French wildlife and beekeeping

Cheeky or what? You may find this a bit hard to believe and it certainly is an eye opener but now the leaves have started to fall Lynne spotted this yesterday when I was out for the day – an Asian Hornet nest actually situated almost directly over one of my hives and no more than 30 metres from several others. Click on photos to enlarge. So what does this tell us? It tells us that maybe, just maybe, the Asian Hornet isn’t quite as dangerous to honey bees as has been thought. It also tells us to always be very careful when drawing conclusions based on limited third party information that may lack a solid foundation or without knowing all the surrounding facts of any given situation, something we can all learn a lesson from. Of course this doesn’t mean that they can’t be a problem in some circumstances and it may be that they are modifying their behaviour, adapting to local conditions and taking other prey or simply that one Asian Hornet nest won’t have a serious impac...

Churning out bad news isn’t fun but there is no avoiding the fact that honey yields continue more or less year on year to reduce in both my part and many other parts of France . This has nothing to do with any real or imaginary issues with honey bee populations but is simply a result of the amount of nectar that is available for any single bee colony to collect. These days increasingly large swathes of France are used for growing cereals where it is the main use of the countryside.  I know I’ve said this many times but it’s fundamental in understanding what is happening with just about every non-woodland species you can think of being affected and needless to say honey bees are no exception. As a result of this massive change in the landscape honey bees and their keepers have become increasingly dependent on a couple of crops to produce surplus harvestable honey due to the loss of native habitat and related flora. This isn’t the same as a bee colony having enough for its own ...

Next time you buy or think of buying pollen for your "health" this is the true cost to the bees of pollen production. Pollen is required by honey bees principally as a protein source to feed their larvae and maintain the colony population. As most people will be aware honey bees collect the pollen from flowers and transport it back to the hive using special hairy receptacles on their hind legs called corbiculae. It's an extremely energy intensive activity and efficiency is paramount in making sure that other colony activities aren’t diminished.    Pollen trapping is dependent on the use of a screen or perforated metal grid of about 5-mesh per inch through which the pollen-collecting field bees are forced to enter the colony and this grid forcibly removes the pollen from their legs. This grid is used with a pellet collection container that is covered by 7- or 8-mesh screen to prevent bee entry. This basic principle is common to all pollen traps. Click on ...

Some years ago I was out with a couple of friends doing a bit of birding and generally poking about in the countryside as one does when we saw one of those fields that had recently been sprayed with Glyphosate and had turned that lovely characteristic rusty orange colour which triggered yet another conversation about the use of toxic substances in agriculture. Click on photo to enlarge. One of the people I was with works in the agricultural sector in the UK and can be a bit of a wind up merchant and I’m never sure whether he is being serious or not. Anyway he does understand the sector as an insider which is always useful, especially as trying to get a straight honest answer from farmers where I live is a total waste of time. Somehow or another during the course of this conversation he mentioned that wheat is sprayed with glyphosate, (Roundup),  in the UK as a pre-harvest crop desiccation, that is to kill off the crop to enable uniform and rapid drying just before h...