a lot of energy. ‘During the winter a colony will use an average of about 1kg per week just for heat production. (So do not skimp on feeding!)’ says Celia F Davis, The Honey Bee Inside Out.

The population of the overwintering colony is around 10–15,000 worker honeybees and the queen. In late January, as daylight hours increase, the queen begins egg-laying again and the workers raise the temperature for rearing the brood to about 34°C.

Spring to summer
The days grow longer and warmer and the plants begin to flower bringing nectar and pollen. The queen’s egg-laying depends on how much she is fed, so as the weather improves and more forage becomes available, particularly pollen for brood, the queen will lay more eggs. It may be as soon as late February or early March that honeybees are seen flying home laden with baskets of pollen to feed the spring brood.

This is a perilous time for bees. The old, overwintered workers are dying off as brood is increasing and new bees are hatching, but their winter stores are now very low. The colony relies heavily on fair weather to forage to feed the growing number of hungry mouths. Between January and March is when many colonies are most likely to die and beekeepers should keep careful watch.

As spring moves into early summer the queen may lay more than 1,500 eggs a day, including drones to mate with virgin queens. A healthy, well-fed colony should grow from strength to strength and vary from 30,000 to 40,000 individuals at the height of the season. The colony continues to build up from May to June, which is usually the swarming season, although they may swarm earlier or later than this.

The workers put the queen on a diet to make sure that she is light and slim enough to fly – as a result, her egg-laying drops a week or two before the swarm. Swarming causes the population of the colony to fall by about a half and this combined with the break in brood both before and after the swarm, while waiting for a new queen to mate, means that the remaining population must work hard to build up numbers and stores again.

Summer to autumn
The longest day of the year has passed and daylight hours grow shorter and cooler. The queen’s egg-laying slows, less brood is produced, fewer bees hatch and the shorter-lived summer workers are dying off. The colony is becoming much smaller in size.

Foragers can be seen bringing home red-jewelled propolis on their legs. This sticky, resinous substance exuded by trees is used to disinfect and insulate the hive as the colony prepares to overwinter. In early autumn, the drones, having served their purpose throughout spring and summer to mate with virgin queens, are evicted by their sisters who do not want to feed them in winter. The bees that hatch in autumn will live for almost six months surviving on summer stores.

The seasons turn full circle as temperatures begin to drop and the colony clusters together waiting for spring to return.

Related links

Visit my blog index for more winter study posts.

A great revision post from Emily Heath of Adventures in Beeland: 3rd Honeybee behaviour revision posts: the queen’s egg laying behaviour & seasonal variations in the size of a colony

Mid Buck Beekeepers Association Blog’s excellent revision notes for BBKA module 6

Recommended reading

Celia F Davis. The Honey Bee Inside Out. Bee Craft Ltd, ISBN-10: 0900147075
Ted Hooper. Guide to Bees and Honey. Northern Bee Books, ISBN-10: 1904846513

An Ealing beekeeper at Thanksgiving in Wake Forest, North Carolina

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Emma Maund

The last of autumn’s leaves fell as my plane departed London Heathrow leaving behind grey skies and rain. Sunshine and blue skies awaited my arrival at Raleigh Durham.

Welcome to fall in North Carolina where forests splash the landscape with dramatic oranges and reds, and dazzling mirror-like lakes reflect the vibrant colours of turning trees.

Last month I was invited to Thanksgiving by good friends, Alison and Rick, who live in Wake Forest in Wake County, located north of Raleigh, the state capital of North Carolina. Wake Forest is a beautiful, historic town surrounded by forests, woods, meadows and lakes. The climate is subtropical with hot, humid summers, mild winters (relatively) and boasting temperatures of around 20°C in spring and autumn. I felt that the days were warm and the nights were frosty; my friends ‘reckoned’ it was ‘so cold it was gonna snow’.

I was lucky to stay at Ali and Rick’s beautiful home and to explore the surrounding woods and forests. I set myself the challenge of keeping my camera on manual mode for the entire trip to capture the incredible range of colours, textures and lights of North Carolina.

As well as its human inhabitants, Wake Forest is home to many forest animals including squirrels, deer, coyotes and a wide variety of birds; the mountainous region of North Carolina even has bears! The red cardinal, the official state bird, was a frequent visitor to the bird table. I found that forest wildlife was less bold than London’s urban wildlife and rather shy of having their picture taken!

I was also excited to see red squirrels, which I’ve never seen in London!

The clearings in the woods behind the house, where we took the dogs for walks, were heavily populated by stripy, stingy insects that Ali called ‘bees’.

… but closer inspection revealed that they were wasps. I wasn’t entirely sure, but one photo tweeted later confirmed that they were yellow jackets, the common name in North America for a predatory and temperamental wasp. Poor bees, falsely accused!

We also came across lots of lovely pine cones in the woods, perfect fuel for beekeeping smokers.

While I didn’t spot a bee, it wasn’t long until I met a beekeeper.

A meeting of beekeepers

Ali suggested a visit to the North Carolina State Farmers Market where I spotted the beekeeper’s stall almost immediately!

Here I met Berry the Beeman, a crop pollinator and beekeeper of Bee Blessed Pure Honey. Berry teaches children about bees and was happy to share stories about his hives. He likes to keep some Carniolan colonies, because they are gentle in nature, and he often gets Kona queens from Hawaii, because they breed fast and are, apparently, very big bees! (He may have been pulling my leg.) My hive partner, Emily, and I prefer big queen bees because they are much easier to spot on the frame!

Berry invited Ali and me to sample his honey crop. The clary sage honey was mildly floral and delicately textured, while the basswood was powerful and tangy with complex layers. ‘As you know, no two honeys should taste the same,’ said Berry, who told us that clary sage and clover have replaced the tobacco fields as major forage for honeybees in North Carolina. I would like to have tasted tobacco honey!

The Beeman, who reminded me of Ealing’s beekeepers, would have been at home sitting at the apiary table drinking tea and eating cake on a Saturday afternoon, so I told him a little bit about our association. When I mentioned that John Chapple, a mentor to many new beekeepers, often tastes interesting and exotic varieties of honeys on his travels, Berry said he should try the basswood honey; Ali excitedly threw in ‘He is the queen’s beekeeper!’

I bought three jars of honey for John, Andy and Pat, who always help Emily, me and others with our hives; you can see what they thought in the epilogue to this post. Berry’s stall was very popular, so after buying my honey and asking for a photo we moved on to look at the Christmas trees.

Guess who’s coming to dinner?

Thanksgiving was an amazing affair – I have never seen so much food even at Christmas! Traditionally a harvest festival, Thanksgiving is now celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in America; being English this was my first Thanksgiving Dinner. Rick is an excellent cook who made sure that I got the best experience of this American holiday. Turkey, bacon, stuffing, mashed potato, sweet potato and marshmallows, squash, cous cous, jello, green bean casserole, three kinds of dessert… they would have to roll me back on the plane to England!

All that eating, drinking and being thankful was followed by more forest trails to walk off the Girl Scout cookies Thin Mints.

My last two days in North Carolina were spent exploring historic Wake Forest downtown where it seems that the British had been before.

As everyone knows, an Ealing beekeeper is 80% tea and 20% cake so a cuppa in The Olde English Tea Room was obligatory. It was lovely inside – like a cosy tea room in the West Country, except that the cucumber sandwiches and lavender tea were much nicer! The atmosphere was warm and friendly, I love those southern accents!

The antebellum southern architecture of downtown was reminiscent of sprawling plantation properties and ranch-style houses with beautiful wood panelling, gabled roofs and huge balconies. I also liked the random planting of ornamental cabbages in flower beds – very accommodating for friendly neighbourhood insect pollinators. Local councils in London could take note!

Rain clouds loomed on the morning before my flight back to London and provided the perfect photographic backdrop for my tour of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Cobalt blue skies and bright sunshine are beautiful, but not always the best conditions for taking photos. Overcast conditions provide interesting contrasts and hues.

The Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary was established in 1950 on the campus of Wake Forest University. The campus and college buildings have an older history dating back to the 1800s, and tours of the picturesque grounds are available on Tuesday and Friday mornings. I am always fascinated to find out the history, culture and architecture of the places that I visit. My tour was led by Josh who told me all about the tobacco fields that once grew in Wake Forest, the migration of the original college to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and the inception of the seminary, which has an impressive international programme. I was rather envious of his travels.

Like everywhere in Wake Forest, the seminary was very friendly and, after my tour, I was free to explore the grounds and take photos of the elegant buildings, pretty gardens and a gnarly, twisted, old tree that I found particularly interesting!

All too soon it was time to say farewell to Wake Forest and to the new friends that I had made there. The warmth of days was matched only by the southern hospitality and the charm of the people of North Carolina. I look forward to when I can return.

A huge thank you to Ali and Rick who welcomed me into their home and to their friends, Lydia, Heather, Carol, Jen and Mickey who made me feel like part of the family.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Epilogue

Back in Blighty, I am no longer worried about crossing the road, but everything looks smaller. Gazing out of my window at the Royal College of Physicians, the trees in Regent’s Park look like saplings compared to the tall pines and oaks of Wake Forest. It is also so cold that it has actually snowed.

At the apiary everyone was interested to hear about my trip to the States over a pot of tea and Emily’s homemade chocolate cake. I gave John, Andy and Pat their Bee Blessed Pure Honey, and John and Pat wasted no time tucking in.

(L-R) Who needs spoons? Pat and John tuck in to alfalfa and basswood honeys from Berry the Beeman, North Carolina.

My Facebook album of Thanksgiving in Wake Forest, North Carolina, is available to view here.

Related links

Wake Forest, North Carolina

North Carolina State Farmers Market

Bee Blessed Pure Honey.

Berry the Beeman

The Olde English Tea Room

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

No incidental music please, say the squirrels

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Emma Maund

Before going on holiday to North Carolina, my options were to leave incidental music playing on my blog or a time-release post about squirrels. I chose squirrels.

So here’s an exposé of the infamous squirrel mafia at Regent’s Park. Enjoy!

A generous passerby looks for a biscuit in her bag to feed a hungry squirrel.

She is too slow for the squirrel who decides that he will do a better job of looking for himself.

Mission accomplished.

Here’s my beautiful, kind friend Helen. Also foolish and unsuspecting – not realising she is being set up…

…for a squirrel ambush!

You wanna piece of me?

As naughty as they are, I was having a lot of fun taking pictures of squirrels until they called in the paparazzi police…

‘No photo!’

This cheeky squirrel even had time to stick out his tongue before making a quick getaway.

Not all wildlife in Regent’s Park is shy about being papped. Apologies to my friend, Danielle, if she is reading this post, for the pigeon…

Magpie, squirrel and… ‘Don’t forget me!’, says the pigeon.

There were a lot more squirrel photos too, but I was feeling quite unwell at the time of preparing this incidental piece. So for more squirrel shenanigans do check out this fun post at Garden Walk, Garden Talk: Shock and Awe – Squirrel Style. And happily, as you read this, I’ll be curled in a comfy armchair beside a log fire in North Carolina, still sleeping off Thanksgiving Dinner!

Winter studies: The life of the queen

Posted on November 18, 2012 by Emma Maund

This winter study post is based on BBKA module 6 honeybee behaviour syllabus items 6.2 and 6.3, which follow the life of the queen. I’m not taking the exams though they make for fascinating reading. First, a video with dazzling nature photography, ‘More than honey’, by Academy Award-nominated director Markus Imhoof takes a global examination of endangered honeybees. Here, he follows the mating behaviour of the queen and the drones.

6.2 The mating behaviour of the honeybee queen and drone including an account of the pheromones involved and the concept of drone congregational areas.

On a warm, sunny day in spring a swarm of honeybees fly away from the hive with the queen and leave behind a virgin queen to emerge from her cell. The virgin is fully sexually mature within a few days and she must mate within the next three to four weeks if she is to fulfil her duties to the hive. Her sisters, daughters of the old queen, initially ignore her, but as time passes the workers hassle her to take her mating flight. So on another warm, sunny day the virgin queen leaves the hive.

In a neighbouring hive, a big bug-eyed, fat-bottomed drone hatches from his cell. He spends his early days being fed and taking short flights. He doesn’t mature until around 12–14 days old – when the urge takes him to join his brothers and drones from the surrounding apiaries in a flight to a drone congregation area.

The drones travel to the same spot each year – an area that is about 100m away from their apiaries where they swarm around 10–40m above the ground. They take routes known as flyways that can reach 21m above the ground. How the newly hatched drones, and the virgin queens, find the same location to mate every year is a mystery. The older drones do not survive the season to tell the younger drones their secret!

The queen does not mate with drones from her own colony due to problems caused by inbreeding. She flies to a drone congregation area, although how she finds it is a mystery – her mother does not show her the way!

Here the drones congregate noisily in the middle of the day waiting for the virgin queens. Our young queen arrives and flies higher and higher until she reaches the ‘drone layer’. Her mandibular glands release an intoxicating scent (the pheromone 9 oxydecenoic acid) which is irresistible to the drones. They form a comet tail behind the queen and chase her through the air.

Our drone is the strongest and fastest. He catches the queen with his six legs hovering above her abdomen and inserts his endophallus inside her open sting chamber, which causes him to become paralysed and flip backwards as he ejaculates. The endophallus breaks off and he falls to the ground mortally wounded. The queen continues on her flight with the drone’s endophallus, now called the ‘mating sign’, plugging the semen inside her abdomen. She will mate with 15–20 drones from different hives to her own. Each drone who mates with her will first remove the ‘mating sign’ and then insert his own endophallus before meeting the same fate as his predecessor.

That done, the newly mated queen returns to the hive. She may take several more mating flights and mate with up to 40 drones, but after her task is accomplished she will start laying eggs within a few days.

The queen produces a scent (queen substance) that causes the workers to turn to face and attend her as she walks through the hive.

The workers are now very attentive to their new queen. She produces a scent that causes them to turn and face her as she passes. It is a wave effect that ripples through the colony creating a constant ring of workers to surround her wherever she passes – her ‘retinue’.

6.3 The queen honeybee’s egg-laying behaviour and its relationship to changing circumstances in the hive and external factors relating to climate and season.

The queen spends her days inside the hive laying around 1,500 eggs a day and taking short breaks of around 5 or 10 minutes. She will not leave the hive again unless it is to swarm like her mother.

She is very picky about the cells in which she chooses to lay an egg. First she will inspect the cell and peer closely inside to ensure it has been cleaned to her satisfaction. Then she will walk past the cell to look at other cells, before making up her mind and walking back to lay an egg in the first cell.

That decided, she sticks her bottom in the cell, produces a sticky substance to keep the egg in place and lays an egg. The egg is deposited standing upright at the bottom centre of the cell. She is very precise and lays each egg in exactly the same way, so it is easy to identify eggs that are laid by the queen and eggs that are produced by a rebellious laying worker who will lay one or more eggs along the cell wall.

The queen stores eggs and sperm separately in her abdomen and controls the release of sperm by opening and closing a small valve. The sperm from her mating flights is kept alive throughout her lifetime by the protein that she eats.

The egg that she has just laid is destined to become a female worker, so she deposits a single sperm on the egg to fertilise it. If the egg was destined to become a male drone she would leave it unfertilised.

The queen spends her days window-shopping for cells that meet her satisfaction to lay eggs.

Who decides whether the queen lays worker or drone? The workers build differently sized cells for worker and drone brood: small cells for workers and large cells for drones; larger still are the peanut-shaped cells made for new queens. The queen uses her front legs to measure the size of the cell before laying an egg – if it is a worker-size cell then she will lay an egg and fertilise it to become a worker. So it seems that the workers decide the demographics, in terms of gender and size, of the population. This is part of an ongoing debate in beekeeping: who rules the hive – the queen or the workers?

While the colony cannot survive without a queen to lay eggs, her egg-laying behaviour is often determined by her workers. For example, if the colony decides that it is time to swarm then the workers will starve the queen, which reduces her egg laying, to make her small and light enough to fly with them to a new home.

The queen’s egg laying is also seasonal and dependent on the weather. When the days grow warm in spring, her egg laying increases as the colony grows in size and she is well fed. In poor weather or when food is scarce, her egg laying decreases as she is fed less food. As the year turns into autumn, her egg laying decreases to ensure a smaller-sized colony for overwintering.

A queen cell nurturing a new queen who will eventually replace the old queen of the hive.

Our queen lives for around three years though she could live up to five years. In her second year she swarms, like her mother, to establish a new home and leaves behind virgin daughters to claim her old throne. However, her egg laying naturally decreases with each year of her life, as does her queen substance, the pheromone that she produces to control the colony. One day the workers choose a worker egg to become a new queen by building a queen cell around it and feeding the young larva highly nutritious royal jelly. Thus the old queen is succeeded by a young rival in a process called supersedure.

Visit my blog index for more winter study posts.

Mid Buck Beekeepers Association Blog’s excellent revision notes for BBKA module 6

Recommended reading
Celia F Davis. The Honey Bee Inside Out. Bee Craft Ltd, ISBN-10: 0900147075
Ted Hooper. Guide to Bees and Honey. Northern Bee Books, ISBN-10: 1904846513

Winter studies: The role of the worker bee

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Emma Maund

What is a beekeeper to do when there are no bees to keep? Read about bees for winter studies, of course!

After passing my basic assessment with the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) earlier this year, I was eager to learn more about bees and beekeeping. The syllabus of the BBKA examinations and practical assessments provide a framework to learn whether taking the exams or not (I’m not). In my first winter studies post, I’m looking at the BBKA module 6 honeybee behaviour syllabus: item 6.1.

6.1 The function and behaviour of the worker honeybee throughout its life including the types of work done, duration of work periods under normal circumstances and the variations in behaviour due to seasonal changes in the state of the colony.

Days 1–3
A worker bee is ready to hatch. She is one of thousands of honeybees who will hatch that day and emerge to see the hive for the first time. She chews away the wax capping of her cell and struggles to push herself out as her older sisters trample over her head. She is lighter and fuzzier than the adult workers, but her soft hairs will soon get worn off working in the hive.

Her first job is to clean the cell she was born in. That done, she is hungry for protein-rich pollen, which she must eat to develop her hypopharyngeal and mandibular glands (to produce brood food and royal jelly) and her wax glands (to build comb).

She’ll spend her early days eating lots of pollen, cleaning cells, and sitting on brood to keep it warm.

The worker bee spends her first two to three days eating pollen and cleaning cells, and sometimes sitting on brood to keep it warm. By day four she is sent to work in the food-processing factory and builds comb, turns nectar into honey and head butts pollen into cells.

Days 4–6
Our young worker has become a nurse bee with fully developed hypopharyngeal and mandibular glands. Her brood-rearing duties include feeding brood food to young larvae and honey and pollen to older larvae. If the colony should decide to make a new queen (to supercede the old queen or to swarm) then she will feed royal jelly to the larvae specially chosen to become queens.

Days 10–12
Her wax glands have started to produce wax, so she moves from the nursery to the food-processing factory. She builds waxy honeycomb, turns nectar into honey and packs pollen into cells, and helps maintain the temperature of the hive by fanning her wings. She will even undertake removing dead bodies, and other waste or debris, from the hive.

But it is not all work and no play. The worker often spends a lot of her time resting or walking (patrolling) around the hive. A pool of resting bees is necessary should the circumstances of the colony suddenly change and a number of bees become needed for a particular task.

Worker bees often spend a lot of time doing nothing at all! They rest or walk (patrol) around the hive, or just try to out-stare their keepers.

While many of her duties depend on glandular development – building wax comb (wax glands) and guard duty (sting gland) – she is a flexible worker and can change jobs when needed. For example, if the colony has recently swarmed she may revert to a nurse bee to help rear new brood. The worker’s life is only loosely structured by the roles accorded by her chronological age, in reality she will work according to the needs of the colony.

Days 16–20
Her hypopharyngeal gland is now shrinking and starting to produce the enzymes needed for honey production: invertase and glucose oxidase. Soon she will become a forager and her world will become much bigger. As a young house (indoor) bee, she will have taken short flights to orientate herself with the environment outside the hive.

Days 19–21
Our worker is living on the edges of the brood nest. Her sting gland is fully developed around 21 days old and produces venom as well as sting pheromones (isopentyl acetate) and alarm pheromones (2-heptanone). She is now able to guard the colony. She also fans at the entrance to help ventilate the hive and occasionally stretches her wings on longer orientation flights.

Worker bees are sometimes found clustered at the entrance and fanning, like these bees that we found at the entrance of the hive on a cold, rainy day. Fanning their wings helps to ventilate and maintain the temperature of the hive.

Days 20+
Our worker is now a forager. She spends her days flying to trees and flowers collecting nectar, pollen, propolis and water for the hive. When she returns home, she dances for her sisters to tell them the best places to go.

In spring and summer workers live between 6–7 weeks: her life is cut short by her foraging activities as she works herself to death collecting food and water for the colony. Her flight muscles are fuelled by the glycogen reserves that she built up as a young worker, but as an adult worker she cannot replenish these stores. Her wings have limited flight miles of around 800km and once she has flown this mileage (whether over 5 or 20 days) she will fall to the ground and die.

The worker bee will grow weary on her last foraging flight. Her tired wings will fail her and she will rest and become cold. One evening I saw this bee stumbling on the echinacea in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, and by morning she was frozen on the ground.

It happens one day in late summer while foraging in a plentiful bed of echinacea. Her baskets of pollen are too heavy for her worn and tattered wings. She tries to lift herself but she is too tired, so she rests. Night falls as the weary forager sits patiently on the echinacea and away from the warmth of her sisters huddling in the hive. By morning she is cold and slow but the rising sun encourages her to try again. She has precious loads of nectar and pollen to return to the hive and her dances will tell her sisters where to find this abundant crop. She weakly staggers forward and tumbles off the echinacea on to the ground.

Day 0
Our worker dies far away from the hive and, unlike her birth, entirely alone. By clever design of nature, she serves the colony even in death by dying on a foraging flight. Her sisters will not need to expend time and energy dragging her body out of the hive.

Inside the hive another worker has chewed away the wax capping of her cell and caught the first glance of her sisters. She pushes herself out and starts to clean her cell. Her life as an autumn and winter bee will be very different to the summer worker.

Autumn and winter worker honeybees
The colony is preparing for winter: the drones are being evicted and the queen is laying fewer eggs. The young worker will produce little or no brood food and the pollen that she eats will make her body stronger and extend her life. She may take a few short orientation flights or the occasional ‘cleansing flight’, but she will not need to forage. She will live for around four to six months eating the honey and pollen collected by her summer sisters. In winter she will join the workers in a cluster around the queen, shivering her wings to help the colony to stay warm until spring returns.

Related links
BBKA examination path and BBKA modules application forms and syllabus to download
Before sitting for BBKA examinations, beekeepers must pass the basic assessment. Here’s my post of Taking the BBKA basic assessment on a rainy Sunday afternoon
A great revision post from Emily Heath of Adventures in Beeland: 1st Honeybee behaviour revision post: bee jobs
Mid Buck Beekeepers Association Blog’s excellent revision notes for BBKA module 6

Recommended reading
Celia F Davis. The Honey Bee Inside Out. Bee Craft Ltd, ISBN-10: 0900147075
Ted Hooper. Guide to Bees and Honey. Northern Bee Books, ISBN-10: 1904846513

A study of autumn colours and lights in Regent’s Park

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Emma Maund

The sun is playful in October. It races across the sky low and bright catching fire to vibrant colours, then hides behind mists and raindrops teasing the day with soft light and vivid tones.

Autumn is a fleeting time of year and so I have enjoyed lunch time walks in Regent’s Park, which has been the perfect canvas for the tantalising display of colour and light.

The days started with golden sunshine, leaves on fire and sparkling fountains…

Gloomy clouds arrived bringing overcast light and saturated autumn colours…

Then the mists fell upon wet leaves capturing spectacular hues, waterfalls and reflections…

Light played with raindrops in the dying rose garden and mists wreathed fading flowers…

I hope you are enjoying autumn as much as I have been!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Related links

If you would like to visit or find out more about Regent’s Park, visit the website of the royal parks.

Autumn colour: The science of nature’s spectacle is a great video from the BBC that explains how the ‘elements have conspired to give us a particularly spectacular display of autumn colour’.

Check out this post of beautiful fall photos by Donna: Autumn Kalaidescope.

Mrs Apis Mellifera

adventures of an aromatherapy beekeeper

Winter watch for bees

Rain or shine, the otters like it fine

Merry Christmas Queen Myrtle and her bees!

Winter studies: A honeybee year

An Ealing beekeeper at Thanksgiving in Wake Forest, North Carolina

No incidental music please, say the squirrels

Winter studies: The life of the queen

Winter studies: The role of the worker bee

A study of autumn colours and lights in Regent’s Park

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: