EDITORIAL Back
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This issue of Apis UK may describe a turning point in
beekeeper/bee relationships. At last we bring you news of the future
of bee control and in the very interesting research item below you
will see that so far scientists have managed to ‘speak to’ and
‘control’ cockroaches using revolutionary ‘insbots’ and although I
suspect that bees are a little bit smarter than cockroaches I’m sure
that bee control will figure somewhere in the
future.
Yet again we report on the decline of
pollinating creatures threatening some of our richest plant habitats
and it is a sobering thought that if we humans were all wiped off
the earth right now, our planet would probably turn back to the
healthy, diverse and ecologically balanced state it was in some
10000 years ago. Whereas if our pollinating insects suffered the
same fate (which we seem to be engineering), we wouldn’t last very
much longer at all! Actually, even nature isn’t clean in some
respects and we learn in this issue that some plants can actually
exterminate others with Wordsworth’s Lakeland daffodils being a
prime example, and super bumblebees are threatening our native
species by being more efficient. Wasps and ants feature in this
issue with interesting features on these members of the hymenoptera,
Ian Rumsey continues his fascinating and well thought out series on
rotating hives, Chad gives us proper and timely warning of the
dangers of beekeeping at sea and Gill Sentinella tells us of the
very interesting beekeeping history of a part of
Bedfordshire.
In New Zealand the inevitable happened and
varroa got to the South Island where I suspect it has been for some
time and from experience of the mite in Europe and the USA I suspect
it will gradually cover the whole of the island in the next few
years whatever lines are drawn on maps. The authorities are quite
right to try and slow its advance for a variety of reasons, but
advance it will.
The rest of our issue this month contains
the usual mix of news and articles and a very interesting selection
of reports from our US correspondent Jim Primus. Should anyone in
other countries wish to contribute, do get in touch. After China,
the UK and New Zealand, and I’m sure elsewhere, we now have the
Irish honey scam where honey isn’t all it seems; our recipe this
month is in fact a curative used by the sexiest (supposedly) woman
in ancient Rome who ought to know about these things and we are
reminded yet again of the marvellous substance that is honey in our
historical note and we take a look at that all but forgotten,
perfectly adapted little fly Braula coeca. And, we have our first
short story. Read it. It’s good. If others wish to contribute short,
bee/beekeeping related stories it would be interesting to see them
in print.
And finally in the press I read of a European
government that released a bear in to the hills to help repopulate
the bear population but stupidly, they forgot to fully brief the
bear on borders and border controls. So the bear who obviously must
take some of the blame for not reading up on the subject, crossed a
border, caused panic, ate some livestock and was shot by a brave
farmer with the consent of the government. Truly pathetic isn’t it.
So how does this relate to bees? Well the Spanish government, in its
efforts to prevent the Spanish bear population from dying out has
allowed an organisation ‘FAPAS’ to follow a ‘bees for bears’
programme which is turning in remarkable results to the benefit of
the landscape, the bees, the farmers and the bears. So to that
European government I would say simply ‘use your imagination, not
your gun’. In next month’s issue of Apis we’ll report on the Spanish
bees for bears initiative.
In last month’s editorial I asked
the question ‘what is going on in the photo’. A reader, Thor Bue
Hansen in, I believe, Scandinavia replied as follows: ‘It’s obvious!
The driver just followed the directions given by his GPS navigator’.
Well Thor, you don’t realise just how accurate that reply is. They
were using GPS to get to the site but in fact it was thinking they
were somewhere else that caused the problem. Thanks to everyone who
wrote in and apologies to one of the correspondents, Melanie
Campanis of Nashville in the USA to whom I can’t reply because my
emails keep getting returned. But thanks for the email and good luck
with your beekeeping.
If anyone has an idea of what is
going on in the photo below, please write in.
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David Cramp. Editor.
NEWS Back
to top
UK Increases imports of New Zealand manuka
Honey
Christie hospital in Manchester UK is another
hospital importing New Zealand manuka honey for medicinal purposes.
They plan to trial the honey on patients suffering mouth and throat
cancer. Rates of survival from these cancers have improved over the
last 15 years due to an effective combination of chemotherapy and
radiotherapy but side effects include mucositis and inflammation and
infection of the tissues lining the mouth and throat with the
attendant risk of contracting the MRSA superbug. They will use the
active manuka honey to counter this. Another Manchester hospital,
The Manchester Royal Infirmary is already using manuka honey wound
dressings to excellent effect.
Super Bumble
Bee
In a recent report in the Journal of Applied
Ecology, Tom Ings, an ecologist at Queen Mary college University of
London, warns us that “Conservationists and policy makers must
consider non-native subspecies as potentially posing an invasive
risk”. He reports on the arrival in the UK and subsequent spread of
a Mediterranean species of bumble bee, Bombus terrestris dalmatinus.
It arrived to pollinate fruit in glasshouses and has now been shown
to outclass native species in nectar collection, queen production,
size of colony and size of male bee. This he asserts is helping the
already serious threat to the UK bumblebee species and further
causing their decline.
Now it’s Irish Honey
Scams
Following news of honey scams in the UK and New
Zealand, it appears that a few beekeepers are still not worried
about getting caught out. Tests by The Food Safety Authority of
Ireland (FSAI) have shown that a quarter of 'Irish' honey turned out
to be from foreign shores while some contained antibiotic
residues.
The tests also discovered that one type of honey
which was genuinely Irish contained antibiotic residues. This was in
a sample taken from the Clare Jam Company and investigators are
looking for the source of the problem. The antibiotics were at a
very low level which would not be a cause for public health
concerns, but they are not supposed to be present in honey, said
FSAI Environmental Health Specialist Jeffrey Moon. While bees are of
course treated with drugs to get rid of varroa, there should be no
residue in honey on sale in our shops. The Food Safety Authority of
Ireland (FSAI) today urged the food industry to be vigilant when
sourcing honey labelled as Irish, following the results of a recent
FSAI survey, which highlights the issue of misleading
labelling.
The survey of 20 randomly-selected Irish honeys,
sourced from various manufacturers and retail outlets throughout
Ireland, identified that five were found to be non-Irish, four of
which were labelled as Irish, and one of which bore a misleading
label of origin. As a result of the breaches, a total of five food
business operators were fully audited including packers, brand
owners and/or retailers of the samples in question.
The FSAI is
working with retailers to ensure the affected products are removed
from sale.`The five non-Irish honey products identified by the FSAI
survey were:
- Molaga Pure Honey (best-before 9.8.07) – the
label inferred Irish origin, but the survey indicated honey of
Mediterranean/Spanish origin;
- Kilkenny Pure Irish Honey (no
information) – labelled as Irish, but the survey indicated honey of
Mediterranean/Spanish origin;
- Natural Ireland Honey
(best-before 9.8.07) – labelled as Irish, but it the survey
indicated honey of Mediterranean/Spanish origin;
- Irish
Honey- Wheelock’s Fruit Stall (no information) - labelled as Irish,
but the survey indicated honey of South American origin;
-
Wexford Honey – Jim Kenny (no information) – labelled as Irish, but
the survey indicated honey of Eastern European to Chinese
origin.
Varroa hits the New Zealand South
Island
Biosecurity New Zealand says it is going to start
testing beehives on the South Island's West Coast, amidst fear the
varroa bee mite may have spread further south. The parasite has been
confirmed in 28 apiaries in the Nelson region, and in two apiaries
30 kilometres southwest of the city at Tapawera. The agency says 500
will now be tested in the Hokitika area. Varroa was first discovered
in the North Island six years ago, resulting in the loss of about
25,000 hives. A Nelson (South Island) fruitgrowers' representative
says whether varroa is eradicated from the region or not, it cannot
be allowed to threaten essential pollination preparations that
beekeepers are about to begin. Despite new mite finds, the
Biosecurity Authority, is not ruling out varroa's eradication from
the region to prevent it spreading through the South island. A
Nelson Fruitgrowers' Federation director, Richard Kempthorne, says
that is what orchardists would prefer to see happen. Leaders of New
Zealand beekeeper groups are concerned that reticence shown by some
owners of unregistered beehives in the Nelson region may jeopardise
the varroa identification enterprise currently underway in that
area. Both Jane Lorimer, President of the National Beekeepers
Association of New Zealand, and Lin McKenzie, chairman of Federated
Farmers™ Bee Industry Group, are urging owners of unregistered hives
to take advantage of an amnesty being offered by Biosecurity New
Zealand, and declare their hives so that inspection can take
place.
Item from NZ online Beekeeping news letter.
(I
really don’t want to sound like a doom monger here but if they
manage to eradicate varroa from the South Island they will have
performed a miracle. From my experience of varroa arrivals in the UK
and in Spain, it has probably been there some time now; it will
spread to wherever bees are kept and is there to stay even if they
start drawing up no movement lines etc. But of course they are right
to try. Ed).
US News Items from
our correspondent Jim Primus
California citrus
battles
Decades ago the citrus growers in the San
Joaquin Valley in central California sprayed a highly toxic
pesticide during the orange blossom bloom. Spraying was carried out
despite insecticide labels explicitly prohibiting application when
honey bees were visiting the bloom. Eventually an agreement was
worked out in which growers did not spray with highly toxic
materials from 10% bloom till petal fall. This created a financial
boom for beekeepers through increased production of the highly
prized, light colored orange blossom honey. Now, trouble between at
least one large citrus grower and beekeepers is brewing again.
Letters from Paramount Citrus are warning property owners and
beekeepers that they could be sued for trespass if they do not move
their bees to locations at least two miles from some recently
planted citrus groves. The latter groves are coming into production
of the small, seedless mandarin orange that has become much in
demand. The problem is that the new groves are adjacent to citrus
groves that produce pollen, and Paramount wants to protect unseeded
varieties of citrus from bees carrying pollen from seeded varieties.
Beekeepers claim that Paramount’s request would cause steep
financial losses if their bees are deprived of the honey they make
from nectar in orange groves. Sun Pacific, another citrus grower,
has also asked beekeepers to keep hives away from their seedless
varieties but has not as yet threatened a lawsuit. Wishing to
protect the seedless crop, Paramount says it will not tolerate any
damage caused by bees that trespass. On the other side, beekeepers
say the restrictions will harm the conduct of their business. Many
of the beekeepers having been using the citrus locations for
decades, and they point to "right-to-farm laws" that allow them to
pursue their livelihood. If the case goes to court, beekeepers could
have the upper hand since previous cases have ruled that honey bees
are free-flying and are not trespassing when found on someone else’s
land. The outcome would have adverse ramifications if the citrus
growers win in which case anyone, anywhere could tell beekeepers to
relocate colonies beyond the flight range to prevent trespass. It
seems that Paramount Citrus has not recognized that even if they are
able to keep managed colonies at a distance there still is the
problem of 'wild' bees such as solitary bees and bumblebees that
will be pollinating the mandarins. Joe Traynor, manager of
Scientific Ag Co. in Bakersfield, California and a broker for bee
colonies, suggests Paramount should do a marketing campaign touting
the virtues of mandarins with seeds, using the slogan "Spit a Seed,
Save a Bee."
North American pollinator
decline
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and
Agricultural Research Service, and U. S. Geological Survey have
asked the National Academy of Sciences to carry out a study to
document the status of pollinating animals in North America. The
National Academies perform a public service by bringing together
committees of experts in all areas of scientific and technological
endeavor. These experts serve without compensation to address
critical national issues and give advice to the federal government
and the public. The pollinator study began last July, and it is
expected to be completed late this year. The investigative committee
will ask (1) to what degree pollinators are experiencing serious
decline; (2) where decline can be established; (3) what the causes
of decline are; and (4) what possible consequences of the decline
are for both agriculture and ecosystems. The recent Bioscience
publication by Losey and Vaughan comes at an opportune time and
should receive added press from the Academy study. The committee (15
members total) has at least three members who will insure that the
status of honey bees receives deserved attention. Nicholas Calderone
is Director of the Cornell University Dyce Laboratory for Honey Bee
Studies. He has published numerous articles on honey bee management,
and co-authored in 2000 an article with the late Roger Morse on the
value of honey bee pollination to U.S. agriculture production. Gene
Robinson at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
co-authored an article in 1989 with the late Roger Morse on the
value of honey bee pollination to agriculture. He is a
well-recognized leader in the study of genes that regulate honey bee
behavior. An additional champion for honey bees is Stephen Buchmann
who is president of an environmental consulting company in Tucson,
The Bee Works, and who is affiliated with the University of Arizona
in Tucson. Dr. Buchmann is a recognized as a world authority on
pollinating animals and he has written five books including “The
Forgotten Pollinators”, and more recently “Letters from the
Hive”.
Biocontrol of small hive beetle (SHB) with
fungi
In 2003, the USDA Bee Laboratory at Weslaco
found that fungus containing dusts or coated strips were as
effective as Apistan in controlling Varroa. The fungus studied was
an entomopathogenic fungus, or a fungus that kills or parasitizes
insects. It has now been found that entomopathogenic fungi are also
capable of killing the SHB under laboratory conditions. Researchers
at the Rhodes University in South Africa tested whether the spores
from four different fungi could kill adult SHB in glass dishes. Two
of the fungi caused significantly increased mortality of the SHB:
one caused 74% SHB death, the other, 28%. The less active fungus was
the same species used in the Weslaco investigation for anti-Varroa
activity. Both of the active fungi lack toxicity for humans and
mammals but under laboratory conditions, both of these fungi are
toxic to honey bees. However, the Weslaco study did not find any
honey bee toxicity of the fungus applied under field conditions.
Thus, dusts or strips containing fungal spores could offer an
effective means in the future for controlling both Varroa and the
SHB. Field studies with the SHB are needed as well as an interested
manufacturer.
Source: Journal of Economic Entomology, vol. 99,
pg. 1, 2006
Jim Primus. USA correspondent
Insect detectives
A few years ago the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded a $3
million project to train honey bees to find landmines that was
spearheaded by researchers at the University of Montana. DARPA was
formed in 1958, and although it coordinates with the Pentagon, it
operates independent of the Pentagon. DARPA has the freedom to fund
what is termed “blue-sky” thinking, ideas that are imaginative and
typically unconventional. But the agency developed the precursor to
the Internet in 1969, invented global positioning systems, and is
credited with half of the major innovations in the high-tech
industry. It also created over 120 technologies for the military
from the M-16 rifle to stealth aircraft. All of these
accomplishments happened because of the agency’s healthy budget
which this year is $3.1 billion. The agency recently announced that
the honey bee landmine “sniffer” project was not successful,
assuming a place in a long list of other failed projects.
Approximately 85% of projects do not achieve their stated goals.
According to the agency, the bees’ instinctive behavior barred
reliable performance. The groundwork provided by the honey bee
landmine detector project may, however, someday have a positive
outcome. DARPA’s new big idea is to make insect cyborgs, organisms
which are a mixture of organic and synthetic parts, that can be
controlled to arrive within feet of a specific target located
hundreds of feet away. Once there, the insect cyborg would remain
there unless ordered to move on and transmit data about the
immediate environment. The agency proposes that the cyborgs would be
created through the implantation of microsystems at the pupal stage
of insect development where it is hoped that the microsystem would
be integrated into the insect’s neural network. Sound far-out? You
bet, but the army of the future may be assisted by platoons of
cyborg insects sniffing out landmines or penetrating terrorist
strongholds.
Other applications of
insect detectives appear more promising. Joe Lewis, an entomologist
with the Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Research Service in
Tifton, Georgia has been studying the tiny parasitic wasp,
Microplitis croceipes, as a potential biocontrol agent of
caterpillar pests. During these studies, he learned that the wasps
were ultra-sensitive to wide spectrum of volatile chemicals.
Together with Glen Rains and Samuel Utley, biological engineers at
the University of Georgia, a hand-held odor sensor called Wasp Hound
was developed (Biotechnology Progress, vol. 22, pg. 2, 2006).
They found it was very easy to train a wasp to detect a new odor in
just three 10-second sessions. The Wasp Hound consists of a PVC
cartridge containing five of the wasps, a light source, an intake
portal for fan-driven air, and a miniature video camera. Assisted by
special software, the device recorded wasp beh avior in response to
sampled air. With no response, the wasps presented a diffuse image,
but if they do recognize the smell, the wasps clustered around the
air inlet within seconds and turned the central part of the image
black. In laboratory trials, Wasp Hound was able to detect and
discriminate the presence of minute concentrations of an odor
associated with growth of a fungal pathogen of several plant
species. So far the authors have found that the wasps reliably
respond to odors associated with explosives, human corpses, decaying
food, and toxic fungi. Odors were detected at the parts per trillion
level, the equivalence of a grain of salt in a swimming pool, and
very similar to a dog’s sense of smell. Why not continue to use
“sniffer” dogs? Sniffer dogs cost about $15,000 to train because it
takes six months to train them and they also require a dedicated
handler.
Honey bees also have a similar sensitivity to
volatile chemicals. Inscentinel, a small British company based at
Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire, has developed a detector with
honey bees as the sensor. Inscentinel’s detector relies on a
well-known response of honey bees when they expect food, the
“proboscis extension reflex”. As air passes by the bees’ head, a
miniature camera records the proboscis extension and sends the image
to a computer. If the tongues stick out, the response is positive.
Inscentinel’s prototype has been tested in several agricultural
applications but most of the interest has been in the sensing of
explosives. It will not be long before we see Inscentinel’s device
as well as the Wasp Hound used for sniffing for bombs at airports or
locating buried bodies.
Jim Primus USA
correspondent
RESEARCH NEWS Back
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HYMENOPTERA NEWS
Ancient Ants
Ants
appear to be the older brethren in the hymenoptera world, beating
bees by millions of years, but only really took off when the bees
and the flowers started their amazing co-evolution. The journal
Science reports that researchers have found that ancient ants
appeared 140-168 Million Years Ago, But these insects, now found in
terrestrial ecosystems the world over, apparently began to diversify
only about 100 million years ago in concert with the flowering
plants, the scientists say. The study was also supported by the
Green Fund. The researchers were led by biologists Corrie Moreau and
Naomi Pierce of Harvard University, the researchers reconstructed
the ant family tree using DNA sequencing of six genes from 139
representative ant genera, encompassing 19 out of 20 ant subfamilies
around the world.
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“Ants are a dominant feature of nearly all terrestrial
ecosystems, and yet we know surprisingly little about their
evolutionary history: the major groupings of ants, how they are
related to each other, and when and how they arose,” said Moreau.
“We now have a clear picture of how this extraordinarily dominant -
in ecological terms - and successful - in evolutionary terms - group
of insects originated and diversified.” Moreau, Pierce and
colleagues used a “molecular clock” calibrated with 43 fossils
distributed throughout the ant family tree to date key events in the
evolution of ants, providing a well-supported estimate for the age
of modern lineages. Their conclusion that modern-day ants arose 140
to 168 million years ago pushes back the origin of ants at least 40
million years earlier than had previously been believed based on
estimates from the fossil record. Their results support the
hypothesis that ants were able to capitalize on the ecological
opportunities provided by flowering plants and the herbivorous
insects such as early honey bees that co-evolved with them,” said
Pierce. The herbivorous insects that evolved alongside flowering
plants provided food for the ants. The researchers found that the
poorly known ant subfamily Leptanillinae is the most ancient,
followed by two broad groups known as the poneroids (predatory
hunting ants) and the formicoids (more familiar species such as
pavement ants and carpenter ants).
Other co-authors of the
Science paper are Charles Bell at Florida State University and Roger
Vila and S. Bruce Archibald in Harvard’s Museum of Comparative
Zoology.
BEES AND PRIMATES
Although much work has
been done on bees in Central and south America, little has been
discovered about how bees and other species interact in Africa, the
original home of the honey bee. In the first study of native African
honeybees and honey-making stingless bees in the same habitat,
humans and chimpanzees are the primary bee nest predators. Robert
Kajobe of the Dutch Tropical Bee Research Unit and David Roubik from
the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute report this finding in
the March, 2006 issue of Biotropica.
Batwa Pygmies, who
have traditionally harvested honey for food, located 228 bee nests
(both honeybees and stingless bees) for the study. Roubik identified
the bees and found that Pygmy names for the bees corresponded to
scientific names, except for a black and a brown form of Meliponula
ferruginea. Honeybee (Apis) nests were numerous compared to other
sites in the tropics, whereas honey-making stingless bee nests were
relatively scarce. Nest abundance did not vary with altitude, nor
did pollen collection or the seasonality of
flowering.
Roubik has followed the progress of
Africanized honeybees in the New World, documenting effects of
pollen and nectar collecting and nesting ecology on native-American
stingless bees. Kajobe invited Roubik to visit the
Bwindi-Impenetrable National Park in southwestern Uganda, where
African honeybees coexist with five or more species of honey-making
stingless bees in their native habitat.
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Chimps in the Park peel and chew the tips of vines and
twigs to make honey dipsticks. Roubik notes that indigenous groups
in the Americas use similar honey brushes to harvest honey in areas
where Africanized bees are relative newcomers. Most studies of
stingless bees have been undertaken in South America and south-east
Asia and have ignored the ecology and context of Afro-tropical
stingless bee species, particularly in equatorial regions. The
researchers hope that this is the beginning of a long-lasting
collaboration that will make a significant contribution to
Afro-tropical bee research. Bwindi-Impenetrable Park is the only
place on earth where gorillas, chimps and humans partition forest
resources. Given the importance of honey as one of the most
concentrated sources of sugar and protein in the forest, and the
fact that the park management plan allows collection of non-timber
forest products, there is a lack of ecological information about the
role of honey-making bees and the role of their natural predators in
this ecosystem. Nothing is known about the amount of honey produced
in nests of different species. Nothing is known about how often bee
species found new nests. “Unfortunately, this dearth of information
about native bees will continue unless more funding for basic
natural history research is forthcoming,” asserts
Roubik.
DEATH BY POLLEN
Each day you
can read in the newspapers of murder, treason and plot amongst human
society, but did you know that all is not exactly squeaky clean in
the plant world.
Researchers from Oxford University in
the UK have discovered a striking example of apparent on-going
extinction in a European plant species. This confirms that
biodiversity can be threatened when one type of plant species
eradicates its relative by swamping it with incompatible pollen. The
findings will help predict the fate of plant species such as the
wild daffodil Narcissus pseudonarcissus, celebrated by the poet
William Wordsworth, and the potential impact of pollen flow from
genetically modified crops.
Researchers at Oxford
University's Department of Plant Sciences studied the plant
Mercurialis annua (the annual mercury), a European species of weed,
(an anti syphilitic for those interested) which has two types, one
with separate male and female plants, the other with male and female
flowers on the same plant (a hermaphrodite). During the last ice
age, males and females of the plant were restricted to the eastern
Mediterranean Basin, while the hermaphrodites' ancestors occurred in
southern Spain and present-day Morocco. Over time, when climates
warmed, they moved towards each other and now occur side by side in
northern Spain. Historical records show that, over the last 40
years, the males and females are rapidly displacing the
hermaphrodites and moving south, further into Spain.
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Mercurialis annua |
By allowing males, females and hermaphrodites to
compete for mates in experimental populations, the researchers have
now been able to explain the mechanism behind the rapid demise of
the hermaphrodites: when hermaphrodites cross with either males or
females, they produce sterile progeny (similar to a mule, which is a
sterile offspring of a cross between donkeys and horses). This is
because the two types of plant have a different number of
chromosomes: the males and females have 16, while the hermaphrodites
have 48 chromosomes. The males have a large advantage because they
produce much more pollen than hermaphrodites, and hold their flowers
on an erect stalk above the leaf canopy. This leads to a process
called 'pollen swamping,' by which the male plants father nearly all
of the offspring in the population. Females, which have the same
number of chromosomes as males, produce normal fertile progeny when
pollinated by the males, but hermaphrodites, which have a different
number, produce mainly sterile progeny. The result is the rapid
extinction of hermaphrodite populations that the researchers have
observed. This finding has implications for other plant species. For
example, in the English Lake District, the wild daffodil Narcissus
pseudonarcissusis threatened by cultivated Narcissus 'Carlton',
which has twice as many chromosomes. In the past it has been assumed
that because the two speciesproduce sterile hybrids, the wild
species is not threatened. The results for the annual mercury
suggest that the cultivated daffodil could in fact eliminate
Wordsworth's daffodils.
HOW TO CONTROL BEES (WITHOUT A
SMOKER)
Have you ever wanted to control your bees by command
as you would a dog. Just imagine if you could! Wouldn’t beekeeping
be so much easier. No more smokers; no more swarming (you’d just
tell them not to); no more stinging (unless you ordered them to
attack someone you didn’t like) and so on. Well one day you may be
able to do just that. But first you would need an ‘insbot’.
Researchers have recently succeeded in controlling cockroaches with
tiny mobile robots. The results hint at a future where we can
interact and communicate with many different kinds of animal, and
there is no reason to believe that bees wouldn’t be among
them.
Researchers recently succeeded in controlling
cockroaches with tiny mobile robots. Little bigger than a thumbnail,
the cubic insect-like robots or 'insbots' are technological marvels.
Developed under the European Commission's Future and Emerging
Technologies (FET) initiative of the IST programme as the project
Leurre, the insbots are fitted with two motors, wheels, a
rechargeable battery, several computer processors, a light-sensing
camera and an array of infrared proximity sensors. When dropped into
a small experimental area with a maze of curved walls, the robots
move, turn and stop. They can navigate their way safely by avoiding
the walls, obstacles or each other, follow the walls, congregate
around a lamp beam or even line up. When placed in the same area
with cockroaches, the robots quickly adapt their behaviour by
mimicking the animals’ movements. Coated with pheromones taken from
roaches, the infiltrator robots even fool the insects into thinking
they are real creatures.
The cockroach pheromones – a blend
of molecules developed by the project partner from the Université de
Rennes I, France – enable various forms of communication, including
recognition and attraction. For example, when a roach detects
another roach, it may approach it, move away or
stop.
Cockroaches were chosen here because their pheromones
are better understood than those found on other gregarious insects,
such as ants.Artificial agents meet natural agents
According
to the researchers, the project had its origins in collective
intelligence and behaviour in animal society, as well as the
tradition of using artificial agents to test theories about animals.
Robots have already been used to interact with some animals, such as
bees. But they cannot react to the
animals’ response. In
this project, the autonomous insbots call on specially developed
algorithms to react to signals and responses from individual
insects. This results in a chain action or reaction between the
artificial and natural agents – a two-way interaction that is unique
and very promising for sciences such as biology and robotics. Not
only did the insbots act like and interact with the insects, they
even succeeded in changing the cockroaches’ behaviour. For example,
the darkness-loving insects followed their artificial cousins
towards bright beams of light and congregated there. This process
took up to two hours, but it showed how humans might soon be able to
manipulate the behaviour of a whole colony of insects. A trick that
would delight pest-controllers and beekeepers the world
over!
LACK OF POLLINATING INSECTS
Apis UK has
often reported on the decline of pollinating insects and now we
report the matter again in the light of new research which is
showing alarming findings. The decline of birds, bees and other
pollinators may be putting plants of the world's most diverse
ecosystems at risk of extinction, according to a new study that
analyzed hundreds of field studies investigating fruit production in
hundreds of wild plant species.
The finding raises concern
that more may have to be done to protect the Earth's most
biologically rich areas. The meta-analysis was sponsored by the
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the
University of California, Santa Barbara and was funded by the
National Science Foundation. The article, "Pollination Decays in
Biodiversity Hotspots," reporting the results, is published in the
January 17 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences. and is available online at the academy's website at
www.pnas.org.
The analysis shows that ecosystems with
the greatest number of species, including the jungles of South
America and Southeast Asia and the rich shrubland of South Africa,
have bigger deficits in pollination compared to the less diverse
ecosystems of North America, Europe and Australia. The study took
several years to complete and all continents except Antarctica are
represented.
New research on the wasp society
hierarchy
Apis UK has previously reported on the wasp
hierarachy and we know that a wasps position in life can depend on
the shape and dynamism of his or her face blotches. Well now, the
journal Nature reports that researchers at UCL (University College
London) have discovered that in the work place, wasps are driven by
their status. The study, published today in Nature, shows that
lower-ranked female wasps work harder to help their queen than those
higher up the chain because they have less to lose, and consequently
are prepared to take more risks and wear themselves out. The study,
funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), reveals
that those higher up the chain and therefore with a greater chance
of being the next in line to breed are much lazier than their
lower-ranked nest-mates: rather than use up their energy in foraging
to feed the queen’s larvae, high-rankers sit tight on the nest and
wait for their chance to become queen themselves.
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Dr Jeremy Field, UCL Department of Biology, said:
“Helpers wait peacefully in an age-based queue to inherit the prize
of being the queen or breeder in the group. The oldest female almost
always becomes the next breeder. The wasps in this queue face a
fundamental trade-off: by working harder, they help the group as a
whole and as a result indirectly benefit themselves, but they
simultaneously decrease their own future survival and fecundity
because helping is costly. It involves energy-expensive flight to
forage for food, and leaving the nest is dangerous. We have found
that the brighter the individual wasp’s future, the less likely it
is to take risks by leaving the safety of its nest to forage for
food.” The defining feature of eusocial animals - including insects
like bees, ants and wasps, and vertebrates like meerkats and the
naked mole rat—is that some individuals forgo their own reproduction
to help rear the offspring of others.
In hover wasps,
helpers spend between 0 and 95 per cent of their time foraging to
feed the queen’s larvae. Previous scientific thinking indicated that
the variation in help given might be proportional to genetic
relatedness. Those less closely related to the queen would help out
less. This new study, however, shows that more distantly related
wasps aren’t in fact lazier. Instead, the team led by Dr Field,
found that it is the likelihood of future reproduction that
primarily determines a wasp’s behaviour - the more likely they are
to spawn their own young in the future, the lazier they
become.
The tests were carried out on the
non-aggressive tropical hairy-faced hover wasp - Liostenogaster
flavolineata. Both the wasp’s rank and the size of the group
were manipulated to show how these variables affected the amount of
help each individual contributed to the group. The team changed the
position of individual wasps in the social hierarchy by removing
higher ranked, older wasps, thus promoting their younger relatives.
Regardless of age, a wasp’s contribution to feeding the queen’s
young depended only on its position in the queue to inherit
queen-ship. Lower-ranked helpers, and helpers in smaller groups,
worked hardest
ARTICLES Back
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The following article has been sent in by Gillian Sentinella
of the Bedfordhire Beekeepers Association and shows just what a
pro-active association can achieve if they really want to. No doubt,
the beekeeping display at the Stockwood Park Museum will encourage
new beekeepers to take up the craft and it could give other
associations ideas for similar undertakings. Gillian Sentinella is
the author of the short film ‘Dancing with Bees’ featured in the
last issue of Apis UK. Ed.
RECALLING HERROD
HEMPSALL
A beekeeping site of great interest in
Bedfordshire.
It’s an unlikely fact that in the early 1930’s,
Luton in Bedfordshire was the centre of beekeeping. It was a
thriving town with hat manufacture as its main industry dating back
to the late 17th century, and the arrival of the railway and cheap
electricity encouraged new engineering firms to move from London,
including Vauxhall Motors. The renowned beekeeper and author William
Herrod Hempsall, moved to Luton in 1903 and opened a School of
Beekeeping soon afterwards on the steep hillside of Stockingstone
Road with more than 100 hives,. Students came from many parts of the
world to learn the craft. Just down the road from the School was
Wardown Park with a lake, bowling green, band stand and house, which
in 1931 became a museum. Herrod Hempsall set up a revolving 3 frame
observation hive with comb and bees which was maintained by members
of Bedfordshire Beekeepers Association in the following years after
his death, proving to be a permanent memory to many
people.
In 1994 a proposal was made by the Association
to move the observation hive to Stockwood Park Craft Museum on the
south side of the town where there were already 2 working skeps in
the public walled gardens, under the care of Ian Beaty; (no mention
of health and safety!) The new Bee Gallery was set up within the
rural trades section, dedicated to the memory of Herrod Hempsall and
centred around his books and equipment which were donated by Leslie
Gingell, one of his local pupils at the Beekeeping School, and an
area was allocated beside the 18th green of the golf course for an
apiary, primarily for teaching beginners the basics of beekeeping
and also to raise funds for the Association by selling honey in the
museum shop.
After 10 years in 2004, the original well
loved display in the museum needed updating and Beds Beekeepers
Association invested £2500 into a modern, interactive centre for
children including of course, an observation hive but this time with
a microphone attached to earphones for in house buzzing, a webcam
outside the building to see the bees zooming off and arriving home
loaded with pollen. In addition, there are puzzles, dead creepy
crawlies, and panels of information for those who want to find out a
bit more, and the 10 minute film ‘Dancing with Bees’ filmed
specifically for this kind of exhibition and aimed at the 4 to 94
age range. Without doubt, the partnership with Stockwood Museum
benefits both parties; the enormous interest in bees pulls in
visitors all year to the museum and the Association has fantastic
facilities for introducing the public to the craft, not only in the
permanent display in the Bee Gallery, but on many open days.
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Stockwood Park
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Stockwood Park Museum beekeeping
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There have been several reports recently in many of the major
newspapers about the huge rise in interest in beekeeping, and
Bedfordshire is following the national trend. The Association has
seen increasing numbers of beginners at courses over the past 4
years in both the north and south of the county, and this year ran a
popular ‘One Day BeekeepingWorkshop’ with 6 half hour talks to give
people a background of beekeeping and a chance to look at the bees
in a hive to see if they really wanted to take up the craft. The
apiary is still sited in the golf course and the golfers who know
the hives are there ask, without fail, if there is any honey and did
we get stung. Those that don’t know about it, send their ball
soaring into the trees when they see 15 spacemen watching them tee
off. This year, one of our young beekeepers is learning beekeeping
here with the intention of setting up hives to help the people in
his home town in Kashmir, an indication of the diversity of the town
and, we hope, an inspiration to other groups who may have similar
ideas.
Gillian Sentinella
Marking
Queens
Despite the cold start, the year in Ulster is proving
fantastic for experienced beekeepers who, by now, will be swimming
in gallons of honey. As for me, this was my second year, having
started with a single nucleus last year. All my well-considered and
carefully researched plans, made over winter, came to nothing the
day all my girls decided to leave home! I had already separated off
several perfectly formed Queen cells, together with brood, in
preparation for increasing my humble stock. Then the proverbial hit
the fan. My daughter decided to move out into her own home and I
took the day off work to help. It was a beautiful sunny morning in
May and I was up early. While I waited for the action to start I
took out the lawn mower and leisurely cut the grass. The removal van
arrived about 10.00am and immediately - the sky turned black. Not
with storm clouds but BEES. My only Queen had decide she was moving
too, regardless of the extra space I had given her and the pristine
frames of foundation adorning her newly refurbished home. This was
my first experience of swarming so I was amazed and a little
panicked. But all was not lost; hamfistedness was to save the day.
Several weeks earlier, in marking the Queen, I had missed the thorax
completely, glued her wings together and also spilt the bottle of
Tipp-ex! I quickly realised that to continue and attempt to clip her
wings too would probable prove fatal – for the Queen that is. With a
healthy dollop of white marker over both wings her majesty’s
attempts at flight caused her to plummet like a stone into the
freshly mowed grass, where she was relatively easy to find. I picked
her up, gave her a good talking to about loyalty, perseverance, the
money I had shelled out for her, and after pointing out the grass
was actually greener this side of the fence, I placed her back into
the hive.
My conclusion? You can be completely incompetent
and still keep bees. Had I not been at home to see my daughter and
the bees leave, and had I not glued up the Queen’s flying equipment
accidentally, and cut the grass so I could find her when she fell
out of the sky, it might have been a sadder ending! Though
eventually my workers all came home, my daughter is not coming back,
except to “borrow” stuff that I was sure I had two of at one
time.
From our Ulster correspondent
Bees
and Rotating Hives. (Part 3 of 5)
The time has come, what is revealed? What exciting revelation
will be made? The result is shown below.
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Resultant comb alignment
after a 10 degree
clockwise
movement at the end of nine
consecutive
days
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Disappointment, despair, there is no correlation between our
theoretical comb built in either a stationary or revolving hive.
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| Theoretical comb alignment without
rotation |
Theoretical comb alignment with
rotation |
The experiment is a failure. Let us move quickly on to something
else where success may more readily grace our endeavours. Failure,
who can abide with failure?
But surely something might be rescued from these ashes, the
comb alignment is different from anything observed before. This is
the first time ever where bees have been subjected to a 10 degree
movement each day though a total angle of 90 degrees. Are you sure
they are not trying to tell you something? Have we not been able,
with the aid of modern science, to view the actual wax attachment to
the underside of the roof? Can we not now measure the precise angle
of each comb to an accuracy of the odd degree? Look, I will give you
a clue; the comb was built between days 6-8.
Well it is true that the comb alignment, if built as per our
theory, in an East - West direction, would have occurred only on
days 6 - 9. We will draw it out to demonstrate the point more
fully.
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We are warming to our subject. By marking off the
diagram in 10 degree increments it becomes apparent that the comb
aligns itself to these angles associated with days 6 - 9 as shown,
and also the order of comb construction may be envisaged, with its
alignment to the gravitomagnetic field as depicted by the arrows
shown in red. Why should comb construction not commence until 5 days
had elapsed. Let us pause for further reflection.
To refresh
the memory regarding how a swarm of bees festoon themselves in an
empty cavity, prior to the commencement of comb construction, it is
worth re-reading the accounts given by Messrs Cowen and
Herrod-Hempsall. It is not an immediate action, time is taken to
produce wax, and also to decide upon the form of construction. The
actual stringing procedure infers a measuring up of the cavity, and
of course, regarding comb alignment, there must be a general
consensus of opinion. A few thousand bees must be of one mind. This
all takes time. One might assume the smaller the swarm the longer
this period becomes, and could be in excess of 24 hours. If an
outside force was a reference point regarding comb direction, and it
was amended by a 10 degree movement, this could confuse the bee
sufficiently to cause them to recommence their calculations. We have
moved their goal posts, not just once but repeatedly for 9
consecutive days. Now by Day 5 things are becoming desperate, no
comb built, no eggs laid, but the bees are solving the puzzle. They
realize that their calculations are correct, something is moving
their reference point. Satisfied with this solution they build
furiously on days 6-9. For them the puzzle is solved. For us the
puzzle is just beginning; have bees the ability to think and
reason?
Although at present we are considering the affect of
external forces operating within the hive, more
important influences of a less substantial nature, already existing
or being created within the hive, must eventually be appreciated and
evaluated. These items may be identified as instinct, innate
knowledge , memory, intelligence, and most important, the essence of
life itself. All are no doubt interrelated as we suspect magnetic,
gravitational, electric, and gravitomagnetic fields intermix. Indeed
they are all probably part of the same thing - an intelligent life
form. This particular example of bee behaviour, indicating their
ability to think, may have some relevance to future studies.
Fortunately we have a more immediate and simpler task of inspecting
a further hive that was rotated in an anti-clockwise direction. Let
us see whether these bees came up with a similar solution.
In this illuminating article, Chad warns us of the
dangers of beekeeping at sea!
Beekeepers
Ahoy!
Although in the past we had teased him mercilessly for
it, we owed our lives to John Whitford who had, as usual, turned up
to go fishing with a packed lunch that had been prepared for him in
a small box with his name on the outside. The small boat which held
the five branch members had been listing for several days. We had
been rationing the remains of John's packed lunch and on this third
day we were down to his last pot of sherry trifle.
The five of us
had been pulling together very well considering we hadn't had sight
of' land for so long. But now, with the prospect our food running
out, we were all secretly looking at each other with a different
perspective. Fred Swift subdued our feelings of cannibalism with
encouraging stories of bravery, all with the common theme of
survival through hardship at boarding school.
Things weren't
really that bad I suppose. We certainly caught a lot of fish, there
wasn't really much else to do. According to the coastguard, the mist
had been to blame. As the mist had descended it had hidden the fact
that we had drifted down stream rather too far. Getting caught mid
flow in the Bristol Channel hadn't helped. That, and the fact that
the combined extent of our collective seamanship was limited to
Roger Tilley's once having gone with a friend to sail a toy sailing
boat with radio controlled rudder, on the boating lake at Weston
Super Mare, when he was twelve.
'If you don't put that camera
down and stop taking pictures of me, I shall be forced to take
action, said John C. addressing Chris rather hotly.
'I just
wanted to preserve the moment, said Chris, a little crestfallen,
(Chris takes his journalism very very seriously.) This situation was
in his eyes a great scoop.
'I never want to be reminded of
drinking sea water again' said Fred looking a little green. Despite
our best efforts to stop him, he had drunk a great deal of
seawater.
'I just thought it would make a nice article for the
Branch magazine. I thought I'd call the article Adrift or
Beekeepers' ahoy'! What do you think?'
At this, we all got a
little cross with Chris. I therefore confiscated the batteries from
the camera so he still had the device to comfort him, just not the
ability to record our plight.
'I have to say that if we come out
of this alive, I think I shall stick to beekeeping in future,'
continued Chris. 'I've rather gone off fishing.'
'It was you that
got us into this mess!' returned John Whitford bitterly. ' We only
came because you kept on and on about fishing. We're beekeepers and
beekeepers are traditionally land lovers. Bee keeping is so much
less risky.'
'That's the last time I will fritter away my
precious hours sitting on a river bank pretending to be occupied and
engaged. This is a lesson, you know, telling us that we shouldn't
turn from our intended purpose.
'I don't even like eating fish'
added John C., who had given me a withering look when I suggested we
could take up golf. The five of us vowed there and then to only turn
to fishing in times of desperation when catching fish was our only
chance of survival.
Our salvation came as a winch was lowered
down from the hovering yellow Royal Navy Sea-King helicopter:
plucking us one by one from our boat. John W. was annoyed that we
had lost the twenty pound deposit that he had paid for the two hours
boat hire, but in retrospect we had a great deal to be thankful for.
There was certainly increased public awareness of the Melksham and
District Branch in the National press. Terry addressed the hundred
strong group of journalists in Plymouth harbour and the press were
all eager to hear the story of our survival.
Despite giving the
five of us a good telling-off for our dangerous antics, Terry was
keen that branch members should learn from our ordeal and I was
asked to draw up a list of the lessons learned. These lessons are as
follows:
* Packed lunches should in future be made to last
for at least four days.
* A diet of raw mackerel or other such
uncooked fish can be made more palatable if washed down with a great
deal of methyglin.
* Most importantly, Fred Swift pointed out
that in the worst case scenario, none of us had mentioned our hives
in our wills. Therefore it was generally agreed that branch members
should be urged to leave bees, hives and associated equipment to the
branch apiary in memorial.
Chad Cryer
BOOK AND FILM REVIEWS
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BOOK REVIEW
This month we are
again taking the unusual route by taking a look at another book in
Spanish, and this time a serious one entitled ‘Pests and Diseases of Bees. Prevention,
Diagnosis and Treatment.’ Written by the team of scientists at
the Research Centre for Organic Beekeeping of Cordoba University in
Spain (CAAPE), the book covers in richly illustrated detail the
biology of the hive and how it relates to diseases, how to carry out
hive manipulations with hive sanitation always in mind and then goes
through each type of disease from virus diseases through to
vertebrate pests including of course a detailed look at the Small
Hive Beetle.
The book contains a
wealth of photographs but also and importantly it gives clear,
detailed yet easily understood diagrams explaining the biological
cycle of the pests in question. Running to nearly 200 pages,
this glossy soft back book gives a slightly different perspective to
the subject than we are used to in the UK and US and should be an
essential source of information for all Spanish speaking
beekeepers.
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Diseases and Pests of Bees |
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Clear Explanatory Diagrams |
RECIPE OF THE MONTH
Back
to Top
This month we take a look at an American healing recipe rather
than food. With many of the healing recipes that have been sent to
me, or that I have read about, it is a wonder that the person on the
receiving end doesn’t explode on contact, such is the list of
ingredients, but this recipe is simple and effective (and extremely
expensive) and should cure rather than kill! Wasn’t it Poppea who
used to bathe in asses milk? And she evidently knew her stuff, so
give this one a try and see where it all ends
up.
De-stressing Bath (ideal after the swarming season
or at the end of the harvest).
Ingredients:
2 litres (4
pints) of milk. (best from a cow).
2 oz (50g) of liquid honey.
Acacia is specified but I’m not sure that is essential.
2 oz of
tincture benzoin
The following essential oils:
30 drops
orange; 10 drops cinnamon; 5 drops clove; 10 drops lemon. 5 drops
almond oil.
Any or none of your favourite fragrance oil. E.g.
lavender.
Pour into a hot bath tub with the water
pouring and whilst in the bath, soak a sponge in the liquid and
massage your body with it.
I haven’t tried this one
(yet) but I am told it is good! Ed.
FACT
FILE Back
to top
Braula Coeca. (pronounced Browler seeker). The Bee
Louse
Many beekeepers are not really aware of the small so called
bee louse that is a common inhabitant of the hive and some may
mistake it for varroa, but in fact it is a small wingless fly
perfectly evolved and adapted for life with bees in the
hive.
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The beelouse, Braula coeca Nitzsch 1818, despite its name, is not
a louse, it is a tiny wingless fly found in colonies of the honey
bee, where it lives on the bodies of the bees and literally steals
its food out of the mouth of its host. The beelouse is in the family
Braulidae, comprising two genera, Braula and
Megabraula.
Some writers have stated that the beelouse
causes little or no harm to bee colonies, but some investigators
think that Braula is harmful. The larvae are problematic because
they damage the appearance of comb honey by burrowing under the
cappings. Most beekeepers practice mechanical control unknowingly by
extracting honey because the Braula larvae are eliminated while
removing cappings before extraction. As many as 187 beelice have
been reported on a single bee queen and is found on worker, drone,
and queen honey bees. If a queen is over infested with Braula, many
beekeepers have found that she will then suffer.
This fly has been reported in Africa from Congo, Egypt, and
Morocco, in Asia from India and the Soviet Union, in Australia from
Tasmania, in most of Europe, in South America from Argentina,
Brasil, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela, and in North
America.
Identification Eggs: Eggs are white,
oval-shaped, with two lateral flanges which are flat and extend
parallel to each other and to the long axis of the egg. Imms (1942)
reported that the average length, without flanges, ranged from 0.78
to 0.81 mm and the width from 0.28 to 0.33 mm. Including the
flanges, a typical egg measured 0.84 mm by 0.42 mm. Eggs may be
deposited in various places in a hive--in empty cells, on brood cell
cappings, or on wax dirt on the floor of a colony, but only eggs
that are laid on honey cappings hatch. Incubation period for eggs
varies from two days during summer to 7.4 days during
winter.
Larvae: Larvae emerge from the attached end of
their egg where they begin constructing a tunnel under cappings and
sometimes on the walls and bottoms of cells. These tunnels give
cappings of infested comb the appearance of being intersected with
fine fractures, similar to the mines of a leaf miner. Larvae feed
upon honey and pollen grains within the wax of their tunnels.
Beelouse larvae pass through three instars, requiring from 7.1 to
10.8 days to complete larval development, depending upon the season
of the year.
Pupa: The prepupa ranges from 1 to 2.7
days and appears cream-white when viewed through the transparent
larval skin. The pupa is enclosed within the unmodified cuticle of
the last larval instar and is white or yellowish in color, 1.4 to
1.7 mm long by 0.5 to 0.75 mm wide.
Adult: The
beelouse has rudimentary eyes just above the antennae seen as pale
spots on the cuticle surface surrounded by more darkly pigmented
rings. There is no trace of wings. The tarsi are 5-segmented; each
terminal joint contains a comb-like structure, divided in the
middle, with a variable number of teeth. The combs allow Braula to
cling tightly to the host which is an evolutionary trait necessary
for life in the hive. Be careful not to confuse Braula with
varroa.
HISTORICAL NOTE Back
to topThe Virtues of HoneyHoney has been in the
news lately as a first rate antibiotic which can even defeat the
MRSA Superbug. Indeed so great is the value now of certain honeys
that some beekeepers are able to command prices per kilo many times
those that they managed to obtain previously. But was this all known
about by our forefathers. We know that in various wars in the past,
many armies on running out of conventional treatments used honey and
some used honey to start with and of course most housewives of old
used honey and other hive products for a multitude of healing
purposes. I am always one to believe that there is no smoke without
fire and that anecdotal evidence can usually lead to the truth of
the matter. So in good faith, read about what one venerable
bee-master of old thought of the curative powers of honey. I take
some examples from his tract. Is he indeed right? ….it
breedeth good blood, it openeth obstructions, and cleareth the
breasts and lights of those humours which fall from the head. It is
a sovereign medicament both for outward and inward maladies. It
helpeth the grief of the jaws, the kernels growing within the mouth
and the quinancy or inflammation of the muscle of the inward gargil;
for which purpose it is gargarized, and the mouth washed therewith.
It is drank against the biting of a serpent or a mad dog. It is good
for such that have eaten mushrooms, or have drank poppies, against
which evil the honey of roses is taken warm. It is also good for the
falling sickness, and better than wine, because it cannot rise to
the head as doth wine. It is a remedy against the surfeit; for they
that are skilful in physick, when they perceive any man’s stomach to
be overcome, they first ease it by vomit, and then (to settle the
brain and to stay the noisome fume from ascending unto the head)
they give the patient honey upon bread.
And so it goes
on. This was taken from ‘Englands Interest, or The Gentleman and
Farmers Friend by Sir J. More, 1707. What I wonder
is ‘the evil of drinking poppies’? Was this an early form of opiate
taking?
POEM OF THE MONTH Back
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This month’s poem comes from one of the greatest who to me seems
to be able to say it all with very few words. The extract quoted was
appended to Burns’ original song by the Edinburgh music publisher,
John Hamilton.
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Blaw, blaw ye wastin winds, blaw
soft
Among the leafy trees,
With gentle gale from hill
and dale
Bring hame the laden bees. |
Robert Burns, Of a’ the airts…
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SHORT STORY Back to top
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I’ll do it
tomorrow |
Rolling Stones Gather No Moss
Mick
Bickers pulled in behind a familiar maroon car at the end of Yew
Tree Road where it runs into Moor Green Lane. As he locked the door,
he glared up and down the road as though daring any lurking vandals
to reveal themselves. Never happy away from his home apiary he
cursed himself for giving in too easily. But he and Trev Dunt had
been friends for many years and Trev could be very persuasive. Yes,
Mick thought, Trev could be very persuasive especially when he
sensed the opportunity to show off his generous nature by responding
to a fellow County member’s call for help. And then there was that
John Magic, a grand bloke, a good apiary manager no doubt but
really! ‘John Magic; well named’, muttered Mick. ‘Waves his wand and
we all come running and not just his own Branch members. No
beekeeper in the County is safe’.
Wrapped in his disgruntlement, Mick was scarcely aware of the
gardens through which his path took him. He was equally oblivious of
the early summer’s blossom which seemed to nod winningly at him in a
doomed attempt to charm him into a happier mood. At the end of the
garden which fell away parallel to Moor Green Lane, the path swung
to the left. The shrubs and specimen trees opened out into parkland.
Mid-slope some hundred yards ahead, Mick’s attention was caught by
an instantly recognised profile. As his mouth formed the word
“Trev!”, it jammed, wide-open. Although the lower part of his body
was concealed by a line of shrubs which rose up a fairly sharp
incline into a lightly wooded area, there was no mistaking his
friend, Trev. But what was he doing? He seemed to be walking upwards
but without progressing. The movement of his head and torso recalled
the to and fro action of some Hasidic Jew attending to his devotions
before the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem or the continuous operation of
a shadoof or the swinging head and neck of a loping giraffe or
simply the normal body motion of a man walking up a hill. But
without advancing a step, not going anywhere! At this moment Mick’s
lips released their hold on his friend’s name. “Trev! Trevor! Trevor
Dunt! What are you playing at, Trev?”
Trev stopped, turned and shielding his eyes with his hand held
horizontal, stared in Mick’s direction. It was one of those moments
which, while fleeting, in recollection appeared an eternity. Slowly
at first then quickening in tempo like the opening clarinet
glissando in Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue played backwards, Trev’s
image started into descent. Continuing to maintain the saluting
attitude of a brave captain going down with his ship, except that he
was going down sideways, Trev slid smoothly down the slope then
slipped from sight. Mick began to run…well, began a rapid shamble.
In a moment he was pushing through a shrub to reach his friend.
He found Trev sprawled in a scatter of garden stones beside an
upturned handcart. An unbroken trail of wet soil marked Trev’s
passage down the sloping pathway to his present boggy resting place.
“Stoned again, are we?” observed Mick. Trev’s response was a
meaningful silence calculated to wither but which appeared to leave
Mick surprisingly unaffected. “What were you thinking? There must be
2 hundredweight of stones here! They call me Mick Bickers, not Mick
Jagger! I mean, not even Lazarus could have moved that lot of stone
on his own! It’s always the same! You read in The County Beekeeper
that Highbury Park wants a hand with drainage and soft-hearted T.
Dunt Esq. comes running! Never mind blooming Birmingham! If they
wanted to do something with their ruddy flood of mud then they ruddy
could and should have done it sooner!”
It was clear that Mick’s
concern for his friend had called forth a darker personality from
his not usually unsociable psyche. In an effort to voice the defence
of a fellow Branch, Trev’s lips parted only to succeed in releasing
a muddy bubble which burst marking his cheeks with the symptoms of a
plague victim.
********************************
Diacritical Path Analysis
Some time later, as
he set his foot on the familiar path of his home apiary, Trevor Dunt
literally experienced a renewed spring in his step from the first
resilient contact with the freshly strewn bark chippings. A few
paces behind shuffled Mick Bickers, eyes fixed on the veil which
bobbed between his friend’s shoulder blades like a dislocated halo.
In a tone of insincere concern, Mick addressed the veil. “That
Highbury Park fiasco! You should have told the bees you were going
and you should have told them sooner.” The veil disdained a
response. Mick renewed his injunction. “You would have had no
problem if you had told the bees! And you should have done it
sooner!” The veil stopped bobbing, paused and rejoined, “Otiose,
superstitious folklore!”
There was a moment’s silence during
which Trev had stopped and turned towards his friend while Mick
tried to determine whether or not Trev had accepted his advice. To
be on the safe side, Mick opted for a change of subject.
- How
long before you took your Bayvarol strips out, Trev?
- A couple
of months.
- Eh!? You should have done it sooner! So it’ll be
Apistan next time, will it?
- Eumm. M’yes. Uh. That is… Well,
I’ll probably… You know…
- You don’t know which you used, do you?
Typical! You just can’t bring yourself to keep proper records, can
you?
Trev’s eyes narrowed in a brief but genuine reflex of
unaccustomed anger. “I can assure you, Michael,” he formulated
carefully, “I can categorically assure you that I take my
responsibilities vis-à-vis pyrethroid resistance very
seriously.”
There was a further moment’s silence which Mick opted
to break with a further change of subject.
“How’s the mead, this
year?” he asked.
“I thought I would try a change of recipe.” Trev
replied.
“What? Another fancy mixture? “ snorted Mick. “It’s a
bit late at your age to plan to be buried with your own 20-year old
mead.”
Warned by a sudden protean change of expression and
wondering if the Highbury Park incident may have caused more
psychological trauma than he had at first thought, Mick reverted to
his favoured strategy of encouraging Trev to talk himself back to
good humour. “Tell me, Trev” he coaxed. ”What would you suggest as a
good honey drink which could be ready for next year’s County
Show?”
“Well, if you started now,” said Trev, “you might try
elderflower and honey. Say 3lb of honey to the gallon and if you
have no fresh elderflower, Marks & Spencer’s or Sainsbury’s do a
nice concentrate.”
“Do you think they would go well together?
What would call a drink like that? Melomel?” asked Mick.
“As
elderberry has been called the English grape, perhaps pyment would
be more apt,” suggested Trev, growing expansive. “The elderflower
has notes of Riesling or Müller Thürgau – both grapes of a temperate
country – and Chardonnay has notes of honey and so the blend
recommends itself.”
“Müller Thürgau? What’s the funny mark over
the ü?” enquired Mick.
“Oh that’s an umlaut or more properly a
diacritical mark, a diaresis,” replied Trev.
“A
dia…what?”
“Diaresis”
“Of course,” said Mick. “Dia
…whatsaname.” He stared at Trev, head on one side like a robin
eyeing a grub. “Yes dia…thingy.” Mick paused and then added without
even the suggestion of a smirk, ”You know. Listening to you, that is
exactly the word that comes to mind.”
********************************
The bees tolled
‘Funny how the louder you hear the
bees, the quieter the apiary seems,’ thought Mick as he set to open
one of Trev’s hives. He eased the hive tool through the propolis and
removed the roof. Pairs of stones, 1 large with 1 small, were
arranged in a quincunx on the crownboard. As the crownboard came
away, the stones shifted, slid towards and then over the edge. With
a sound like ice-cubes being dropped into a summer jug of Pimm’s,
the stones came to rest at Mick’s feet in a miniature parody of the
Highbury Park incident. Like the full moon emerging from behind a
cloud, Trev’s face appeared above a ceanothus. “What in the name of
gad’s lymph do you think you’re playing at with my hive log?!!!”, he
screamed. “Calm down! Calm down!” called back Mick. “These are
stones, not logs!” Evidently impressed by Mick’s observation, the
moon face sank silently back into it’s concealment behind the cloud
of ceanothus.
An uneasy peace re-settled over the apiary. Out of
view of each other, the two men proceeded with their separate tasks.
As he worked, Mick pondered Trev’s unstable moods. ‘It’s just not
like him,’ he thought. ‘He must be liverish. Still the O.A.P., Old
Apicultural Procrastinator, has finally got round to keeping some
sort of records. He should have done it sooner.’ They worked on.
Opening another of Trev’s hives, Mick shook his head and muttered to
himself. ‘Here’s another one that needs a super. I don’t suppose for
one minute that he’s got any frames ready. It’s always the same. If
I ask him if he’s made up any shallow BS frames, it’ll be, I’ll do
it tomorrow.’ They worked on.
Dusk was beginning to darken
the apiary. Mick looked to the sky and felt a first stutter of rain.
Trev remained out of sight behind the shrubs at the far end.
Deciding it was time to leave, Mick was about to call out to his
friend then changed his mind. ‘Let him sulk if that’s what he wants.
I’m off.’ He made sure that his smoker was out forcing a twist of
grass into the end vent, slipped his hive tool into a side pocket of
his rucksack and had a last look round. Satisfied, he stepped out
onto the wood-chipped path which led away in a lazy S-shape between
the head-high banks of bramble and fireweed. The first droplets were
now an established drizzle.
Suddenly he exclaimed out loud,
“Bigger-Beggar-Bagger!” A pause, then apologetically, “Oops, pardon
me, bees! His Evening News! I’ve still got Trev’s paper!” Cursing
his forgetfulness, Mick dropped the rucksack, jerked open the draw
string and roughly retrieved the paper. Back he went to the apiary,
his footfall quiet on the wood-chip. He hurried up to the large
ceanothus where, abruptly, he stopped and looked. Trev was standing
in front of a hive, veil thrown back, bare-headed, quite still apart
from the movement of his lips and the small channels of drizzle
which marked his cheeks. Mick stifled an involuntary snigger and
almost out loud chuckled to himself, ‘Well, just look at him! He’s
telling the bees! He should have done it sooner! Still better late
than never! Heh-heh-heh… Better not disturb the superstitious old
fraud. Heh-heh-heh… I’ll give him his Evening News later.
Heh-heh-heh…’ Stuffing the paper into a side pocket, he retraced his
steps. Mick was still chuckling as he bent to retrieve his rucksack
from the wood-chipped path. Preoccupied, he did not notice the
blackberry runner reaching towards him as he stooped nor did he feel
the soft tug as the thorns picked his pocket clean of Trev’s
paper.
It was raining steadily when Trev at last emerged onto the
path out of the apiary. There was no sign of his paper which lay
just off the wood-chip, hidden by a drooping swag of rain-heavy
grass and fireweed. The sodden newsprint was already barely legible,
a fragment of a grainy picture with a partial news snippet;
News in Brief
.. regret to announce the tragic death of Elizabeth
Dunt, aged 32, daughter of Trevor and Florence Dunt, after a losing
battle with cancer. The
family…
********************************
Ron Fisher
LETTERS Back
to top
Dear Editor
Attn: New Product
Hi! I am Randy Johnson an
inventor. I have a new kind of outdoor jump suit and I am looking
for a manufacturer to license this and put it on the market for me.
This jump suit will be good for hunting, fishing, landscaping, bee
keeping or any kind of farm work, For more info you can contact
invent-tech by email at products@invent-tech.com , or by phone at
1-800-940-9020 , ex 2230 and ask for more info on the sting saver
file # 463369. This jump suit will help keep the body cool and safe
from harmful stings and bites. You can also contact me at ,
randyj40@hotmail.com, or randynight41667@yahoo.com. I think this
product will be good for you and your company. Thank you.
I’M
LOOKING FORWARD TO HEARING FROM YOU.
Randy Jonson
(Any
clothing manufacturers out there wanting to develop a new bee suit?
Ed.)
Dear David
Can you help via Apis -Uk to
source suppliers of honey jars? It appears that Bristol Bottle
Company are in administration. Do we have a general suppliers list
online?
Martin Gilmore
Dear Sir
The
Century Foundation, Bangalore in association with Bangalore
University, India is organizing the “International Workshop on
Strategies for the Integrated Beekeeping Development in South Asian
Countries” from November 13-14, 2006 in New Delhi. The FAO of
the UN is supporting the scheduled workshop with a view to promote
integrated beekeeping in SAARC countries.
The proposed
meeting will address the possible strategies to integrate beekeeping
development in South Asian Countries for sustainable
livelihoods.
ON behalf of the Organizing Committee, I
take this opportunity to invite you to participate in the
deliberations of the scheduled workshop.
For details
of the workshop please contact :
Dr. V.
Sivaram
Organizing Secretary
International Workshop
on Strategies for the Integrated Beekeeping Development in South
Asian Countries
Dept. of Botany
Bangalore
University
Bangalore – 560056, India
e.mail: mailto:%20sivaram900@yahoo.co.uk
or mailto:%20drvsivaram@gmail.com
Phone:
+91-09845514004
Fax: +91-080-23219295
2 to 8 July THE ROYAL
SHOW BBKA is planning a comprehensive display of bees and
beekeeping at the Royal Show, Stoneleigh on 2-5 July 2006. This will
be located in the new Countryside Smallholders area. To volunteer as
steward send your name, address, telephone number, (e-mail) to Clive
Joyce National Beekeeping Centre, Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire, CV8
2LG.
8 July Thorne’s
Open Day, Wragby bargains from 9.00 a.m.
11 – 13 July The Great Yorkshire Show
2006 at the Showground, Harrogate includes daily demonstrations
of bees at work in the Bee Garden and Observation Hives in the
Flower Hall.
Friday-Saturday 21 - 23
July Devon Beekeepers Association Summer Conference at Exeter
University. For more information Download Booking Form [159KB
PDF]
30 July – 4 August
Social Insect Meeting: The XV Congress of the International
Union for the Study of Social Insects will be held in Washington,
D.C. For more information, go to: http://www.iussi.org/IUSSI2006.html
11 – 12 August
Shrewsbury Flower Show Alongside, the Shropshire Beekeepers
Association will be staging fascinating displays, reflecting the
wide range of interest in everything to do with bees, from honey to
mead and other homemade wines. Members of the association believe
that their display at Shrewsbury Show is second only to the annual
National Honey Show.
13 - 14
November INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON “INTEGRATED
BEEKEEPING DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTH ASIAN COUNTRIES” , New Delhi,
see Editor’s letters above
QUOTE OF THE MONTH Back
to top
I hope that everybody read the quote for last
month as it could contribute to a long and healthy life for all. It
was of course that famous Roman gardener Pollio who said it in
answer to the question by the great Augustus and I’m sure that you
all knew that. Well now turn your attention to the following easily
recognised and well-known tract.
The Honey-bags steal from the humble
bees,
And for night tapers, crop their waxen thighs,
And light
them at the fiery glow-worm’s eyes.
Editor: David Cramp Submissions
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