From A to Bee (5 page)

At tonight's session, David is running late and we all get talking for the first time. The initial awkwardness of not knowing each other has gone and we have a common interest which makes things easier. There's a real mixture of people getting involved. I find out more about my co-learners. There's the father and son who have been beekeeping before but want to have an update on modern techniques (when I say 'father and son', the son is easily in his fifties). There are a few others who have kept bees previously, including an Aussie guy who sounds quite experienced in keeping bees but only in Australia, who wants to find out why we are better beekeepers (OK, maybe I'm making that bit up). Then there are a few, like me, who just want more information but are keen to get started. There are at least three married couples; it is evident that one of the pairing is keen and the other, duty-bound, has come along for support.

  The average age is about 45 and about 60 per cent are male. Thirty per cent of them started the course with beards and now I would say at least 50 per cent have them and so it does seem that some are starting to morph into my stereotypical beekeeper as the course goes on. Fortunately I don't seem to be changing just yet, although I do seem to be enjoying more cider recently…

Last night at my session not only did I learn a little bit more about my fellow classmates, we also learned a lot about swarming. Before now I had never considered swarms, other than hearing horror stories about people seeing them fly by with almost military precision, with a noise equivalent to a jet plane flying past, and everyone diving for cover. Needless to say I was pretty sure swarms were not a good thing. I was quite taken aback when I realised it was quite the opposite in fact.

  I had never before considered the reason for a swarm. I discovered that it is an example of the amazing perception of the colony that knows it is under threat and does something about it. A 'new' queen is raised – how, I do not know yet – and the old queen leaves the hive with between 1,500 and 30,000 bees to set up a new colony elsewhere. There are a multitude of reasons for this, which could include a diseased hive or the fact that they are running out of space but in any case, they do it in the interests of the colony.

  It also transpires that this is the time that people are least likely to get stung. David showed us pictures of beekeepers with various limbs being inserted into a swarm once it had come to rest. He then decided to show us a picture of a beekeeper with a 'bee beard', which is exactly what it sounds like, i.e. thousands of bees that affix themselves to someone's face. As they are in a swarm state they are said to be calm and docile. Having looked online tonight, while thinking about this whole swarming malarkey, I found out that the current 'world record' – how is there a world record for this sort of thing?! – was 57 pounds of bees!

  The crazy thing about these bee beards is that they date back to the 1700s. Surely there must have been better things to do than layer your chin with bees. Another ancient technique was known as 'tanging' – apparently back in the day, people saw a swarm as good luck and hence tried to lay claim to the swarming bees. They would run after the swarm banging pots and pans to try to calm the bees and 'tempt them into stopping'. People would then rest their handkerchief over the swarm to lay claim; another piece of silly British tradition and a practical demonstration of just what you can do with a handkerchief.

Tonight it really struck me just how much I have already learned about bees but, at the same time, just how much more there is still to learn. David took us through the mechanics of the queen bee today. It just shows how important she is with a whole session dedicated to her, and to be honest she is quite an amazing subject. However, David was quite quick to state she was simply an 'egg-laying machine', and though it was a relatively complex job, that was all she really was.

  I can't quite imagine our queen wanting to be labelled this way but it was interesting to hear that actually the queen isn't the real leader in the hive. Like us, a democratic society, the workers and drones are the real decision-makers (OK, I realise that might sound a little naive!) and arguably, because of the variety of jobs they do, are also the more advanced bee.

  The queen bee seems to keep the colony together and calm by emitting pheromones. Apparently, if the queen suddenly dies, within fifteen minutes the colony will be aware of this and will immediately set about raising a new queen. This is also true if they feel that the queen is losing a bit of strength or if she has accidentally been damaged; the bees will start raising a new one, even if she is still present in the hive. I find this all rather astounding. How on earth can a colony of 60,000 make a collective decision on these sorts of matters within fifteen minutes?

  I have a theory that it is either a very complex game of Chinese whispers (although unfortunately if that were true, what started out as 'we must raise a new queen' could end up something completely different) or evidence of a highly functional, structured and organised set-up which, at my current level of expertise, I simply cannot explain.

  Can you imagine this happening in our world: 60,000 people trying to make a decision to essentially bump off the Queen? It would take fifteen years, not fifteen minutes. I couldn't see Queenie being too pleased if, while walking around Buckingham Palace, she saw one of her footmen desperately hiding a new queen behind a coat of armour in the corner of the throne room. In the bee world, the old queen gets the hump and flies off with half the colony. To top this off, David went on to tell us some even more amazing facts about queens that I wasn't already aware of:

All in all it was a pretty fascinating evening; so much so that as I left the classroom in deep thought, I managed to fall down all the stone steps to my car. This happened just as another group of people were walking out of the main building only to see me perform a stuntman-like somersault down the steps and land on my feet. It must have looked amazing aside from the fact that I landed on wet leaves and so skidded along before promptly falling on my derrière. Not my proudest of moments! But I did say I was clumsy.

I must be addicted. Never before in my life have I ever taken homework seriously, but on Wednesday we were given the task of reading some leaflets about bee diseases ahead of next week's lesson, and here I am tonight dutifully sitting in front of the fire with a lovely glass of red wine (maybe that is the difference from my school days) reading the leaflets word for word. My God, bees are not having a good time of it; my God, there are so many diseases.

  Shockingly, not only did I do my homework but I also found myself reading around the topic; something my parents and teachers could only have dreamed about when I was a child. I was going online to find out more about the diseases just so I was better prepared for next week… Quite scary really, but I am already excited about starting next year.

I knew tonight was going to be a rather sombre occasion as I had learned about the diseases but I never realised quite the impact it would have. I would advise you now to go and get a nice strong drink to prepare yourself for a rather melancholy read!

  I was expecting to hear that bees were getting the equivalent of the human cold and that reports in the media were being slightly exaggerated; such is my optimistic attitude to life. What I wasn't expecting was the fact that for once our media are rather downplaying the problems. It is more like Armageddon for the global bee population as a pneumonia virus sweeps through it.

  David was very good at explaining the issues but the frustrating thing for him as a bee inspector and, from the sounds of it, for every beekeeper alive, is that there is no complete diagnosis. It did get a bit technical so my revision certainly paid off. In brief, it sounds as if the bees' immune systems are weakened as larvae, probably by a mite called varroa. This is a vicious little bed-bug-like mite that, if seen up close under a microscope, would give children nightmares for weeks. They weaken the larvae such that, as adult bees, a whole host of secondary diseases make their move and kill them off.

  From the sounds of it upwards of 30–50 per cent of hives are being affected every year at the moment, with colonies literally 'collapsing'. Apparently beekeepers are finding hives either abandoned, with no bees in them at all, or there is a slow and gradual decline in numbers until they all die a painful death, unable to look after themselves.

  It seems pretty desperate. I needed a drink after the session and so popped to the local pub with some of my new beekeeping buddies. Some of them who had kept bees before had experienced colony losses themselves. It is amazing how attached people get to their bees and obvious how upsetting it could be to see them simply disappear.