The package bees I purchased did not have the queen I originally ordered due to poor weather conditions and shortages. The supplier was ‘forced’ to import Italian queens from Australia. So instead of the dark bees I wanted my first hive was populated by golden Italian bees (they look a little like wasps to the untrained eye). The swarm I caught for my second hive consisted of Italian mongrels slightly darker but still quite clearly of Italian origin.

I always wanted to keep the North European (British) dark bee apis mellifera mellifera. So I broke my own rule, (Hypocrite!)  And purchased two imported Apis Mellifera Mellifera (AMM) queens from Bickerstaffs, who have just recently started breeding Apis M M at their  bee farm in Greece.

The new queens arrived safe and sound in the post. They were in plastic shipping /introduction cages with about five attendants each. I put them in a cool dark place and left them in peace.

I had to wait until late afternoon of the day they arrived before  I could open my hives. The weather was very changeable  and I needed a reasonable period of bright weather. I was beginning to get concerned; the forecast was awful, rain and wind for the next twenty-four hours when luck would have it there was a break in the clouds.

I suited up, lit my smoker and opened my hive No2 (the swarm hive). Much to my surprise I found the old queen easily she was on the third comb I lifted. I had worn thin rubber gloves instead of my usual leather beekeeping  gauntlets. I was therefore able to pick her off the comb without too much trouble. I put the comb back in the hive, carried her away and killed her. (I felt a heel doing it and unfortunately so did she!   ) I put the lid back on the hive and left them to it.

Finding the queen so easily gave me the confidence to  tackle my No 1 hive which had twice as many combs and bees. I lifted the lid gave them a good smoking and started to lift the bars. This time the queen was on the fourth comb, I removed the whole comb, another with brood and a third with stores all complete with their bees. I put them into my third hive with two blank top bars and a litre of syrup. Hopefully they will build up enough to last through the winter.

I left the two hives queenless for twenty-four hours then wired the Apis M M queens in their travel cages to two top bars. I remembered to remove the plastic covers to reveal the fondant plugs. The fondant ensures a slow release as the bees have to eat through it before the queens can escape.  This gives time for the queen to get the hive scent and the bees to get used to her.

I opened each hive in turn this time I sprayed them with diluted syrup mixed with a little vanilla instead of smoke. It would keep the bees occupied while I inserted the top bar with the new queen and also mask any scents so they will not notice anything strange when the hive is closed up with the new queen.

I have two more days to wait before I can check the queens have been released. Fingers crossed they are accepted. If they are then I will have two hives with Apis MM. I will re queen the other hive next spring with an Apis MM queen.

I have not noticed any beehives near where I live and if there are then as most conventional beekeepers cull their drones I hope I can keep my stock reasonably pure over the subsequent years, time will tell.

The last month has been pretty busy and I have to admit to rather neglecting this blog. Guardian Generations is now available in limited numbers exclusively from my Guardian Sci Fi website. It will not be on general release for another month or so therefore if you are quick you can get an exclusive, dated pre-release  first edition. You never know it might be worth something one day

I have been working on the book website to reflect the publication of Generations. Instead of the ‘Look Inside’ page which used a small flash program to turn the pages of a virtual first chapter I have used Google books and linked to them from my website. The advantage is they show random sections of each book. I have limited it to 20% but it is far better than just one chapter.  Please give it a try and let me know what you think.

It has become time to renew my clive.uk.com domain name and it has doubled in price! I have to say I was a little annoyed but as it is an established website listed on Google etc., I had no choice but to pay up. I have purchased www.cliveosbornerapley.com so I will slowly build that domain name up and eventually shut down the clive.uk.com. I don’t want to be caught like that again.

I have also changed the domain name of my publishing website to reflect the content. The original was www.partnership-publishing.com . It was initially designed to discuss that method of book publishing but it has subsequently evolved to discuss all aspects of publishing a book. The new name is www.publishingoptions.info. The original name will be active for the next six months to ensure the new one is fully Google listed and linked too.

If you have bookmarked either site please remember to update to the new domain name.

I am currently in Scotland so I will be picking up book three once things have settled down here.

Book three word count 9000

Continuing with the discussion on what is wrong with modern beekeeping methods;

3)   With the removable frames came the next fundamental change to beekeeping, foundation comb . This great step forward ensured the bees built their comb within the confines of the frame. There was no chance of them building cross comb making it difficult to remove the frames. In the quest forever more honey yield the foundation was impressed with the size of the cell that would encourage the bees to produce workers and reduce the number of drones. The cell size was also increased from the natural size the bees would construct in the hope they would produce larger and more productive bees.

Since that time the cell size has remained largely unchanged. With slight regional variations the cells are 10% to 15% larger than the bees would normally build. Coincidently in the wild Varroa prefers the large cell size of Drone brood so the larger size of  worker cell foundation forces the bees to build is ideal for them (lucky old Varroa!)

The other main issue with using wax foundation is the transfer of chemicals and pesticides present in the wax, which can cause health issues with the bees.

If the bees are left to their own devices they build comb which is ideal for them and less than ideal for the Varroa. Of course their own wax will also be free of the build up from the pesticides and chemicals.

Personally I believe that allowing the bees to build their own comb is less stressful for them and they know best what size to build (Don’t forget they have had over 100 million years practice. Why do we as beekeepers feel we know better than they do?)

Bees building their own comb in one of my hives.

4)   One additional thing the modern hive with removable frames facilitated was selective breeding. This in my humble opinion is the worst interference of them all. A strain of bee that has perfectly adapted to its environment is taken and bread with other strains of bee to produce a gentler more productive hybrid. The required traits are selected and bred for but what about the myriad unknowns. Is the new strain more susceptible to a particular disease, can it cope as well with the extremes of its environment? There are many questions that should have been asked and weren’t. The hybrids then mix with the native bees and millions of years of natural selection quite simply fly’s out the window.

Of course things can quickly get out of hand with unforeseen consequences the African hybrid bees are a case in point.

5) This leads nicely into my final point about what is wrong with ‘modern’ beekeeping, the import and export of bees and queens. The movement of bees by beekeepers around the globe brings with it the danger of diseases and pathogens native bees are not equipped to cope with. Varroa is a case in point. How long will it be before the Hive Beetle is found in Europe? Not long if modern beekeeping methods have anything to do with it!

Next: What Can Be Done To Put Things Right?

Well, from our point of view nothing is wrong with modern bee keeping methods. We can harvest a large amount of honey easily, manipulate the colonies, transport the hives and generally interfere with the bees with very little effort on our part.

We transport bees and queens all over the world, use selective breeding to produce better strains of bees (from our point of view) and manufacture chemicals and pesticides   to prevent or cure diseases and pests that inflict our bees. Even the British Bee Keepers’ Association (BBKA) is sponsored by and endorses Bayer, a pesticide manufacturer!

So everything is wonderful? Well let’s look at it from the bee’s point of view.

I could probably fill a book here but I will try and keep it to the main points.

1)   The design of the hive forces the bees to start at the bottom keeping their brood at the bottom then working upwards for storing their honey supplies. Supers are added above the brood box and as each one is filled another one is stacked on top. If the brood box becomes crowded then another can be stacked on top of it giving two brood boxes when the supers have been removed. Once the second brood box is added then the supers can be re-stacked on top.

The bee’s natural instinct is to build downwards moving the brood down as the hive expands then back-filling the old brood comb with the honey stores. They are also happy to build horizontally if they happen to make their nest in a fallen tree.

Their natural instinct to move down is the opposite to the beekeepers requirements!

2)   A cornerstone of all modern hives is the removable frame. The frame enables the beekeeper to inspect the hive on a regular basis. It is recommended that the hive be inspected around every ten days or so during the spring/ summer to check every thing is OK. The beekeeper looks for signs of disease, correct laying patterns, healthy brood and queen, etc.   The frames are also spaced to precise dimensions to enable the bees to move up and down the hive enabling them to fill the upper levels with honey.

So every ten days the bee’s nest is stripped apart by the well-meaning beekeeper. The precisely controlled temperature the bees maintain plus all the pheromone scents used to regulate the function of the hive are lost or diluted.  With the precise spacing of the frames even lifting the box above can have the same effect.

The bees have had over 100,000,000 years practice and beekeepers feel the need to strip their nest apart every ten days to check they are doing things right??

I was reading a book the other day by an eminent beekeeper and he mentioned one of the things you have to look for during this inspection is laying workers. He goes on to add “..the queen has died or is unable to lay eggs possibly as a result of damage when manipulated by the beekeeper” So the beekeeper should be checking for something that is possibly caused by checking for it! Need I say more?

Next: What is Wrong With Modern Bee Keeping? Part Two

The news is always full of articles about global warming or pollution caused by oil spills excreta. Governments have conferences and disagreements about what can be done while in the background largely un-noticed a disaster of equal proportions is unfolding.

What am I talking about? The demise of the Honey Bee! (Check out my blog entry on where have all the Honey Bees gone?)

So why should the disappearance of such a humble insect be cause for concern? Well where do you think all the fruit we eat comes from? Figures from the USA are freely available on the net and speak for themselves.

The largest managed pollination event in the world is in California where nearly half (about one million hives) of the US honeybees are trucked to the almond orchards each spring. New York’s apple crop requires about 30,000 hives; Maine’s blueberry crop uses about 50,000 hives each year. Bees are also brought to commercial plantings of cucumbers, squash, melons, strawberries, and many other crops.

In the UK honeybee hives run by mostly amateur beekeepers -contribute around £165m a year to the economy by pollinating many fruits and vegetables.

In short – the disappearance of the bee would cause mass starvation and be an extinction level event for many plants and animals.

What has gone wrong? The bee probably evolved along with flowering plants in the Lower Cretaceous about 120 – 140 million years ago. The earliest evidence for the bee so far found is in 100 million year old amber.

The following is from a 2006 BBC News article.

Scientists have identified the oldest known bee, a 100 million-year-old specimen preserved in amber. The ancient insect, trapped in tree sap, is at least 35-45 million years older than any other known bee fossil.   It appears to share features with both bees and wasps, and supports theories of bee evolution. Experts believe pollen-dependent bees arose from carnivorous wasp ancestors.

They survived the extinction of the dinosaurs, survived continental drift, climate change were around while our earliest ancestors were swinging in trees! How many diseases and parasites evolved to threaten them in that time? Probably many, and they survived them all until now!

So what has changed? The decline started with the invention of the modern hive by Langstroth in 1860. He lived in the Victorian period filled with the expansion of industrialisation. Beekeepers were keen to apply the same industrial methods to beekeeping. They measured their success by ever greater honey yields at a time when nature was something to be controlled. By controlling nature some advantages were gained. However a price is always paid when man pushes the boundary of the natural balance of nature. In beekeeping, much was lost when man-made systems replaced the bee’s natural brood nest.

Bees have lived with and provided us honey and wax for thousands of years. Strange they have suffered since man started to manipulate them on an industrial scale 150 years ago.

Next: What is Wrong With Modern Bee Keeping?