French Honey bee swarm in August - too late to survive?

Honeybee swarms that issue from colonies that live in hollow trees, cavities in stone walls, roof spaces and such like are always of interest to me as they have invariably developed the ability to survive without all the treatments and manipulations that beekeepers generally use and to my mind these are the survivor bees we need for the future.

This little piece is about one such swarm…….

To my surprise I was called to a bee swarm on the 18^th August this year which is extremely late in the season but these things do happen and after asking the caller a few questions to verify it really was a swarm of bees I prepared a ruchette, (which is a small hive or nuc box in English), popped it in the car and set off.

Sure enough, when I arrived there was the small swarm clustered close to the ground attached to an Oleander shrub about 20 metres from the persons’ house where it had come from. Remarkably the roof of the house has three separate bee colonies in it, one on each eave and one in the ridge and they have apparently been there for several years which goes some way to disproving the widely held view that left to themselves honey bees won’t nest close together – these are no more than 6 or 7 metres apart in total.

Click photos to enlarge

A small swarm at that time of year will almost certainly be a swarm that the colony has produced in addition to its main or prime swarm that will have been larger and earlier in the year. The conventional wisdom is that secondary swarms or after-swarms are issued in the first week or so following the prime swarm and contain a virgin Queen and although normally the first virgin Queen to hatch will kill the others in their cells before they hatch this isn’t always the case and exceptionally over a period of some weeks there could possibly be a 3^rd, 4^th or even 5^th swarm all lead by a Virgin Queen if the issuing colony is severely restricted for space or genetically inclined to swarm which can apparently be the case. There are other reasons put forward for after-swarms but that isn’t really important here as this particular very small swarm had a mated Queen and didn’t issue until the 18th August, (April – June being the normal time period for swarming here).

Housing the swarm in the Ruchette was easy with a little persuasion following which I took them back to my place.

Next there is the tricky matter of giving them a fighting chance of becoming a viable colony at this late stage of the year, something they would be unlikely to have without help. When a swarm moves into its new home it has nothing, no comb, no stores and no brood. This is a period when the bees must work hard and fast in constructing comb, fetch both nectar and pollen to enable the raising of new bees. Even if conditions are good it will be nearly 4 weeks before there will be any new bees during which time the size of the colony will be diminishing as bees die. In this case that would take us to the middle of September when the season is more or less finished apart from Ivy, a few garden flowers and perhaps some flowering cover crops / green manures, phacelia, mustard, fodder radish being the most widely grown, certainly not enough for so few bees to provide themselves with winter stores.

With this in mind the following morning I immediately put a top feeder on with syrup and continued keeping it topped up every day until the beginning of October when I started giving them slightly diluted honey using a simple modification to the inner cap of the feeder by drilling some holes in it to make the honey available to the bees.

All this feeding has given the bees the ability to increase their colony size and bring the ruchette up to winter weight with stores of honey before the end of October. All I can do now hope that they will get through the winter, especially as they are from an unmanaged colony which as I mentioned at the outset tend to have good survival traits.  

Fingers crossed, Chris

Spring bees in France - solitary and bumble

Living where we do it's highly unlikely that I will see anything but the most common species of either solitary bees or bumble bees and even those are under increasing pressure as almost all the available land surface is constantly plowed for the production of cereals and crops for the animal feed industry. It's mainly the ground nesting species that are suffering although increasingly people also spray insecticides on the solitary species that nest in the outside walls of their houses or block the tiny holes and spaces they use. Many people also spray ground nesting bees in their gardens but I'm sure in most cases this isn't malicious but simply because people don't know what they are or the important role they play in our environment.

Of course even the common species are a joy to me and I see a reasonably large number at our place. Here are a few I've managed to spot so far this spring which given the rather poor weather it isn't too bad. 

Click on or tap photos to enlarge.

Male Andrena fulva, Tawny mining bee, not managed to get a decent photo of a female yet, perhaps when the rain stops.

Female Andrena haemorrhoa, Early or Red tailed mining bee. Females of this species are easily identified by the combination of a foxy brown thorax and foxy brown tip to the tail.

Female Andrena nitida, Grey patched mining-bee.

Andrena gravida, Banded or white bellied mining bee. Probably a female judging by size alone and what a stunningly pretty bee. 

Male Andrena cineraria,  Ashy mining bee. A species that may be benefiting from the extensive cultivation of Oil seed rape in the region, (or in much of France), as only takes pollen from certain Cruciferous plants, (mustards, rapes, charlocks etc).

The above Ashy mining bee was found about 20cm, (8 inches), from this Nomada lathburiana, Lathbury's Nomad which is a "cuckoo bee" or cleptoparasite for the Ashy mining bee. The Nomada female detects incomplete host cells which are still open and being provided with food and places her egg in it. When the Nomada hatches it will destroy the egg or the larva of the Andrena species and consume the provisions. 

Male Anthophora plumipes, Hairy footed flower bee having a few moments rest from feeding and trying to defend a patch of violets from other males. Haven't seen any females yet this year. 

Queen Bombus pratorum,  Early bumblebee or early-nesting bumblebee.

Xylocopa violacea, Carpenter bee. Always plenty of these here, (just let one out of the house that came down the chimney). A docile bee that frightens some people that don't know what they are. 

Now when is that rain going to stop so I can go outside and get on with the garden, (and play).

Chris

Ivy in France - too important to ignore

I was always lead to believe when younger, (as were many people), that Ivy “strangled” trees and was a thug to be removed but contrary to popular beliefs Ivy is not a parasite, does not normally damage sound buildings or walls, is rarely a threat to healthy trees and if we look around it shouldn’t take long to find plenty of examples of large old trees supporting Ivy that is of a great age.......

Read more - Link to web page.

Chris

Having honey bees without keeping them.

There appears to be more and more people that just want to have some honey bees in their garden or on their land. These same people are often met with a barrage of it isn’t possible, they will all die, you need to be trained, (like a donkey?), or you will be spreading disease and every other evil that paranoid beekeepers can dream up to protect their image of being masters of their craft and keepers of the grail. Fortunately not all bee keepers are that precious or narrow minded.

   

However would it surprise you to know that actually it’s perfectly possible and reasonable to have honey bees without playing with them?

LINK HERE Having honey bees without keeping them.

Hope you enjoy it, Chris

Winter bee colony mortality rates.

A couple of interesting maps from the studies carried out for the European Commission certainly throw up more questions than answers.

Why should the UK suffer nearly 30% winter losses in the winter of 2012/2013 when in the same winter France only recorded losses of 14.2%, Germany 13.3% but Belgium an astounding 32.4%?  

From my own perspective anything around 15% could be considered normal with colonies that are not heavily manipulated.

Anyway, here are the maps and also a link to the document and other downloads.

Click on maps to enlarge.

2012/2013 

2013/2014 

LINK TO DOCUMENT HERE.

Chris 

Soya bean cultivation in France

As if things weren’t bad enough already Soya seems set to be the latest money generator for the people that exploit the cereal lands of France 

Click on photos to enlarge

It was some 30 years ago that Soya bean trials were first made in my region of Poitou-Charentes but at that time it wasn’t economically worthwhile and it was cheaper to import from abroad. As the dominate producers, (Brazil, Argentina and the United States), moved to growing Genetically Modified Soya and imports swelled as a result of an ever increasing demand from the industrial production of both meat and poultry some thought there was an opportunity to try growing Soya again. With this in mind Eric Simon of the animal food manufacturer Alicoop, Pamproux along with some others approached Ségolène Royal, (then President of the Region), to provide assistance via additional Regional subsidies alongside those available from the CAP, (Common Agricultural Policy), for this crop. With the market price and subsidies combined it’s more profitable than sunflowers and in a couple of years regional production has exceeded 2000 hectares and is set to grow exponentially.

On the plus side it is a crop that like sunflowers can manage without irrigation. It also has no requirements for fungicides or insecticides, fixes nitrogen from the air in its root nodules and provides an alternative to the Genetically Modified alternatives that are imported, all of which in different circumstances would deserve our support.

So what’s the problem?

The simple answer is the vexed issue of the continuing decline of pollinators as a result of every last piece of half viable land being turned to the plough which was already bad enough in itself but it did at least have the small virtue of sunflowers that have usually been grown as the 4^th crop that has to make up no less than 5% of the land surface of any given crop producer. If Soya replaces Sunflowers, of which there is every likelihood, it will leave much of the French countryside almost devoid of food in the summer for bees whether they are Honey bees, Bumble bees or Solitary species. The one thing Soya doesn’t have is flowers that open, they are small, remain closed and internally self pollinate. Add this to the other crops that are already grown over the largest land areas, that are wind pollinated and have no nectar, wheat, barley and maize and it’s clear that it’s an expanding “green desert”, pleasing on eye to those that don’t understand but a catastrophe for our pollinating insects.

Chris

The so called Flow Hive.

As this is a subject that isn’t going away and keeps being brought to light, (usually but not always by people that have little or no experience of keeping bees), I thought I should attempt a response of my own that I can use as and when required that makes my position and views clear.

   

Firstly for people that have no practical experience of beekeeping it should be noted that the structure that matters in this instance it isn’t actually a hive but what we beekeepers call a “super” in English or la hausse in French. This is a supplementary box that goes on top of a hive to enable the beekeeper to collect honey that is in excess to the colonies requirements. The fact that they can also supply a hive to go with it is neither here nor there as it’s the supplementary box and its constituent parts that are different. This supplementary box for honey production is usually separated from the hive proper with a grill that keeps the Queen in the hive itself.

My first objection may not seem very important to some people and that is that the device relies on artificial pre-formed honey comb structures made entirely from plastic when the natural situation would be bees making comb with their own wax.

These plastic frames are designed to shift vertically along the center (or midrib) of the honeycomb structure. This is operated by turning a key that shifts the midrib breaking open the back of the cells containing honey which then theoretically drains backward, drips down the back of the plastic frame and is captured in a trough that leads to a tube that drains to the outside and into your jars or other containers of choice.  Once the comb is drained, you turn the key again which shifts the comb back into its original position when the bees supposedly chew open the wax seals on the front of the comb and refill them assuming somehow the bees know that the cells have been emptied from the back?  All of this is achieved without removing the lid or removing and exposing the comb and bees to the air.

All sounds wonderful but then the sales spin always does.

The first thing is that honey cells need to be filled and sealed with wax by the bees before the honey is ready to be extracted and stored. Taking honey before this has happened will usually mean that the water content is too high thus leading to fermentation, (more than 19%).

Now they make much of how kind this system is to the bees because there is no requirement to remove the lid and remove the frames. They claim that it’s possible to see if the cells are sealed simply by looking through the glazed side but anyone with experience will know this simply isn’t true. As you can see from the photo the faces of the frames simply aren’t visible even from the top with the lid removed which means the frames have to be lifted out to see the entire faces.

Another concern for me is honey robbing.  Pictures on the Flow™ Hive site also show honey dripping from the hive into open jars with no bees in evidence when in reality any source of exposed honey would immediately attract thousands of bees and potentially trigger a robbing frenzy as other hives in the area rapidly discover free open air honey. Either way, you wouldn’t be sitting there with open honey without there being bees all over and in it. Anyone that doubts this should stand by a hive with a teaspoon of honey and watch the speed with which bees arrive.

Then there is the not so small matter of the nature of the honey and whether it would actually just run out or not. Again anyone with actual experience of keeping bees in most European countries will know that there are some types of honey, perhaps the majority, which simply won’t. Indeed there are some that can’t even be extracted by spinning out of the frame if they start to set in the frame, Oilseed rape being one of them which requires very precise timing for extraction and Heather honey is thixotropic and cannot even be spun out from the combs in an extractor and is usually pressed. These will clog and jam the mechanism requiring the Flowhive frames to be removed and cleaned with hot water.

Price?   Well if you want to spend over 500 US$ for a 7 frame flow hive when you can buy a regular Super with 9 waxed frames for €30 you must have money to burn.

So what if any are the benefits?

Zero as far as I can see, it won’t be less intrusive or kinder to the bees that much is clear and the super with the Flow frames will still need to be frequently removed, emptied of bees and cleaned. If your reason for buying this is because you are afraid of bees or you think it will make it easier you are mistaken.

If you really are determined to try one I reckon that if you wait there will be a glut of them on the market at knockdown prices when people realise they aren’t all they are cracked up to be, or on the other hand I may be wrong. 

Chris

Bee swarms in French windows and removing them.

This year, as is the case every year, I was called to several houses to remove honey bee colonies that had set up home between their windows and closed shutters. 

This is a very common occurrence here in France whenever houses are left unoccupied for any length of time in the swarming season with the shutters closed, (mainly end of April until the end of June). Scout bees find what for them looks like a great place to set up home and if it wasn’t for the humans it would be. Unfortunately when the humans return to their holiday home or back from a couple of weeks away they find their uninvited guests where they don’t want them to be.

Although this isn’t an ideal situation, unless of course you are happy to leave your shutters permanently closed and enjoy the watching the bees, it isn’t an impossible one providing you can find someone competent to re-home them as quickly as possible. Every day that passes makes it harder on the bees and more difficult for the person removing them; anyway I thought I’d share this one as an example to give some idea of what is involved in a sensitive removal.

I arrived at this house at about 2.30pm in late July having been contacted by Malcolm Harding the key-holder keeping an eye on the property. Doug Hart, bee keeper friend who owns a house locally who was going to give a hand and observe arrived later. The owners of the property were in the UK and the house was on the market to be sold which meant the colony had to be removed to prevent deterring prospective purchasers. As can be seen it was a sizeable colony and well established, probably between 2 and 3 months.  

Click on images to enlarge

 Honey bee colony in the window from the inside.

Number one issue was that the shutters lock from the inside for rather obvious security reasons and couldn’t be opened. Number two issue was that the windows were stuck firmly closed by the wax and wouldn’t open inwards. Solution simple enough – smash a pane of glass to reach in and release the shutter bolt that was just clear at the bottom of the comb. Having done that it was possible to carefully prise the shutters open and mercifully they opened with a clean break to the combs where they were attached near the top leaving the colony nicely exposed ready for removal.

The honey bee colony nicely exposed. 

The principle difficulty in almost all cases apart from a very recently started colony is that a large part of the comb structure is filled with honey. As soon as this is handled honey starts to go everywhere and I try to make every effort to reduce the number of bees that end up dying in this and over the years have worked out a very simple manner to achieve this. I take plastic storage boxes and fill the bottoms with old disused fabric, clothing, sheets or whatever. This prevents puddles of honey forming and provides something for it to soak into. I put metal queen excluders across the tops of the boxes to lay the removed comb on which allows any honey to drip and avoids squashing too many bees. The comb that isn’t used for storing honey is filled with brood in various stages, eggs, larvae and sealed pupae, this I try to leave until I have removed as much comb with honey as I can always cutting carefully with a sharp knife into manageable sections. Of course the comb with honey is very heavy and tears easily when moved out of the vertical.

As much comb with eggs, larvae and sealed pupae as possible is wired into hive frames which are placed either in a ruche, (hive), or a ruchette, (nucleus box or small hive), which is where the colony will hopefully be going for transport. I say hopefully because nothing is ever certain in nature and more than once I have run into to difficulties. These old French houses often have cracks or gaps round the window which lead to cavities in the thick stone walls and some of the bees can sometimes hide with the queen.

Comb containing bee brood in various stages wired into hive frames.

Doug and Malcolm watching the bees while I take a drink

Bees busy fanning pheromones to indicate where the Queen is inside the Ruchette

Once the entire comb has been removed the bees have no where to go. If the queen has already gone in the ruchette with the brood comb the rest of the bees will gradually follow. If she isn’t already in there it’s a case of allowing the bees to form a cluster where the comb was, then putting that cluster in the top of the ruchette. This may have to be repeated until the Queen is in. Once she is in the ruchette can be left on the window ledge under where the comb was and by nightfall the majority of the bees will be in and with the ruchette entrance closed they can be taken away to their new home.

The following morning back in our fields.

A week later when they were put in a full sized hive they had already filled in the gaps in the brood frames, made a huge amount of new comb and filled it with honey and pollen - happy bees.

Chris

Honey bees are wild, it really is that simple.

There seems to be a large number of people in the bee keeping world that can’t get to grips with the fact that Honey bees can and do live quite contentedly without the assistance of Human beings and have done so for some 300,000 years managing the ups and downs of disease and ice ages. Insects really don’t need us to manipulate their life processes, they just require suitable habitat and living conditions and Honey bees are no exception to this, but already I hear the cries of outraged bee fiddlers everywhere accusing me of bad management, spreading disease and worse.

Let’s start by taking a quick look at some of the mainstream bee keeping practices;

* Clipping the Queens wings to prevent them from being able to fly when the colony attempts to divide and swarm.

* Opening the hive on a regular basis, normally every 7/8 days in the season, removing the frames of comb to check for signs of diseases and for any Queen cells that are made prior to swarming.

* Should Queen Cells be found it is fairly common practice to destroy all but one or two or in some cases all of them. (The bees will make perhaps 10 – 15 but will normally only allow one or two to hatch, the others are insurance).

* Regularly destroy Drone cells and larvae to reduce the number of varroa mites; there is a special tool for this – a Drone comb.

* Use Plastic pre formed honey comb.

* Using various insecticide treatments in the hive to kill varroa mites.

* Regularly removing old Brood comb and replacing, usually with a frame of new wax foundation.

* Transporting hives with bees from one location to another for forage.

* Feeding the bees with artificial pollen substitutes often made from soya flour.

Granted not all mainstream keepers use or practice all of these methods but weekly removal and inspection of colony frames much of the year, varroa mite control and swarm prevention are considered to be necessary for colony survival and preventing the escape of colonies into the wild.

My perspective on this that puts me in the naughty corner is that I simply don’t think it is right or necessary to treat bees using any of these products or methods. I’m happy for my bees to swarm, in fact it’s a marvel of nature and although it takes time I enjoy swarm collection and hiving them. I never have any health issues with my bees, and yes, I would know and I’m certainly not of a mind to use insecticides in my hives whether they are synthetic or so called natural.  

Contrary to the popular view Honey bee colonies don’t die or fail when left alone or I should say that they don’t fail anymore than would be naturally expected. The only disease that is considered to be serious in France is American Foul Brood which isn’t very common and is mainly spread by bee keepers using infected equipment or selling infected stock.

Much is made of replacing old comb with new wax foundation, but if left to themselves they manage the comb by removing any  that is no longer fit for purpose and replacing or restoring as required, something they have always done.  Many keepers talk of hives becoming too full of honey or too full of brood but again the bees will manage this if they are of local stock although maybe not to our maximum profit.

For the time being how a person wishes to keep and manage their bees is still a matter of choice here in France, (and the UK), but as always there is a vociferous body of people that would impose their views and methods on everyone else.

This short video, made 14.04.2015 shows one of my hives that has been completely free of interference for 8 years. The brood frames have never been touched, looked at or fiddled with. The hive has been allowed to swarm and produce their own new Queen each year and as can be seen they are healthy and industrious with the “air conditioning on”, (the bees upside down fanning at the entrance).  If you watch carefully you will also see one or two bees exiting the hive with debris in their mouths that they are cleaning out.

Chris

Violet Oil Beetle in France

Oil beetles are another one of those species that not everyone is comfortable with due to their interesting life cycle which we’ll come to.

They belong to the genus Meloe which is a large group with some 35 species of Oil beetle in Europe and 15 in France although I’m not sure how rare some of them may be and they are also somewhat understudied according to OPIE. Certainly the commonest are the Black Oil Beetle Meloe proscarabaeus and the one I find at our place the Violet Oil Beetles, Meloe violaceus, and we sure have a lot of them, so many that it’s hard not to tread on them when walking among the trees where the Lesser celandines are flowering at the moment.

Click images to enlarge

Below: Newly emerged female before putting on weight.

Below: Female having put on weight. 

Below: Recently emerged male with pronounced kinked antennae.

Below: Another male, again showing pronounced kinked antennae.

They are a flightless beetle without functional wings, and shortened elytra, (modified, hardened front wings), and they have a very interesting life cycle as mentioned.  Soon after emergence in March / April the adult beetles mate after first putting on some weight. With both the Violet and Black Oil Beetle the males have kinked antennae which they use to hang on to the females antennae with during courtship.  Once coupled they remain attached with the male being dragged around for an hour or more. The female then lays her eggs in a small hollow she digs in the soil and when these hatch the larvae, (called triungulins as they have 3 hooks on each foot), climb up the vegetation and wait on a flower head for a passing bee to settle to which they attach themselves. Very few survive but those that do and manage to hitch a ride are taken back to the solitary bees’ nest where they consume the bees’ eggs and the nutrition that has been put there. They then pupate and emerge the following year.

Below: Violet Oil Beetles coupled.

Below: Violet Oil Beetle eating Celandine.

They are classified as cleptoparasites and not actually parasites.

“”Kleptoparasitism or cleptoparasitism (literally, parasitism by theft) is a form of feeding in which one animal takes prey or other food from another that has caught, collected, or otherwise prepared the food, including stored food (as in the case of cuckoo bees, which lay their eggs on the pollen masses made by other bees). The term is also used to describe the stealing of nest material or other inanimate objects from one animal by another.”      SOURCE

Despite this behaviour which some dislike they are a good indicator of the level of solitary bee activity where they are located for without them they can’t exist.

As can be seen in the photo Oil beetles often attract small midges which feed on the oil produced by the beetle but do it no harm.

Rugged Oil Beetle Meloe rugosus,  Mediterranean Oil Beetle Meloe mediterraneus and the Short-necked Oil beetle  Meloe brevicollis are some other well known but scarcer French Oil Beetles.

If in the UK Buglife are running a survey on Oil Beetles and would appreciate your help. 

BUGLIFE OIL BEETLE SURVEY

BUGLIFE OIL BEETLE IDENTIFICATION GUIDE 

Chris

Horned Osmia ( Osmia cornuta )

Osmia cornuta is one of the first solitary bees to emerge in spring and as such is an important pollinator of fruit trees such as apricots, plums and almonds. Present in most of Europe, (not the north), it is a species that has disappeared from most areas of intensive agriculture, but it survives well in some urban areas, wastelands, public parks and gardens in particular areas. 

Given this living where we do in the intensive cereal lands I was extremely pleased to see a group of these about midday buzzing around the table on the patio in the sunshine. At first I thought they were Osmia bicolor with their bright orange abdomens and black head and thorax, not easy to see when they don’t settle. Anyway, a little later Lynne called me to say that a couple were kindly putting on a performance for me on the table and providing a photo opportunity. 

Please Click on images to enlarge. 

They are closely related to both Osmia bicolor the Two Coloured Mason Bee and Osmia rufa, the Red Mason Bee and they behave in much the same manner. The female builds a nest in an elongated hole, often in an old branch or some other piece of timber. The majority of the holes are between 5 to 8 mm in diameter and the nest is formed with a series of cells separated by clay partitions. Each cell contains a food reserve formed by a ball of pollen and nectar, on which an egg is laid. If the gallery is too long, a dirt cap is raised by the female to reduce its size. As a generalist pollen collector they will use what ever is available according to season, this is taken to the nest and mixed with regurgitated nectar to make the so called bee bread which is made into a pellet stuffed into the cavity.  When the cell is half full following 10 to 30 trips, the female lays an egg and builds a front wall with some clay and then repeats this until the tunnel is full with up to 15 eggs and then seals the outside with a clay plug. She repeats this for about two months building one nest after the other.

When the eggs hatch the one that were laid first which are to be females develop more slowly. When fully grown the larva spins a light brown thread cocoon and transforms into a pupa.

The bee is fully formed in late summer but remains where it is until the following spring.

The mortality rate is very high; perhaps 60% or more never get to fly and in part this is caused by Cocoxenus indagator, is which a ‘fruit fly’ and a cleptoparasite of Osmia species that lays its own eggs in the bees nest when the bee is away foraging. Having said that it’s built in to the numbers of eggs produced so nothing to be concerned about as long as the habitat requirements are met. 

Places used for nests include - Hollow stems; Galleries in walls, soft stones or soil; Gaps in window frames and drainage holes; Old galleries dug by other species of Hymenoptera; Natural or artificial galleries in timber with holes of a diameter of 8 to 10 mm; Sometimes even snail shells as with Osmia Bicolor. Galleries are thoroughly cleaned before any eggs are laid and can be used almost indefinitely. All of these locations are available at our place and with no chemicals or poisons they should go on to thrive.

Definitely one to look out for in France.

Chris