I am at Stepney City Farm (An urban farm is an intriguing concept in it's own right) and I am garbed head to foot in a white cloth onesey that feels disconcertingly like a placebo to the human inside it than an actual defense against the bees on the outside.
I'm at the back of the group (80% courtesy, 20% fear) and while the people in front are watching our host Meetal opening up the Hives, I'm watching the people in front. Or rather, I'm watching an array of bee's settle and walk all over the oblivious people in front. I suspect that it's kinder not to draw attention to it. I sure as hell wish I didn't know that the stingy little bastards were just as likely to be crawling all over my back looking for a way in!
Prior to standing here and wondering if I share my fathers predisposition to anaphylactic shock, we were given a powerpoint presentation and hand-outs on the basics of bee anatomy, lifestyle and working habits. Because this is a working farm we will be seeing Honey Bees today, though there are well over 200 individual bee species recorded in the UK.
Meetal says that there is no reason for a bee to sting you if you don't give it reason to.
And I agree with him.
However, I also feel that there was no reason for hiccups, and still that shit happens.
Anyway, on with the learning.
Prior to standing here and wondering if I share my fathers predisposition to anaphylactic shock, we were given a powerpoint presentation and hand-outs on the basics of bee anatomy, lifestyle and working habits. Because this is a working farm we will be seeing Honey Bees today, though there are well over 200 individual bee species recorded in the UK.
Meetal says that there is no reason for a bee to sting you if you don't give it reason to.
And I agree with him.
However, I also feel that there was no reason for hiccups, and still that shit happens.
One of the bee's on the chap in front disappears into a crevice where the onesie velcros against the hood and doesn't come back out again.
It really IS kinder not to say anything.
Isn't it?
It really IS kinder not to say anything.
Isn't it?
Anyway, on with the learning.
THE HIVE
Now that the hive is opened up the bee's surge up and around us in force. With the bee's out of the way (*Inside the suit of the guy in front) we can see that the Hive is a specially constructed box with wooden frames in it. The frames go into the hive empty... just a square wooden frame... which the young worker bee's (being 12-20 days old) soon fill themselves with honeycomb of hexagonal holes made from beeswax for the purpose of storing honey (food) and their own spawn. Meetal doesn't appear too bothered about whether the bee's use the upper frames for brood or for honey, and consequently there is a bit of everything happening in the frame he passes around us. Some baby bee's are crawling out of the hexagonal cells, while honey congeals in others.
Some beekeepers - particular those with a focus upon harvesting honey - incorporate a Queen Excluder frame, which is basically a grid of holes large enough for all but the queen bee to pass through, to prevent her from laying eggs where the beekeeper hopes to exclusively harvest honey.
BEESWAX
Beeswax is effectively bee-sweat created by 8 purpose-specific glands on the underside of their abdomen. These glands atrophy when the bee comes of age and is set to further tasks, leaving the beeswax duty to the younger initiates.
HONEY
Honey is bee food, not human food. At least, that is what it is meant to be. This high sugar 'fuel' is converted from pollen nectar as sustenance for the bees. Particularly through the winter when there are no flowers to collect further food from.
The varying tastes in honey are the result of the varying flowers the bee's produce it from.
THE COLONY
A Honeybee colony can be very variable in size due to environmental restrictions but a standard of around 20,000 to 80,000 worker bees (infertile females) hundreds of drones (fertile males) and 1 Queen Bee is given.
THE QUEEN BEE
Each honeybee colony has a single Queen bee as standard. This is the only bee in the colony who can lay eggs. She will generally only make one mating flight in her life, though if she does not encounter an adequate number of mates in this flight (up to around 15) she will embark upon other attempts. She can store up to 6 million sperm which she will use to make her eggs over the remainder of her approximately 4 year life. She can choose the sex of each individual egg by either fertilizing (female) or not fertilizing (male) with the sperm of one of her prior mating courtships.
When the Queen Bee dies or wanes in her abilities to produce brood, the worker bee's will create another queen (or a few of them, just to be sure one will survive to maturity) by feeding a single offspring nothing but Royal Jelly. This is the only thing the Queen Bee will eat for the rest of her life. Immediately upon emergence from the birthing cell, the Queen will seek out other Queens and un-birthed Queen cells and kill anything they find there to ensure their own uncontested dominance. Queen Bee's mature from egg to adult in just 16 days.
WORKER BEES
Worker bee's are infertile females. They make up the bulk of the colony and rightly so since they are the real grafters. They collect the nectar, build the honey comb, produce the honey, feed the brood and queen and protect the hive. They only live around 6 weeks before ostensibly dying from exhaustion. They have baskets on their back legs for collecting pollen and can sting. Insects they can sting multiple times, but there is truth in the fact they can normally only sting mammals once due to the thickness of mammalian skin. The worker bee's often lose their stingers and a good chunk of their body in the process of such an ill-advised attack and die shortly thereafter. Humans should not be so squeamish around them; bee's do not want this to happen.
They can also kill invading wasps by surrounding them and raising their body temperatures by collectively vibrating and essentially 'roasting' the wasp.
Should necessity dictate (ie, in a Queenless colony) worker bee's can lay unfertilized eggs that will result in drone workers. This however is a handicap for the colony as drones do comparitively little work.
DRONE BEES
Drones are male bees. They do not work and are not functional in any function beyond mating with the Queen. Sounds like good work on paper, but their superfluousness also means that come winter when the food stores go up in value, they are turfed out of the hive to die out in the cold. The small number who successfully mate with the queen (around 12-15 per Queen) enjoy the added bonus of having their endophallus ripped out during mating, resulting in them dying shortly thereafter.
To minimise the potential of inbreeding, breeding is done outside of the hive.
After the roof of the hive is put back and our pre-hive powerpoint walk-through is complete we are treated to a honey tasting and a selection of honeys are made available to us for £7 a jar. I nearly buy one but I am sans £1. Heading off for drinkies next anyway and glass jars rarely fare well in drinking sessions that start at 2pm.
Bee's are fascinating. And they don't want to sting you. And they are vital for our crops and our economy. Their plummeting numbers in recent years is a real concern and a real tragedy desperately in need of reversal. Planting accessible flowering plants and eradicating the use of chemical pesticides is a very prominent first step in giving the existing populations a chance of finding their way back.
Now that the hive is opened up the bee's surge up and around us in force. With the bee's out of the way (*Inside the suit of the guy in front) we can see that the Hive is a specially constructed box with wooden frames in it. The frames go into the hive empty... just a square wooden frame... which the young worker bee's (being 12-20 days old) soon fill themselves with honeycomb of hexagonal holes made from beeswax for the purpose of storing honey (food) and their own spawn. Meetal doesn't appear too bothered about whether the bee's use the upper frames for brood or for honey, and consequently there is a bit of everything happening in the frame he passes around us. Some baby bee's are crawling out of the hexagonal cells, while honey congeals in others.
Some beekeepers - particular those with a focus upon harvesting honey - incorporate a Queen Excluder frame, which is basically a grid of holes large enough for all but the queen bee to pass through, to prevent her from laying eggs where the beekeeper hopes to exclusively harvest honey.
BEESWAX
Beeswax is effectively bee-sweat created by 8 purpose-specific glands on the underside of their abdomen. These glands atrophy when the bee comes of age and is set to further tasks, leaving the beeswax duty to the younger initiates.
HONEY
Honey is bee food, not human food. At least, that is what it is meant to be. This high sugar 'fuel' is converted from pollen nectar as sustenance for the bees. Particularly through the winter when there are no flowers to collect further food from.
The varying tastes in honey are the result of the varying flowers the bee's produce it from.
THE COLONY
A Honeybee colony can be very variable in size due to environmental restrictions but a standard of around 20,000 to 80,000 worker bees (infertile females) hundreds of drones (fertile males) and 1 Queen Bee is given.
THE QUEEN BEE
Each honeybee colony has a single Queen bee as standard. This is the only bee in the colony who can lay eggs. She will generally only make one mating flight in her life, though if she does not encounter an adequate number of mates in this flight (up to around 15) she will embark upon other attempts. She can store up to 6 million sperm which she will use to make her eggs over the remainder of her approximately 4 year life. She can choose the sex of each individual egg by either fertilizing (female) or not fertilizing (male) with the sperm of one of her prior mating courtships.
When the Queen Bee dies or wanes in her abilities to produce brood, the worker bee's will create another queen (or a few of them, just to be sure one will survive to maturity) by feeding a single offspring nothing but Royal Jelly. This is the only thing the Queen Bee will eat for the rest of her life. Immediately upon emergence from the birthing cell, the Queen will seek out other Queens and un-birthed Queen cells and kill anything they find there to ensure their own uncontested dominance. Queen Bee's mature from egg to adult in just 16 days.
WORKER BEES
Worker bee's are infertile females. They make up the bulk of the colony and rightly so since they are the real grafters. They collect the nectar, build the honey comb, produce the honey, feed the brood and queen and protect the hive. They only live around 6 weeks before ostensibly dying from exhaustion. They have baskets on their back legs for collecting pollen and can sting. Insects they can sting multiple times, but there is truth in the fact they can normally only sting mammals once due to the thickness of mammalian skin. The worker bee's often lose their stingers and a good chunk of their body in the process of such an ill-advised attack and die shortly thereafter. Humans should not be so squeamish around them; bee's do not want this to happen.
They can also kill invading wasps by surrounding them and raising their body temperatures by collectively vibrating and essentially 'roasting' the wasp.
Should necessity dictate (ie, in a Queenless colony) worker bee's can lay unfertilized eggs that will result in drone workers. This however is a handicap for the colony as drones do comparitively little work.
DRONE BEES
Drones are male bees. They do not work and are not functional in any function beyond mating with the Queen. Sounds like good work on paper, but their superfluousness also means that come winter when the food stores go up in value, they are turfed out of the hive to die out in the cold. The small number who successfully mate with the queen (around 12-15 per Queen) enjoy the added bonus of having their endophallus ripped out during mating, resulting in them dying shortly thereafter.
To minimise the potential of inbreeding, breeding is done outside of the hive.
After the roof of the hive is put back and our pre-hive powerpoint walk-through is complete we are treated to a honey tasting and a selection of honeys are made available to us for £7 a jar. I nearly buy one but I am sans £1. Heading off for drinkies next anyway and glass jars rarely fare well in drinking sessions that start at 2pm.
Bee's are fascinating. And they don't want to sting you. And they are vital for our crops and our economy. Their plummeting numbers in recent years is a real concern and a real tragedy desperately in need of reversal. Planting accessible flowering plants and eradicating the use of chemical pesticides is a very prominent first step in giving the existing populations a chance of finding their way back.
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