Adventuresinbeeland's Blog

It’s fun to investigate what people search for to find my blog. I’ve noticed a wiggling, shaking and bum-raising theme:

A bee bum.

‘Why do bees wiggle their bums’
&
‘Why do bees shake their bum’
&
‘Why do bee butts pulse’
&
‘Why do bees put their bums in the air’

Well, here’s some potential answers…

1. Why do bees shake their bum?

One reason is to dance! The well-known waggle dance tells honey bees where food sources over 100m away are located. It’s a figure of eight shape with the bum waggle in the middle. The dancer will stop to exchange the nectar she’s collected with ‘watching’ workers so that they know what they’re looking for (I say watching but they’re really feeling her vibrations, as the dances are done in the dark of the hive).

The direction of the dance on the vertical face of the comb indicates the direction of the flowers in relation to the sun. As honey bees can see polarized light, the sun does not have to be shining for the dance to be successful. The nearer and more high quality the forage, the faster the dance and the more waggles in the middle.

There are also other types of honey bee dances that involve abdomen waggles/vibrations:

• round (tells other foragers there is food somewhere within 15m of the hive)
• transition (halfway between a round and waggle dance, if food is between 15 and 100m away)
• buzzing runs (an excited dance. The worker runs through the colony buzzing her wings. Other workers she runs into will pick up her movement and start running around buzzing too. It’s used as a signal for a swarm to exit the hive or take off once a new home has been found.)
• DVAV (dorsoventral abdominal vibrating dance) (get a move on – a worker will mount or grab another bee and vibrate their abdomen on top of her. Used to recruit more foragers during a nectar flow.)

In my previous post on Bee communication I went into more detail about the various meanings of honey bee vibrations and movements.

2. What does it mean when a honey bee butt moves in and out or pulses?

This search suggests the observer was not seeing a communication dance but something else – breathing!

Bees have no lungs but move oxygen into their bodies through breathing tubes (tracheae), which are connected to surrounding air through multiple holes in their body called spiracles.

In his book ‘The Biology of the Honey Bee’ (1987), Mark L.Winston explains that “When the bee is inactive gas exchange can operate simply by diffusion, but during periods of increased activity bees pump their abdomens to increase gas exchange” (p.34).

This pumping movement makes the abdomen move rhythmically as oxygen goes in – which could be the ‘in and out’ movement the searcher was thinking of. A bit like us breathing more heavily and panting after we’ve been running fast.

3. Why do bees put their bums in the air?

Honey bee workers will raise their abdomens in the air to expose a gland called their Nasonov gland. An scent attractive to other bees is released by this gland. The bees will fan their wings while raising their bottoms, to disperse and spread the Nasonov scent.

Nasonov is used by the bees to mark previously scentless locations such as water or a new colony location. I have seen my bees do it when their hive was moved a couple of feet, presumably to help returning foragers find their way home. Similarly, when a virgin queen leaves the hive to mate, workers will mark the entrance with Nasonov pheromone to guide her back.

Nasonov gland scenting

A bee bum.

Wine!

There was a surprise treat for Ealing beekeepers this weekend – Pat had brought us some mulled wine, which he heated up and dished out to eager takers. He gleefully told us that unlike most recipes, his doesn’t involve burning off most of the alcohol (he followed Felicity Cloake’s ‘How to make perfect mulled wine‘ method).

Pat with his mulled wine

We also had a bit of a feast to go with the wine – mince pies, baguette, cheese and cake. Well it is Christmas. The bees huddle up and eat and so do we.

Api-Bioxal

With this warming fuel in our bellies we even managed to do a bit of beekeeping. In the association apiary hives are given a one-off anti-varroa treatment of oxalic acid around December/January time. Those of you outside the UK may not know that UK beekeepers can no longer legally use generic oxalic acid crystals and should use Api-Bioxal, a Veterinary Medicines Directorate approved product containing oxalic acid, instead. Of course you can still buy oxalic acid crystals, which are cheaper than Api-Bioxal, but you would technically be breaking the law if you used them for anything other than ‘hive cleansing’. Would anyone find out… probably not… but in an association apiary things need to be done by the book, so on Saturday we trickled Api-Bioxal on the bees.

Apibioxal drizzling

I’m happy to say that both our hives were bursting with bees. They were not in a tight cluster and the day was warm enough that some colonies were flying. It’s a quick job to trickle 5ml of the Api-Bioxal syrup mix over each seam of bees. They were gentle on us and the most difficult part was closing up afterwards without squashing any. The National Bee Unit estimates it should have a 90-95% efficiency rate – you can never get all the mites but you can get a satisfying number.

Bee Music

Exciting news for bee music lovers – on Wednesday 21st at 10am BBC 6 Music have a bee-themed show, as BE will be performing their 2016 album ONE, which was created for the Hive installation at Kew Gardens using a live feed of bee colony sounds. If you can’t listen live you can catch up with it afterwards. 

Happy Christmas everyone!

Last week Emma and I met up to check on our two hives. It was a warm day for November and we wanted to make sure our larger colony was set up well for winter, with not too much empty space which the bees might struggle to heat.

Here’s Emma glowing as she lights up the smoker. Particularly toasty feet – she had two pairs of socks on!

We had been considering removing the super and overwintering the bees on a single brood box, but we found they were covering several frames in the super and appeared to be using the honey. So instead we made up some insulated frames to place either end of the super, which should help keep them cosy. They also have plenty of silver foil thermal insulation sheets in the top of the hive (the kind you buy in rolls to help insulate lofts and walls).

Below is a FLIR thermal camera image of our polystyrene nuc. Inside the bees are doing great, they are covering all the frames and were bringing back two colours of pollen, dark and light yellow. I expect one is ivy but am unsure what the other might be.

I am skeptical about how exact that 11.4C reading is, as I would expect the colony to have brood, with frames containing brood kept nearer 34-35C by the bees.  I also took a photo of a empty hive and found the camera read a similar temperature of around 9C! Philip over at the Mud Songs beekeeping blog has a useful post on Beekeeping With a “Flir One for Android”, with links to tutorials in the comments. I wish I had more time to investigate the software, but everyday life with Tommy is pretty full-on.

Look how much extra comb the nucleus bees have been busy building along the top of the glass.  We have left them some fondant in the feeder hole.

Mouseguards are on now. The next thing to do will be oxalic acid treatment in December. Now that the law has changed, this should be done with Api-Bioxal. Annoying as it is a bit more expensive and doesn’t come ready-mixed.

Best of luck to everyone over-wintering your bees.

It’s easy to take certain things in life for granted – at work, at home, in our local environment. We get used to things being the way they are. And then suddenly they might change very quickly, leaving us reeling. Last year my neighbours cut down a beautiful fruit tree which used to blossom in their front garden. I’m sure they had their reasons. Perhaps it cut out their light. Still, I miss that tree.

In London we can never assume our green space is going to stay green. We are constantly on the back foot as time and again developers come after land we thought belonged to the local community.

And so it is with Northfields allotments, where Tom and I share a plot. It will come within the 10% of the allotments which Pathways, the housing charity that owns the allotments, plans to build on. They are aiming to create 18 new social homes for the elderly and four private homes for sale. For Halloween the plot holders got together to hold a pumpkin trail running through the allotments, to raise awareness of what will be lost if we don’t prevent the building work. Thousands of people turned up to see the pumpkins and enjoy hot soup, mulled wine and a BBQ, plus face painting, a tombola and cake/jam/honey stalls.

Here’s a few photos of the allotments so you can see their beauty too. The Chief Executive of Pathways has suggested we could have allotments on the roofs of the new homes, but we can hardly relocate our apple and cherry tree up there.

The photo above was taken using a FLIR thermal camera for the iPhone. It’s a very light little camera. I want to take more photos using it as the season goes on, to see how the cluster moves over winter. Need to read the manual some more though as I think I’m not using it to its full capabilities. Phillip has done a useful post on ‘Beekeeping with a Flir One for Android‘ on his Mud Songs blog – a great blog about beekeeping in chilly Newfoundland by the way.

These allotments are home to stag beetles, birds, bees, butterflies and many other vulnerable small creatures. They’re a wildlife haven in a busy urban area. It’s so sad to think of losing them. We do need more affordable homes and social housing but should we destroy all our green space to do so?

To read more about the proposed development, see:

• Dean Court Redevelopment – Pathways website info on the proposals
• Northfields Allotments under threat – local news article on the allotments
• Thousands enjoy spooky goings on at Northfields allotments – all about the Halloween pumpkin trail
• Save Northfields Allotments – Facebook page set up by the allotments committee

Autumn has come to the apiary. Crisp dry leaves litter the floor. Some flowers are still around – purple michaelmas daisies, ivy and the last of the himalayan balsam along canal banks. The bees come and go, but no longer in the same numbers or with the urgency they had earlier in the season.  They are winding down, preparing for the long retreat.

I took Tommy for his first visit to the apiary. He seemed to enjoy the attention of being the youngest beekeeper there, even if he couldn’t join in with the cake testing. He was asleep when I first got to the apiary but woke up just as I started topping up the feeders with syrup, so no time for further beekeeping! Luckily big Tom was able to transfer our smallest colony into a poly nuc for winter. I have never overwintered a nuc so fingers crossed.

We had a triple whammy of sweet treats this week – Clare’s chocolate and banana bread, Jones’s lemon honey cake and my chocolate biscuits. Plus tea of course.

Jonesy was testing his lemon honey cake for the National Honey Show at the end of October. The recipe it has to be made to is on the National Honey Show website (class 85). Most of us thought the cake was very nice, moist and light, though not everyone agreed and he did also get some feedback that it was too dry! Does anyone have any tips for winning the cake class? I quite fancy making the honey fruit cake recipe.

Here’s a little bee climbing up inside a lily.

I have been missing my bees. It is tricky visiting them as so far Tommy has refused to drink his milk from a bottle, meaning that I’m the only person who can feed him. It is easily a two hour round trip to the apiary by public transport and he usually feeds every 1-2 hours in the day. So you can see the difficulty. However on Saturday Drew drove us down and entertained him for a while, so that I could concentrate on a little beekeeping.

I was enchanted to find new comfy picnic tables and a much improved fence. Tea and cake at the apiary will taste even better now.

Emma and I have sold off a lot of equipment, Tom built us a lovely new equipment stand and Emma has done some tidying, so our once towering equipment empire is now much more manageable.

After several days of a freakishly warm September, in contrast Saturday was overcast and chilly. So I didn’t inspect but did some tidying – removed the empty Apiguard trays and ekes, took out the varroa monitoring boards which were taped up for the Apiguard treatments and topped up the syrup feeders.

Melissa’s colony is smaller than we would like, so I added a couple of dummy boards to help them keep warm. We may need to put them in a nuc over winter.

It felt a bit painful visiting the bees, a reminder that I have been neglecting some parts of my life. But it was also nice to lose myself in the actions of caring for them. Lift the hive roof off, lay it down on the ground, gently lift off the feeder and prise off the crown board. Physical work is satisfying.

I spend a lot of time walking around to keep Tom entertained. In one of my local parks these pretty pink and white autumn crocuses cyclamen (thanks Lucy Garden for correcting me in the comments!)  are flowering. I noticed a little brown carder bee visiting them.

Ivy flowers are out now too – an important late source of forage for many pollinators. There’s even a bee which specialises in visiting them, the Ivy bee, Colletes hederae. It forages almost exclusively on ivy’s delicate green and yellow flowers, flying only from September to mid-November. The Bees, Wasps & Ants Recording Society (BWARS) has a Colletes hederae mapping project, so keep an eye out for these bees if you live in southern England or Wales. They were first recorded as new to Britain in 2001 when Ian Cross discovered specimens at Langton Matravers in Dorset.

Hoverfly on ivy

A short visit but I hope to go again soon.

Thanks to a comment left on my blog, I found out about a fun walking project being carried out by activist and gardener Meg Beresford, called ‘Let’s Make a Beeline’.

Meg is walking for 8 days between Aug 30th until Sept 6th – from Edinburgh Botanical Gardens to her home in Wiston Lodge, Scotland – to raise money for a bee-themed weekend gathering there. Each day she is covering 10 kilometres (6.2 miles), as bee expert Dave Goulson has found that a bumblebee can travel up to 10 kilometres to make its way home. At the gathering she plans to “bring together internationally renowned authors, speakers and academics to engage in bee conversation”, with bee themed workshops and music.

You can follow Meg’s adventures via her blog at makeabeeline.org, which she is updating daily. Along her route she is visiting gardens and other bee friendly projects to connect with other like minded folk. I am enjoying reading about her travels and seeing the beautiful scenery of Scotland. She also has a donations page.

It cheers me up to know that other people are out there that care about nature, in a week when I’ve heard of depressing developments both locally and globally: in Ealing some of our treasured local allotments will be lost to a new housing project, while in South Carolina millions of bees have been killed by spraying, partly because inadequate prior warnings were given to beekeepers.

Writing is difficult at the moment. It’s rare that I get the chance to sit down and type without Tommy’s eyes popping open and requiring attention. But here are a few photos from my walks round the local parks and Kew Gardens.

Red clover 

An important plant for bees, particularly bumblebees. Clover florets (florets are the individual flowers that make up the flower head) drop once pollinated so that bees know not to bother visiting them. When red clover first flowers it has too deep a flower for a honey bee to reach the nectar, but if the clover is cut and then grows back, the flowers are shorter and can be accessed by honey bees.

White clover 

The legume family, including clovers, vetches and trefoils, have special bacteria in their root nodules. These bacteria are able to turn nitrogen from the air into nitrates that enable the plants to manufacture protein for growth – in other words, they make their own fertilizer. This means they can afford to put more protein into their pollen, making it especially nutritious to bees.

White clover nectar is also very important for bees. According to an information board I saw recently at Kew Gardens, white clover contributes more nectar than any other plant species in the UK. Elizabeth Gowing describes clover honey in her ‘Little Book of Honey‘ as “sweet and light, with a citrus tang which changes to a sourish aftertaste that stops it being sickly to eat”.

Ragwort 

When I think of July flowers, I think of yellows and purples. Bright yellow ragwort flowers grow alongside members of the thistle family in all the wilder parts of my local park. They’re tough and can grow on waste land, road sides, rough grassy areas etc. The plants are an important food source for orange & black striped Cinnabar moth caterpillars. Ragwort contains toxic alkaloid substances, which the caterpillars cleverly absorb and assimilate, to become unpalatable to predators.

Celia Davis in The Honey Bee Around & About (2007) describes ragwort as being “very attractive to bees… likely to produce quantities of extractable honey which smells horrible when it is fresh. If it is allowed to stand and granulate, the flavour improves and some beekeepers use it to blend with other, less flavoursome honeys.”

Clive de Bruyn is also positive about ragwort honey, commenting in his classic book Practical beekeeping (1997) “The honey is a deep yellow with a strong flavour thought by some to be obnoxious. I personally find that it adds a bit of interest.” Has anyone reading tried it?

Some more yellow flowers below – a sunflower, the one with pink petals I think is a species of echinacea and I’m not sure what the flower with a bumble bee in the middle is called – any ideas?

Presumably it is the sunflower nectar the bees are after, as a number of experts I’ve heard speak have said that sunflower pollen contains a particularly poor percentage of crude protein – only around 13% compared to 22-24% for an average pollen.

A honey bee forager – had she watched a dance first?

Bees on sunflower

Thistles, teasels and knapweeds

I find the different members of the thistle and teasel family hard to tell apart. They come in various shades of purple and levels of prickliness! Below are photos of a bumblebee on what I think is common teasel and a honey bee on what I think is a species of thistle. Teasel seeds are an important winter food for some birds, such as goldfinches. Interestingly there is some evidence that teasels may be partially carnivorous and able to absorb nutrients from dead insects in rainwater which gathers in a cup-like receptacle formed by leaves on their stem – see ‘Carnivory in the Teasel Dipsacus fullonum — The Effect of Experimental Feeding on Growth and Seed Set‘.

The pics below were taken by Drew on a better quality camera, as you can tell. I’m not quite sure what purple flowers these are, so if you do know please leave a comment!

Some more purple flowers – verbena, cornflower and globe thistle.

Bumblebee on globe thistle

Honey bee on cornflower

Verbena boraniensis

Himalayan balsam

Recognise this? It grows in watery areas, so you can see it along the edge of canals and rivers. An invasive weed, but useful for beekeepers. It leaves a light grey pollen stripe on the middle of a honey bee’s back, the part she can’t quite reach to clean.

Blackberry bramble

Over now in London, but the flowers continued during early July. We have blackberries available to pick already. It grows everywhere of course so is very useful for our bees. Did you know that there is a special word for the scientific study of brambles – batology?

Homo sapiens

A young and sprightly example of the human genus. Not known to attract bees. Does gain attention from elderly ladies on the bus.