Monday 10th May 2009

Today is the start of the exam season in our schools, so tonight's class is to be held in the school snack bar. A very unsuitable place to hold a class as the acoustics are appalling, but that is the way it is. Tonight Al is taking the class on his own, and he begins with some very exciting news. A beekeeping member of EMBA is emigrating to France and has several hives which he no longer requires - about 30 - a mixture of Nationals and Smiths. Al has bought them all - confident that we newbees will snap them up. A buzz of excitement goes round and is amplified hugely by the cavernous interior of the refectory. He passes a piece of paper round and we all have to write our names down and what our requirements would be. He will then sort out what is available and there will be a draw the following week. Everyone seems to want National Hives. I am more disposed towards the Smith Hive, for no other reason than it was designed by Willie Smith of Innerleithen near Peebles and so is surely more suitable to the Scottish climate?
After that diversion, we huddle round a TV screen and are shown a clip from a German wildlife programme which has filmed a queen bee's mating flight!
Our main topic tonight, however, is swarming. Al shows us another video, this time starring himself as The Beekeeper coming along to deal with a swarm of bees. The swarm is in a tree in his garden and we see him knocking the swarm into a skep, covering it until evening, to let any flying bees return, and then dumping it in front of an empty hive. What a glorious sight it is to see this company of bees marching en masse into their new home. They were Al's bees anyway, and he knew they were going to swarm, so he took the risk that he might lose them so that he could produce this wee film for the beginners. Fortunately his hunch that they would stay in his garden paid off and it was a very valuable thing to see.
He talks about signs of swarming and what to do to prevent losing our bees. This is done my means of creating an 'artificial swarm' . You make the bees think they have swarmed by taking the frame with the queen and some attendants out of the hive and putting it in a new hive. The original hive is moved to a different spot and the hive with the queen is moved back to where it was (following ok?) The flying bees return to the hive and find there is now plenty of room - they all think they have swarmed, so they continue as before, while the other hive with the non flying bees will rear new queen cells and thus a new colony is born. Simple! Well - I think I understand, but it feels a bit like trickery to me. A lot of beekeeping seems to be about management and manipulation and I don't know how I feel about that.
Our next visit will be to T's apiary. A very experience beekeeper who lives in one of the leafy western suburbs of Edinburgh. Apparently we get tea and cakes too - nice!

Monday 4th May 2009

Most of this evening's class is taken up with discussions about our various apiary visits. Later we go on to learn about the sex life of the queen. Although she normally has only one nuptial flight, she can mate with up to 10 or 12 drones on this single journey. The act of copulation is tantamount to suicide for each drone, as instead of neatly tucking his apparatus back in his trousers, at the end his genitals are ruptured and he falls to the ground, leaving them dangling from the queen. The next drone to catch up with her does not see this as a warning to his own well being - he simply removes the ruptured debris, and has his own wicked way, and so on. The queen stores all this sperm in a special organ called the spermatheca and returns triumphant to the hive with her last suitor's genitalia hanging from her, like the proof of a blood stained sheet, to be lovingly cleaned and cared for by her attendants. (Well, I do like a bit of drama). She then begins her life's work of laying up to 2000 eggs a day, and secreting "queen substance" - the pheromone which keeps the colony working together, and prevents the workers from bringing on more queens.
I ponder over this fact. Who controls the colony? The workers can, in theory, turn any egg which the queen has laid into a potential new queen. The Queen must produce enough of this pheromone to keep the workers happy, so they will not supersede her. A sort of 'bread and circuses' policy on her part, but the workers seem to know the colony will not survive without an effective queen, so is it a win-win situation? True co-operation even? I have too much to learn before I can possibly begin to imagine the machinations of a bee colony.
As we finish, we are given our next apiary visit details. I will be going to the apiary of N, the association chairman. His bees are kept on the edge of land belonging to the nearby agricultural college - land which my ancestors used to work, so I am looking forward to that.