Hairy-Footed Flower Bee

Temperature today hit 24° and will reach 25° tomorrow. Suddenly it's summer. The Hairy-footed Flower bee has been busy in the rosemary bush. Anthophora plumipes is all black with an exceptionally long tongue and doesn't sit still for a portrait so she is a bit blurry (whereas the rosemary is sharply in focus).

And I just saw the first Himmelblaue Bläuling of the season flitting around the back of the garden. On the downside, this sunny weather brings out Homo cretinicus in great numbers. Next door must sun bathe with a transistor radio that broadcasts, presumably, out of a hole torn in the space time continuum. I kid you not, while I had my tea I heard 'Like a Rhinestone Cowboy' followed by 'Daydream Believer' by the Fab Four - no, not That Fab Four, a much more fabulous foursome - The Monkees.

Swell

Pollinators at work on a male flower (c) and female flower (r)

The recent warm weather has kickstarted the squash. The vines had been rampant and lots of tentative fruiting, but finally some look determined to go through with it.
'Anna Schwartz' Hubbard on the left, 'Black Futsu' moschata (top) and 'Oregon Sweetmeat' (bottom)

Cauld Frosty Morning No.3

The ice was about half an inch thick on the hen's water bowl this morning and the ground is crunchy. The cab driver the other night told us this will be the coldest winter in 100 years. I'm not sure where he gets his information but I'm thinking I might construct a styrofoam surround to help the bees retain warmth throughout. Hmmm, I'll just put the kettle on and give it some more thought...

Bok-kok!

From bottom left clockwise - Miss Brody, Miss Moneypenny, Miss Havisham, Miss Wilberforce and Miss Marple. I'm hoping eggs are just a few weeks away now. Monday I took 7 litres of honey from the bees.

Hydromel...

... as I Made It Weak For the Queen Mother

Take 18 quarts of spring-water, and one quart of honey; when the water is warm, put the honey into it. When it boileth up, skim it very well, and continue skimming it, as long as any scum will rise. Then put in one Race of Ginger (sliced in thin slices), four Cloves, and a little sprig of Rosemary. Let these boil in the Liquor so long, till in all it have boiled one hour. Then set it to cool, till it be blood-warm; and then put to it a spoonful of Ale-yeast. When it is worked up, put it to a vessel of a fit size; and after two or three days, bottle it up. You may drink it after six weeks, or two months.

The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby, Knight, Opened (1699)

We performed a shook swarm Sunday and housed the colony on fresh foundation, leaving two bait combs for the varroa to make their way into. I scraped away a bit of honeycomb and pollen stores for our consumption from around the capped grubs that we had to bin. A little taste of things to come.

Sunny Sixteen Degrees

I peeked in on the bees yesterday. They were very busy foraging and returning with at least three different colours of pollen in their baskets - white, lemon yellow and goldenrod. There is still a fat heavy frame of honey stores and the queen is laying again as I saw both eggs and grubs.
So the colony seems to be in rude health and, hopefully, will expand this spring to full size.

Bee-clothed

More pictures of China's BeeMan contest here.
Our bees have settled in and are very active foraging right now, but it's a small colony and we will probably have to feed them to get their stores sufficiently built up for the winter.

Mud Poultices

After a full season of beelessness, this evening we housed a nucleus in our chicken-loud glade. And I got stung thrice on the head for my trouble. I remember my first ever sting when I was about five and by way of a remedy my mother pressed a spoonful of mud on it - a sort of poultice to draw the poison out. Unfortunately I didn't remember until a long while after I was set upon - too late to find out whether it's effectiveness wasn't largely dependent upon the presence of mother.

A Sticky End

Well, our bees didn't survive the winter after all. They expired sometime between January 17th and the end of February. I suspect their numbers were not great enough to generate the necessary warmth. The queen was not a good layer and it was still quite a small colony in the autumn so I left them all the honey they had made and put in an extra dummy board to decrease the area that they would need to warm. Maybe in a normal winter they would have managed. Anyway, we weren't the only ones. I'm cleaning the hive, putting in fresh brood foundation and getting my name on a list for a swarm.
Meanwhile there is some bee-inspired art to see at the Contemporary Applied Arts. (sample below)

Bzzz

Yesterday I took the stethoscope back to the hive and had a listen and happily there was a lot of buzzuzzing from within. So the cold weather hasn't finished the bees off. And today I saw a bumblebee out and about.


And coincidentally Mike @ Articles & Texticles just sent me this picture of an early beekeeper's hat from RadioGuy's collection. It wouldn't look out of place at the Steampunk exhibition at the Museum of the History of Science that we saw today on an outing to Oxford. (Sydney Padua, who also runs the Natural History of Shelbourne blog created the poster for the exhibit featuring her Babbage & Lovelace comic strip.)

Shook Swarm 2

Today we shook the bees onto fresh frames and foundation, about two weeks later than last year, but then winter seemed to hang about longer this year. The colony looks to be a healthy size but I'll find out if we were successful in about 10 days when I remove the two frames of grubs that we left as bait comb.

Darwin Blogging

We had our own little Darwin 200th birthday celebration last night (it had nothing to do with my birthday being the same day - but I do support the movement to make it a national holiday). There are lots of programmes at BBC which can still be 'listened again' to, at least for a few more days. Also the folks at Agricultural Biodiversity have been busy on the subject.
Meanwhile, the sun shone today, temperatures soared to 8°, and the bees were out flying around. Which saved me the trouble of getting the stethoscope out to check for signs of life after this latest cold spell.
I won't keep a daily tally à la George Orwell, but - three eggs this morning! Two of the chicks we hatched are now laying regularly.

Big Chill

"Farmers are in pain about their turnips, both those on the ground, & those that are stacked under hedges. The frost has lasted now just seven weeks: it began Nov 23."
Gilbert White January 9, 1789
The garden has been frosty now for over 2 weeks, which is more than we've had for the past 10 years put together I think. The ground is crunchy and won't easily let go of the leeks and parsnips. Every morning it is necessary to break the layer of ice off the chicken's water basin and some days it has been almost solid throughout. Over Christmas, I put a thatch around the beehive to help keep the heat within and now can do little more than wring my hands and fret. The MET says it will get warmer tomorrow.

Bring Out Your Dead

On mild days in winter, such as we've just had, the bees have a bit of a clear out. And one mustn't be too alarmed to see a pile of a few hundred dead bodies lying outside the front door of the hive. After all, in mid-summer they die (and are born) at a rate of 1000 a day. They just don't all expire at once. In a heap. In full view.

Good Bees

"In the first edition of my book, I reproduced numerous photographs of all the annual beekeeping activities, including driving bees from a skep, a job that ends in hitting it with sticks. Now it can be seen from these photos that there are bees in the hive in question; that the operators are wearing neither gloves nor a veil; that they have as their sole weapon a modest Bingham smoker; and finally, at the foot of each open hive, there is my dog sitting peacefully, my dear friend Polo, a cocker spaniel with long ears and long hair, ie. it has everything needed for just one bee to create mayhem if it was dissatisfied... Thus, bees are not bad by nature." Abbé Warré

Top Bar Hives

The bees are out and about today enjoying the 12° temperature. Michael @ Articles & Texticles just sent me this link to a TED talk on the plight of the bees. In summary, Mr.vanEngelsdorp would like to encourage anyone with a lawn to turn it into a meadow and then take up beekeeping. Sounds reasonable to me. But I've been reading some more interesting ideas on sustainable beekeeping here and here. Smaller hives, more swarms, and less interference, allowing the possibility for the bees to be able to evolve in a way that they can coexist with varroa - which they have done elsewhere. In India, the grubs emerge from their sealed cell 2 days earlier than ours do, which means that any varroa in the cell with them don't have time enough to reproduce. I will build some small top bar hives this winter following the design developed by Abbé Emile Warré and perhaps have three or four smaller colonies going by the end of next summer. An English translation of his book 'Beekeeping for All' can be downloaded free here (with plans!).

Saint of the Day

"Rain and inclement winds, the mists of the morning, the ambushes laid by a hastening twilight, carry off hundreds of workers who never return; and soon, over the whole little people, that are as eager for sunshine as the grasshoppers of Attica, there hangs the cold menace of winter. They gather in the centre of the hive, contract themselves, and cling to the combs that contain the faithful urns, whence shall issue, during days of frost, the transmuted substance of summer. By the concerted beating of their wings - the little sisters that have survived the flames of the summer sun - which go quickly or slowly as the temperature without may vary, they maintain in their sphere an unchanging warmth, equal to that of a day in spring." (a 35° day, that is!)
The Life of the Bee by Maurice Maeterlinck


Ambrosius - patron saint of beekeepers

Smokers in Whitehall

This week (Wednesday the 5th) British beekeepers are donning their suits, lighting their smokers and marching to the Houses of Parliament to deliver a petition and lobby for more funding for research on bee disease/health. It's been the poorest honey crop on record apparently. Probably since about 1517. Back when England was Catholic, beekeeping was big business due to the demand for beeswax candles and there was plenty of honey to be had, enough to eat and drink. With Reformation, honey took a nosedive on the commodities trading market and soon beer superseded mead as this country's drink of choice.


Just finished racking 3 gallons of mead, another 3 months and it will be ready to bottle. The initial taste test was very encouraging.
In 1600, Harrison wrote in his History of England, "There is a kind of swish swash made also in Essex, and divers other places, with honeycomb and water, which homely country wives putting some pepper among, and a little other spice, call 'mead'. Very good in mine opinion for such as love to be loose-bodied at large, or a little eased of the cough; otherwise it differeth as much from the true metheglin as chalk from cheese."
Here's to being loose-bodied at large!

No More Free Lunch

Days are shortening, beans are drying on the vine and apples are dropping. It is about this time of year that the drones destiny is sealed.
"One morning the long expected word of command goes through the hive; and the peaceful workers turn into judges and executioners. The great idle drones, asleep in unconscious groups on the melliferous walls, are rudely torn from their slumbers by a wrathful army of virgins. They wake, in pious wonder; they cannot believe their eyes; and their astonishment struggles through their sloth as a moonbeam through marshy water. They stare amazedly round them, convinced that they must be victims of some mistake; and the mother-idea of their life being first to assert itself in their dull brain, they take a step towards the vats of honey to seek comfort there. But ended for them are the days of May honey, the wine-flower of lime-trees and fragrant ambrosia of thyme and sage, of marjoram and white clover. Where the path once lay open to the kindly, abundant reservoirs, that so invitingly offered their waxen and sugary mouths, there stands now a burning-bush all alive with poisonous, bristling stings. Before the bewildered parasites are able to realise that the happy laws of the city have crumbled, dragging down in most inconceivable fashion their own plentiful destiny, each one is assailed by three or four envoys of justice; and these vigorously proceed to cut off his wings, saw through the petiole that connects the abdomen with the thorax, amputate the feverish antennae, and seek an opening between the rings of his cuirass through which to pass their sword. No defence is attempted by the enormous, but unarmed, creatures; they try to escape, or oppose their mere bulk to the blows that rain down upon them. Forced on to their back, with their relentless enemies clinging doggedly to them, they will use their powerful claws to shift them from side to side; or, turning on themselves, they will drag the whole group round and round in wild circles, which exhaustion soon brings to an end ... The next morning, before setting forth on their journey, the workers will clear the threshold, strewn with the corpses of the useless giants; and all recollections of the idle race disappear till the following spring."
M.Maeterlinck The Life of the Bee

I've just purloined over 30 pounds (11 litres) of honey from our army of wrathful virgins. The early honey is very light and flowery tasting while this late harvest has a much more complex and, I think, interesting flavour. Let's say, the first goes well in tea and the second is better on toast. As you can see it's much darker as well.

The Birds & The Bees

Green Porno by Isabella Rossellini. More here.