Happy new year, lovelies! I hope you had a safe, relaxing holiday break with lots of self-care and downtime.
Episode 36 is now up over on Podbean! The book review continues. Listen wherever you get your podcasts!
Homestead Updates
Just before the new year, we were off to the vet with Luna the whippet. She had a tiny sebaceous cyst on the side of her neck that would start expressing every now and then. She’s had it for weeks and we have got used to emptying it on occasion but it always comes back because the sac/capsule remains under the skin. Our plan was to point it out next time she goes in for a dental so the vet can remove it while she’s under anesthesia. Well, I noticed after Christmas that it was swollen and thought maybe it had become infected. By the next day, it was even more angry looking so we applied a hot compress that evening and planned to take her to the vet in the morning. The following morning, it spontaneously ruptured; mainly releasing blood but there was some pus in there. We cleaned the area and were able to get a lunch time vet appointment. They shaved around it, cleaned it up, and gave us antibiotics. Thankfully, it drained on its own so didn’t have to be lanced or anything like that. It’s scabbed over now and looks to be healing well. Once the area has healed, we will need to see if the sac/capsule is still under the skin. If it is, and it starts filling again, we will need to schedule surgical removal, and will have her teeth cleaned at the same time. Otherwise, we’ll stick to our schedule of having it removed when her teeth are cleaned in the Spring.
Not to be outdone by a mammal, one of my skinks also needs vet treatment. On January 2nd, I went to feed all the pink tongue skinks and noticed that something was wrong with Europa’s jaw; it was swollen on one side, preventing her mouth from closing. I pulled her out and a close inspection showed either a broken tooth or potentially a broken jaw. The exotic vet is closed on weekends and I don’t trust any other vet to handle something like this. Thankfully, she is still drinking, able to flick her tongue (so no nerve damage), and there is no bleeding or signs of pus. I put her into a hospital tank (a tank with paper towels in a quiet area to reduce stress and keep her clean) and checked on her first thing the following morning. My plan was that, if the area looked worse, I would go to the emergency vet for medication but would not agree to any surgery unless they had the exotic vet in to do it. Thankfully, as of time of writing (02/03), the swelling has decreased by half and Europa is still active and bright-eyed. As of the time of recording, I have a vet appointment scheduled with my exotic vet. Fingers crossed!
Pepperjack the rooster has some frostbite on his comb after the cold weather we have had. I anticipated this because his comb is so big and showy, and some of my hens with large combs have had frostbite in the winter. His is mild and the area actually looks pretty good. I’m optimistic that he won’t lose any of his comb from the damage. I’m not treating it in any way currently because the skin is intact but delicate and I don’t want to risk damaging it. If he was tamer, I might try a salve but, since he will panic and struggle, I don’t want to risk further damage. If the damaged skin opens up, I will have to wrestle him so I can apply medicated ointment and monitor healing.
In home news, I scheduled the septic people out when the ground thawed because we’d noticed some issues; the smell of drains and wet ground around the access points. Not good! Our regular company was able to come out within 2 days and immediately identified the problem: the pump had died! So they replaced that for us and got everything moving again. It was good timing because, within a few days, we had a lot of rain come down, which melted all remaining snow, and our back garden flooded due to all the water. I don’t want to think about what would have happened had all that flood water got into the septic system!
We also got the final quote on a whole-house generator plus electrical upgrade, which is needed before install. The generator is unlikely to ship before April but I’m glad we have the first deposit down and everything ready to be done in the Spring. It is a big investment for us because we need a large generator for all our electrical needs (reptiles = lots of lighting!) but it’s going to be a game changer for us, honestly. Not only will it mean not having to worry if we lose power for an extended time again in the winter but it also means feeling more secure to leave the property in the cold season. The new generator models have wi-fi access that alerts you when power has been lost and the generator kicks in. This will give us such peace of mind if we are out of town!
Hive Updates
I’m glad I was able to put out more fondant and winter patties in mid-December on a mild day because we had some nasty cold weather after that, including a pretty wicked storm.
During this quick peek into the hives, I got an idea for where the clusters were. I was surprised to see that my Saskatraz mother colony, which was one of my weakest going into winter, was still in the bottom box; whereas other colonies that went into winter stronger, are already near the top, having eaten through their lower food stores. I suppose it’s possible that the Sask colony is smaller and not eating as much; still interesting, though!
New Year’s Eve, I went out with my stethoscope to see if I could hear the girls in their clusters. Last winter, I had no success with this. I don’t know if it was due to location of the bees and/or user error but I couldn’t hear a darn thing last year. This time, I had success! Again, the Sask-mother colony cluster was low in the hive, buzzing away. The other colonies are all closer to the top, with the nucleus colonies being right up by the fondant.
Queen Macha (Southern US queen) is also pretty high but they weirdly decided to start their cluster in the middle box this year. I’m assuming the bottom box wasn’t full enough? I’m interested to get in there in the Spring to see if there are any clues as to why they clustered midway. This is a pretty big colony still, based on the buzz, so I’m trying not to worry.
Sask-daughter colony is also higher but not quite at the feeder yet. This colony was also weaker than I’d like going into winter so I am hopeful this is a good sign and they haven’t exhausted their food stores yet.
Cerridwen/OH queen, my strongest colony, sounds strong! This is the loudest hive to listen to and just makes me happy. They’re in the middle box now and seem to be doing okay. I’ll be gutted if I lose this colony so I really hope they’re doing well.
It was so good to hear them all! I might have got a little teary eyed listening to the hum and buzz of them working away in their hives. Love my bees!
I started building my top bar hive. I received it as a gift for my birthday, back in July. It’s a full kit from Gold Star Bees so I just need to drill and nail it all into place. I made the body and then realised it’s much bigger than I expected! It’s taking up a fair amount of space and I probably should have waited until Spring. Oops! I still need to make the lid and then I’ll paint it. Legs won’t go on until it’s ready to go out.
Bought my package of Carniolan bees for Spring, and these bees will be going into the top bar hive. Can’t wait! I just hope they arrive on a better day than my Sask girls did; it was snowing when I picked up that package. No fun for any of us!
Random aside: I have been having very vivid dreams involving bees again. This is not unusual for me since I got into this mad hobby. I often have the same kind of bee dreams; either there is a swarm somewhere in my house that I need to catch and move, or I go out onto this large property with huge, ancient trees, and in the trees are nests; just hanging out in the open. The combs are huge and often shaped in circles, hanging in layers like chandeliers made of beeswax. I’m always filled with excitement and plan to climb up and examine them more closely but somehow I never get to that point in the dream. Often, these dream bees are huge; sometimes as large as 5 inches. In the dreams where they’re actual size, I often find the queen, and she’s especially large. strange!
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Honeybee Democracy, T. Seeley, Chapter 2: Life in a Honeybee Colony
. . . .this being an Amazonian
Or feminine kingdome.
-Charles Butler, The Feminine Monarchie, 1609
Apis mellifera, the Western or European honeybee, is one of almost 20,000 bee species throughout the world
All of these bees descended from a species of vegetarian wasp that lived some 100 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous period
Some bee species still have an appearance that is very similar to wasps, to the point where they might be mistaken for one of their carnivorous cousins
It is in the behaviour that we see the key difference between bee and wasp species; almost all wasps are carnivorous, preying upon other insects (and spiders) for food
Bees abandoned the carnivorous diet of their ancestors and instead source their protein from pollen, and their carbohydrates from nectar
Now, bees are often fuzzy as the fine hairs on their body help collect the small pollen particles
Wasps will also visit flowers to consume nectar but it is the bees that have evolved a strong mutual dependence on flowering plants
Bees seek food/nourishment from flowers, and many flowering plants in turn rely on bees for successful reproduction
While bees forage, they pick up pollen grains from the stamens of flowers and deposit some of them on the pistil of other flowers; cross-pollinating
As Seeley puts it, bees “serve as flying penises” for plants. Pg.21
Within this large family of bees, the honeybee is unique for its social structure
Most bee species are solitary, building small nests in plant stems or in soft, sandy soil
The typical life cycle for a solitary bee starts in late-Spring to early-Summer, when a mated female emerges from her winter burrow. She will make a multi-chambered nest, placing a ball of sticky pollen and nectar into each chamber before laying an egg on each ball of food. Eggs laid, she then seals all the chambers. Inside, the hatched larvae eat through their food source until their development is complete, at which point they chew their way out of the chamber. By the time they emerge, their mother has died. These newly emerged adults then fly out, mate, and the females will repeat the cycle.
We see then that a solitary bee species has a relatively short life cycle.
A Composite Being
In contrast, honeybees live in the thousands, all close together in a nest cavity or hive
Most of the colony consists of the female worker bees; all daughters of the fertile queen
Despite being female, worker bees are not capable of reproduction; they have underdeveloped ovaries and do not lay eggs outside of a very specific circumstance (and, even then, not all worker bees will develop the ability to lay)
The queen honeybee is much larger than the worker bees with a distinctive long abdomen and longer legs
The queen is the reproductive heart of the hive; she lays all the eggs to produce future generations of bees, and can lay as many as 1500 a day during peak production
Over a single summer, the queen produces about 150,000 eggs, which means she is capable of laying 0.5 million in her 2-3 year expected lifespan!
When a virgin queen emerges from her cell, after a period of a few days where her exoskeleton hardens and her flight muscles develop, she will go on her mating flight, where she will mate with 10-20 male honeybees, collecting approximately 5 million sperm
This bounty of genetic material is stored in her spermatheca, a spherical organ positioned at the rear of the abdomen behind her ovaries
The queen controls release of this stored sperm in order to fertilize her eggs
Fertilized eggs produce worker bees (female)
Unfertilized eggs produce drones (male)
For female honeybees/fertilized eggs, the cell and food given to the larvae influences whether that bee will be a worker or a queen
A fertilized egg deposited in a standard cell and fed the standard larval food will become a worker bee
A fertilized egg laid into a large cell, called a queen cup, that is fed nutrient-rich royal jelly will become a queen
“For the fertilized eggs of bees, food is destiny”
Less than 5% of all eggs laid are unfertilized (drones)
Drones are large, fuzzy, with big adorable eyes (needed to spot the fast flying virgin queens), and big flight muscles that allow them to give chase to queens on their mating flights
Inside the hive, drones are lazy; they do not work or help their sisters, they just hang around and eat the food until they leave to look for virgin queens to mate
Drones reach sexual maturity at 12 days of age, and start visiting drone congregation areas, of which little is still known; it is here where they wait for a virgin queen to fly past
Knowing all of this, we can think of a honeybee colony as a society made up of thousands of workers, a queen, and some drones but it also helps us to understand the biology of a colony better if we consider it as a superorganism; a single living entity that functions as a whole
Honeybees are not the only superorganism insect; consider leafcutter ants, driver ants, and fungus-growing termites
“A colony of honeybees is, then, far more than an aggregation of individuals, it is a composite being that functions as an integrated whole.” Pg 25
A wild honeybee colony weighs as much as 5kg/10lbs; so imagine them as an organism of about this weight, which eats, thermoregulates, and reproduces
The unique way in which honeybees live offers certain advantages, such as maintaining a brood nest temperature between 34-36C/93-96F even when ambient air temperatures outside the nest range from -30 to 50C/-20 to 120F
They generate heat by isometrically contracting their flight muscles
Honeybees also engage in colonial breathing: limiting the buildup of CO2 by increasing ventilation (this was discussed in greater detail in ‘The Lives of Bees’); ventilation is also increased if the colony needs to be cooled
Additional benefits include colonial circulation: heat producing bees place themselves at the center of the brood nest region while other workers bring them honey from stores; and colonial fever response: raising the brood nest temperature when exposed to fungal infection
“I suggest, though, that the single best demonstration of the superorganismic nature of a honeybee colony is the ability of a honeybee swarm to function as an intelligent decision-making unit when choosing its new home.” Pg.27
Unique Annual Cycle
Why are honeybees so particular when choosing their new home? Simply put, they need to be, and examining their life cycle makes this clear, especially in regards to their ability to survive the winter
Unlike most bee species, they do not spend the winter in dormancy; they stay awake and thermoregulate
When temperatures drop, bees cluster together in a roughly basketball shaped group with the queen at the center
The surface temperature of the cluster is maintained above 10C/50F, which is a few degrees higher than the worker bee’s “chill-coma threshold” Pg.29
To produce heat, worker bees isometrically contract their flight muscles (discussed in greater detail in ‘The Lives of Bees’), which is called ‘shivering’
When flying, the honeybee expends energy at a rate of approximately 500 Watts per kilogram (or 250W/lb)
An Olympic rowing crew expends energy at a rate of 20W/kg (10W/lb) so we can see how energy intensive flying is for bees
If we consider that only a portion of the clustered bees will ‘shiver’ at maximum intensity then we can determine (according to Seeley) that 4lbs/2kg of bees in a cluster generate about 40 watts, comparable to a small incandescent bulb
Despite this remarkable ability to thermoregulate, insulation is also a vital consideration when selecting a nest location as poor insulation means faster heat loss and more energy expended
Occasionally, a swarm might nest in the open and these colonies will inevitably perish during the winter cold
For these hard working bees, honey = fuel
On average, 20kg/44lbs+ of honey is needed to successfully over winter
If you were to put your managed hive on a scale and note the weight each week, you would see a steady decline over the winter months as the bees consume their honey stores
In Ithaca, NY, Seeley notes that his colonies tend to restock their honey stores between May 15th and July 15th, a period of just 60 days
We can see then that a large amount of honey (44lb+) is needed and must be collected within a short window of time (60 days); that’s a huge amount of pressure!
To give a clearer idea of just how much 20kg/44lbs of honey is; it would fill a 14 quart or 16 liter bucket, or about 50 of those bear shaped squeezable bottles of honey you see at the grocery store
Let us also consider the work involved in converting nectar into honey; nectar is usually 40% sugar, whereas honey is 80%, so work is needed to encourage water evaporation from the nectar until the correct sugar content is achieved and the honey can be capped for storage
Knowing that a foraging bee brings back a nectar load of 40mg or 0.001oz, it would therefore take 50 million foraging trips to get 20kg or 44lbs of honey!! Think of that in miles flown! These are some hard working little insects!
Now let’s consider how much space is needed to store this honey; 250 square-centimeters of honey comb is needed to store 1kg of honey (or 18 square-inches per 1lb honey), and 250 sq-cm of comb equals 0.9 liters of nest cavity space
Thus 20kg/44lbs of honey needs a nesting cavity of 18 liters or 4 gallons as a minimum; a larger space would allow more room for the brood nest and extra food storage
Early on in the human-honey bee relationship, we learned that keeping bees in large hives led to a bountiful honey harvest
The average managed hive size of 160 liters or 36 gallons can lead to a honey crop of 100kg or 200lb per hive!!
Aside from storing such a large amount of food for winter, the annual cycle of the honeybee is unique in other ways, such as brood rearing in the middle of winter
After the winter solstice, as daylight hours begin to increase, the colony raises their core temperature to 35C/95F in preparation to rear brood
It can be cold outside with snow on the ground, and yet the bees are beginning to gear up for brood production
The queen begins to lay again, using the cells that previously stored honey and are now free for eggs
From egg to larva takes 3 days, at which point workers feed the larvae a protein rich food secreted from a gland in their heads
After 3 days of being fed this protein rich food, the larvae is weaned off it and moved onto a mixture of honey and pollen (bee bread)
10 days after hatching from the egg, the bee larva has grown large enough to almost fill the cell and now spins a cocoon to begin the metamorphosis into an adult bee
It is at this stage that the worker bees cap the cell, protecting the delicate larva during this critical period of development
After 7 days, the metamorphosis is complete and the adult bee chews her way out of her cell and joins the colony’s workforce
Fun fact: the newly emerged bee neatly attaches the chewed up pieces of wax from the cell capping to the edge of the now empty cell so that it can be used to cap the next larva to grow in that cell. Recycling!
When brood rearing begins in mid-winter, perhaps 100 or so cells contain brood but, by early Spring, over 1000 cells hold developing bees, and the colony grows rapidly, just in time to forage on the newly blooming flowers
By late Spring, when the honeybee colony has grown to full size (about 20-30,000 bees) and have begun to reproduce (swarm), most other insects are just starting to increase their activity
Colony Reproduction
Honeybee colonies are hermaphroditic; they contain both male and female reproductive parts/functions
In this way, honeybee colonies are much like fruit trees with Seeley comparing them specifically to apple trees
Consider: the apple tree and the honeybee colony both produce male and female propagules
Male propagules = drones, pollen
Female propagules = queens, egg cells
Pollen from one apple tree fertilizes the egg cells of another, just as drones from one hive will breed with a queen from another; thus, trees and bees rely on cross-fertilization to avoid inbreeding pitfalls/complications
The male reproductive parts of apple trees and honeybee colonies are simpler to produce, and therefore ‘cheaper’, with 1000s of drones and millions of pollen grains being dispersed each year
Any single drone or pollen grain has a low chance of reproductive success so releasing so many at once therefore increases the overall chance of success
The female side of this process is more complicated and ‘expensive’, and thus the queen bee is sent forth in a protective swarm just as the egg cells (seeds) of the apple tree are sent forth in the protective matrix of the apple fruit
A swarm and an apple are much larger and more costly than the drones and pollen grains and so fewer are created and released (usually less than 4 swarms in a year, and a few hundred apples)
But this costly protection and support structure offers a much greater chance of reproductive success despite their smaller numbers, and so the whole thing equals out with swarms and apple fruits matching the overall success of their more numerous male counterparts
Swarming
Most years, swarming starts after a few weeks of warm days and prolific flowering in the spring
In Ithaca, NY, Seeley’s colonies send out drones in late April with swarms cast a few weeks later
Seeley notes that he can predict when swarming will begin by noting the weight of the hive that he keeps on a scale; when the steady decline in weight has stopped and begins to creep up again, this is when the colony will cast a swarm
Thus, swarming is timed to allow build up of the parent colony and enough time for the swarm to find a new nest site and prepare for winter
An early start is therefore extremely beneficial; swarms cast late are more likely to perish during winter due to lack of food stores
Even when ideal conditions are met (early start to parent colony, early cast swarm, forage available, etc), it’s not uncommon for newly established colonies to fail during their first winter
This was discussed in ‘The Lives of Bees’: in the mid-1970s, Seeley followed the lives of several dozen wild colonies, and learned that less than 25% of the new colonies survived to Spring, compared to an 80% survival rate of established (1year+) colonies
We can see this summed up in an old beekeeper’s rhyme: “A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay, a swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon, a swarm in July isn’t worth a fly.” Pg. 33
So what is the swarming process?
It starts with the colony raising 10 or more queens; the workers make special cells called ‘queen cups’ that look like inverted bowls, and are created on the bottom edge of the comb
After the mother queen lays eggs in these queen cups, the larvae are fed protein-rich royal jelly to ensure their development into queens (as opposed to workers)
It’s still a mystery as to what exactly triggers a colony to rear queens in preparation for swarming; we know that certain conditions are seen before this process begins, such as a large population of worker bees, little space left for brood, increasing food stores, lots of good forage, and warm weather but “to this day, no one knows what specific stimuli the worker bees are sensing and integrating when they make the critical decision to start the swarming process.” Pg. 34
Queen bees emerge after just 16 days. Very fast development!
While these daughter queens are developing in their cells, the mother-queen is being prepared to fly; the worker bees feed her less and also begin shaking, pushing, and even lightly biting her to keep her moving about the hive; this causes her to lose about 25% of her body weight, and also stops her egg laying
The worker bees are basically forcing her to achieve peak flying condition! Trimming her down and building her strength so she can fly.
While the queen is being put through her paces, the majority of the worker bees gorge themselves on honey
A study that dissected worker bees at this stage found they had 1-2 drops of honey in their stomachs, which increased their body weight by 50%
This means that half of a swarm’s total weight is made up of honey
The workers’ wax glands, which are located on the ventral plates of 4 of the abdominal segments, become hypertrophied in preparation to build comb in their new nest
At this stage, worker bees display greater lethargy, often just resting on the comb or clustering outside the entrance
Jay Hosler, biologist and comic book artist, calls this “the calm before the swarm” Pg.38
Several dozen worker bees remain active; these are the scout bees that search 5km or 3 miles around the nest for a new home
In the summer of 2007, Seeley and one of his grad students, Juliana Kangel, learned that scout bees play a key role in triggering the moment of swarming
These bees are uniquely positioned to witness conditions inside and outside of the nest, which allows them to time their departure for optimal success
The time inside the nest allows them to learn when the developing queens have reached the pupal stage, and their time outside means they know when the weather is optimal (sunny and warm); combined, these conditions mean it is time to go!
At this point, the scout bees will go to the cluster of sluggish bees at the entrance and begin to scramble over their cooler sisters
Every few seconds, the scout bees press their thorax against one of the clustered bees and activate their flight muscles, creating a piping sound (called worker piping); this tells the bees it is time to begin warming their flight muscles in preparation to leave (flight ready temp of these muscles is 35C/95F)
This piping increases over the next hour and seems to galvanize their sisters into action
When the scout bees sense that their sisters are ready, they start to perform a ‘buzz-run’, which involves the scout bee running through the nest excitedly, buzzing in bursts, and knocking into any sluggish bees
In response, nearly all the workers get excited and start running toward the entrance until they pour out and up into the air, pushing the mother-queen out with them
This is the ‘prime swarm’; the first swarm of the year that leaves with the mother-queen, and consists of some 10,000 bees (about two-thirds of the colony)
This mass of bees fly around each other, forming a cloud about 10-20 meters/30-60ft across with the queen somewhere near the middle
They do not travel far on this first flight; coming to rest on a branch, tree, fence post, etc, and gathering into a beard-shaped cluster
The swarm will rest here for a few hours to a few days while the scout bees search for a new nest site
Once the new site has been chosen, the scout bees again induce the swarm to fly, and this time they go directly to the newly selected home
Meanwhile, in the parental nest, one-third of the original population remains with 12 or more queen cells, 1000s of brood, and lots of food stores
For a short period of time, the colony is thus without a queen but soon a new one will emerge and so the bees are calm
During this queenless period, enough worker bees may emerge that the colony returns to full size and strength; f this happens before the first queen emerges then workers will keep her away from her developing sisters so that she doesn’t kill them
The workers will also refrain from chewing the wax cappings from the remaining queen cells, trapping the matriarchs inside, but feeding them through a small hole they create
All this is done because virgin queens are murderous!
The first queen to emerge will pipe (or ‘toot’) by pressing her thorax to a surface and activating her flight muscles; in response, the queens in their cells will respond with low-pitched ‘quacks’; this informs the queen that she has lethal rivals
This might be what encourages the first queen to emerge to leave in a secondary swarm, often called an ‘afterswarm’ by beekeepers
To do this means giving up the bounties of the parental nest but also decreases her chances of being murdered in a fight with her sister-queens
Workers will shake the new queen in preparation for flight, and then they will leave on a warm and sunny day
This might be repeated with each emerging queen until the colony is no longer strong enough to cast further swarms
At this point, workers will allow the remaining queens to emerge without interference
The first queen will murder her sisters in their beds by stinging them to death
If 2 queens emerge at the same time, they will fight to the death!
The victor queen will inherit the parent nest; she will take a few days to strengthen her exoskeleton and flight muscles before departing on her mating flight
The virgin queens that left with a swarm will go on their own mating flights after a new nest site has been located
No queen ever mates within the nest
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And that’s it for this episode! Next week, I’ll continue on with Chapter 3. A lot of what was covered in this chapter is likely already familiar to you so I hope it wasn’t too dull to hear it all again. We did go over a fair amount of this in detail in ‘The Lives of Bees’ but it never hurts to revisit things.
I hope you all are doing okay, taking care of yourselves, and have a good support system for when you need it. As I’ve said before, it’s okay to not be okay! We’re all just doing the best we can.
I hope 2021 will be kinder to us all.
Thanks again for sticking with me. Take care of yourselves!