Ender's Entomology Fail

I recently watched the Ender's Game, the Hollywood adaptation of the hugely acclaimed novel by Orson Scott Card. The movie, quite a departure from the book, reminded me of 80's anime series Gunbuster (released about 3 years after Card's novel) and the visuals made me think of Dead Space, whilst the aliens seem to have been borrowed from the Babylon 5. Why in a blog about beekeeping I'm talking about a sci-fi film. Well, [spoiler alert] central to the movie is that the aliens are very much like ants and so Earth's entire strategy is based upon the protagonists' understanding of ants.

Ants like bees are part of the order of Hymenoptera. Hymenoptera are basically four winged insects whose fore and aft wings are connected by hooks. The order includes a huge number of insects but ants, bees and wasps have their very own suborder called Apocrita, it has to do with their tiny waists. In common with a lot of bees, ants are social insects, they live in colonies, have queens, drones and sexually immature female workers.

In Card's novel he mentions the aliens have a similarity to bees and ants. In the movie the script writers felt a need to go beyond that and have the relationship between Queen ants and the rest of the colony explained clearly and slowly for the viewer. It's very important the viewer understands this because, as I mentioned, Earth bases it's whole survival strategy on it and for reasons I didn't quite follow they only had one shot at doing their thing. Unfortunately Hollywood then undermines the whole film by getting all it's ant facts completely wrong..

Dynamite fact checking Hollywood.

Mazer, the unconvincing Maori, has our protagonist Ender slowly explain, for the benefit of the audience, that the Queen ant "directs the worker ants." This isn't true. The Queen lays eggs and that's about all, the workers feed her and attend her needs but she doesn't actually direct them. In fact it's more likely to be the other way round. In honey bee colonies it's been observed that workers exert some level of control over the Queen by altering her food intake if they want to slim her down to swarm and dictating what kind of eggs she'll lay through cell construction.

Ender then goes on to tell us "What she thinks they do." No. Ants haven't somehow evolved telepathy, and as I've mentioned she doesn't control the colony anyway. Bearing in mind Queen ants have a very limited sphere of experience if the colony was dependent upon her directing it they would be unable to forage, defend the colony or do any of the other fairly surprising things ants get up to,

In case the viewer still hasn't grasped what some script writer too lazy to spend ten minutes with Wikipedia is trying to get across we then get told "Without her they can't think for themselves." Not true, foraging ants can travel a couple of hundred metres from their nest, encountering and responding to situations a Queen would have no experience of or ability to cope with..
 
And finally we're misinformed if she dies "they die." Wrong again Ender! What actually happens is, just like honey bees, if a Queen is lost the workers will select an egg or grub and raise a new Queen. If there's no viable eggs or grubs then some workers will sexually mature and start laying male eggs to continue the colony's genetic lineage. Oh and just to fully undermine the whole plan many ant colonies have multiple queens anyway which should render the whole exercise of killing the Queen pointless.

So there you have it, a $110,000,000 movie with it's plot resting on some incorrect information a few minutes with a book (or Google) could have cleared up. Despite being a box office failure it's actually a fairly entertaining flick, just better if you ignore the dialogue though.

Auction Sundays

Sunday the 27th of April was auction o'clock and time for the annual pilgrimage to Woodmansey Village Hall for the Beverley Beekeepers' Association Auction. This year I didn't actually need a lot, which was just as well because when I was waiting to register I was surprised to find I'd brought an empty chequebook (in the words Fox Television's popular jaundiced everyman: "D'oh!") so I was limited to the few beertokens I had in my pocket at the time.

According to the auction list there were about 30 colonies of bees going under the hammer. These ranged from complete National Hives down to 5 frame Nucleus boxes.

Few hundred thousand, seeking a good home.

INnside the hall as per usual there was  few clusters of Nuc boxes, beekeepers seem to wind up with a lot of those. I've got three of them knocking about myself and should maybe think of flogging one actually. The Heather Press that I'm sure has attended every auction I've been to wasn't there this year so perhaps it's found a home at last. There were a few WBC hives, white painted and straight from a postcard, various bits of National Hive, and a skep.

Olde Worlde Bee Hive

Believe it or not some people are reviving skep making and keeping bees in them. Not being waterproof you need to keep them somewhere sheltered though either with a cover or in a bee bole. I gather they're still very useful for catching swarms in. Sticking with the Olde Worlde there was an antique (well old at any rate) Honey Extractor up for auction.

Nowadays honey extractors need to be made from Stainless Steel or Food Grade Plastic, this one was probably galvanised steel or something so can't be used. It would've been nice as some kind of humongous ornament or for a museum perhaps but it didn't meet the reserve.

Potato sacks, used for clothing after a poor honey crop..

Some enterprising individual had acquired a load of potato sacks and bundled them into rolls to auction. Hessian smolders slowly making it excellent smoker fuel, I tend to use corrugated cardboard but it doesn't smell great and you can never be too sure about glues it contains, might have to give it a try myself at some point I didn't bid on them as I was a little short on cash but they all went.

There was a few random items such as set of demijohns for the mead maker and a crate of 330ml bottles -I guess someone's going to be making a little home brew, a jar of sheradised nails and what appeared to be a brand new Handy Hand Push Lawn Mower was quickly snapped up. A manual lawn mower is just the thing for an apiary where you don't particularly want a loud motor to be annoying your bees. Never thought about it really but when I'm using my Flymo I always keep one eye on the hives just in case.

Nucs, lawnmowers, floors, hessian. Got it all.

One thing I did bid on but didn't win was a commercial sized Brood Box, there was a little commercial equipment and only about 3 or 4 people bidding on it so I'd guess the WBC and National are still far more popular in the area at the moment. A futuristic looking shiny green polystyrene super and brood box with a hard plastic outer went for £6 which is pretty amazing for an almost complete hive, as someone commented probably reflects current opinion on poly hives -although poly Nuc boxes seemed to get a bit more attention.

There was a load of open mesh hive floors going in pairs and was after a couple of those so bid on a few, picking up a pair for the princely sum of £5. They didn't have sliding boards but if none of the ones I have fit I can easily make up a couple of those from some Correx signage I seem to have acquired for free.. Auctions are strangely unpredictable things and after a few pairs of floors went for around the £5-£7 mark similar lots started going for £17.

There was a batch of Claw Hive Tools sold for £2 a piece. I was actually wanting a second Hive Tool so I could prising both sides of each frame at the same time and speed up my hive inspections but missed out on these and picked up one of three Mann Lake tools instead. I think I paid about the same as they go for retail really but it was new and I saved on the postage :)

My modest haul

After cup of tea and a little queueing to part with my cash I got my little haul home. I'll be scorching and treating the hive floors before plonking them under the hives at some point.

Vintage Cafe

For 3 weeks starting from the 14th April Vintage Cafe on Chanterlands Avenue, Hull, are displaying, and hopefully selling, a selection of my bee products.

A selection of handmade hive products on display

If you don't know Vintage Cafe it's certainly worth a visit. I've parked outside it umpteen times to post my sales in the nearby Post Office but it was only last month I went in for a latte - well two lattes actually as the first was a bit good. As well as sandwiches, paninis, cakes, soups, hot and cold beverages they also do craft sessions and collect for the homeless. -busy bees! Much of the food is gluten free BTW so I'll be recommending the place to a couple of Coeliac buds.

Tea or coffee?
..or both and a cake.

Honey and Chalkbrood

Inspected all three hives today. Hive1 is going well, the number of bees is going up with 6 seams and there's a lot of capped brood and eggs. They've even started putting honey in the super I gave them last inspection.

Honey already being stored in the Super on Hive1

The Queen has been laying a lot of eggs but the pattern is a bit haphazard so I suspect she may be on her way out but I'll see how she goes for a little longer yet -hopefully the bees will start the supersedure process if they want her replacing. They've already started rearing drones too, you can see their domed cells toward the top of the comb in the picture below, and a few uncapped drones towards the left.

Messy brood pattern.

No play cups or queen cells have appeared yet but I'll be keeping any eye out for them.

When I previously inspected Hive2 I noticed some chalkbrood was visible in the comb. Chalkbrood is a fungal infection which affects the bee larvae killing them and giving them a chalk like appearance. A strong colony tends to be able to manage it by pulling out infected larvae from the comb but a weak colony may have difficulties. Upon this inspection there was actually far less chalkbrood visible in the comb than previously and it took a little hunting to spot it.

Some Chalkbrood in upper left of shot.

I assume this meant that the bees are getting on top of it and are removing infected larvae. There was some dead chalkbrood infected larvae lying on the open mesh floor. The bees should eventually remove them from the hive, but if they don't I'll need to come up with a way to remove them myself -possibly by swapping out the hive floor and scorching it.

Dead Chalkbrood infected larvae

Although the bees appear to be coping with the chalkbrood this inspection I'd already decided to treat the infection and decided to go ahead and do it anyway. The common way to get rid of chalkbrood is to requeen the colony, people seem a little unsure if the chalkbrood dies back in the interim with no brood before the new Queen starts laying or of the new Queen should have less of a genetic disposition for her brood succumbing the chalkbrood -I'd assume it's more to do with the former than the latter but I could be wrong. There's a few medications available for Chalkbrood although beekeepers disagree on it's efficacy. I decided to give it Beevital Chalkbrood a try.

BeeVital MycoStop

This is a red liquid made of stable amino acids, essential oils (no idea which ones..) and propolis. The blurb states the concoction inhibits the growth of Ascosphera apis fungus. The instructions were a little confusing, it being an Austrian product I'd guess some clarity was lost during it's translation from German to English. It talks about spraying infected comb but the photo in the instructions shows it being squirted into the seam between frames. It advised using 20-30ml per colony three times at 7-10 day intervals. I decided to squirt it into inhabited seams like in the photo, if that doesn't help I'll try applying it to the comb -there's 250ml in the bottle which should be more than I need.

In Hive3 I spotted two chalkbrood infected larvae so treated them with the MycoStop too. They're still building numbers. They've still got plenty of stores left but only 2 seams of bees so I've left an entrance reducer in place to make it easier for them to defend. With their low numbers and stored food they'ed be an easy target for robbing out by the two stronger colonies.

Broomsticks

Broomsticks on Newland Avenue, Hull, are now selling my Propolis Tincture and Lip Balms. If you're in the area pop in and have a look. They're jolly nice people and support Retired Greyhound Trust.

Broomsticks on Newland Avenue, Hull

They sell a massive variety of herbs, resins, essential oils, fragrance oils, incenses and ayurvedic medicines so I figured as Propolis falls within ayuverdic and folk medicine (as well as modern dentistry) it would fit nicely with their current lines. Other things on sale include candles, melts, artwork, figurines and huge range wiccan related items like tumblestones, spheres, pendulums, herb harvesting tools, books on related subjects and clothing from Spiral. As well as being a shop they also offer a range of therapies including more massages than you can shake a stick at, Aromatherapy, Reiki, EFT and Reflexology. They also had a few customers asking  about lip balm so I dropped off some of that too :)

They have a Facebook page here www.facebook.com/broomsticks.biz

Go there!
Buy these!

As I've mentioned Essential Oils this seems a good place to do a quick rundown of some Essential Oils commonly used in beekeeping. They're either mixed with syrup (although they don't dissolve too well on their own -I gather lecithin can help) or added to grease patties. Some are evidence based, some anecdotal and some probably experimental so do a little research before adding any to your hives..

Some Essential Oils used in Beekeeping

Essential Oil	Used for
Geranium	Used as a lure to attract swarms
Lemongrass	Used as a lure to attract swarms
Peppermint	Mask pheromones when combining colonies
Spearmint	General health, Control Mites
Tea Tree	Control Mites
Thyme	Control Mites, Treat Nosema
Vetiver	Treat Nosema
Wintergreen	Control mites

The Dead of Winter

The beekeeping season has started and I've not posted for a while, been very busy with sales of my propolis and lip balm products. I've also made a Facebook page to help publicise my online sales, if you fancy a look it's over here: Hivemind Heavy Industries by Hull Bees.

12th March, 2014, sunbathing weather for some.

In early March I noticed Bumble Bees sunning themselves and beehives starting to appear in fields heralding the start of activity for bees and beekeepers alike.

Beehives ready to pollinate a field

Towards the end of 2013 we were told to expect the worst winter in 60 years, so I was expecting something along the lines of The Day After Tomorrow, albeit a little less crap than that 126 minutes of pure disaster. With that in mind, the winter I mean not the movie, and the poor year that was 2013 I'd decided to give the bees a huge amount of emergency stores using candy boards, a method which I gather isn't particularly common in the UK. Basically each hive was given about 7 kilos of white sugar formed into a huge sugar lump, a third of a pattie of pollen substitute and an extra entrance near the top of the hive. This meant that if the bees ran out of stores wherever they were in the hive they would have food directly above them -if it's too cold bees will starve to death rather than breaking the cluster to go get food stored elsewhere in the hive. The top entrance is for in case the main entrance at the floor of the hive gets blocked with dead bees. It turned out that like The Day After Tomorrow the much touted worst winter didn't really get off the ground either and save for a few freezing nights it was probably the mildest winter I've seen.

Lighting up my smoker and grabbing my hive tool on 15th March I decided to give the hives their first inspection. Whipping the lid off of Hive3 the sugar appeared to be intact but I could see the bees had
been taking the pollen substitute. In the picture below the dark area is empty space left where they've taken the yellow substitute. They need pollen for rearing brood so I figured that's possibly a good sign.

They've been nibbling.

This was the hive holding the captured swarm and was expected to be the weakest of the three colonies. When I removed the candyboard and I was able to see just one seam of bees. Not great, but the queen was already laying so I'm hoping she'll be able to ramp up worker numbers in the next few weeks.

Only one seam in Hive3

I did a very brief inspection and found they had a lot of stored food left over -probably on account of the mild Winter -that and the small population in this hive.

That's a lot of stores for Spring

They obviously weren't going to need feeding. In August this hive had had 4 seams of bees so that should mean a lot of dead bees somewhere. After the Winter of 2013 the hive floors were deep in dead bees but this year was very different.

Let the bodies hit the floor..

Removing the brood box to check the floor it was obvious that the bees had done a pretty good job of disposing of their dead sisters over the mild winter. With the floor cleared and swiftly blowtorched back on went the brood box, crownboard and roof.

Hive 1 and 2 both had about 4 seams of bees left in each and plenty of stores. As well as taking the pollen substitute they'ed also made a start on the sugar and had been making tunnels above the seams.

Hive1's Candyboard, slightly chewed.

Hive2's Candyboard, not much pollen substitute left.

There was some brood and eggs visible in both brood boxes so the Queens were getting into the swing of things. Getting the bees out of the tunnels in the candy was a bit tricky and involved a lot of shaking, brushing and the judicious application of smoke. There were more dead in Hive 1 & 2 than in Hive3 but that was to be expected given that there were larger colonies, but still nothing approaching the numbers of the previous year.

Dead On The Floor

Having removed the candy boards I knocked out the sugar into a large tub which I brought into the house giving my housemate the impression my bees had spent the Winter refining white sugar. :) I put it in an upstairs room to dry out in full sun and I shall probably be using it to make syrup later in the year.

Result!

14th of February, 2014, Youtube's 9th birthday and St Valentine's Day. As well as the usual stack of cards from various admirers and hopefuls this year I also got a large white envelope from DEFRA. I've mentioned a couple of times that my bees were in the European Union Pilot Surveillance Programme for honey bee health. This European Commission driven study included 200 beekeepers in England and Wales of which I was one. The Regional Bee Inspector visited each beekeeper in the study three times, twice in 2012 and once in 2013. As well as a visual inspection he took samples of bees from each hive which were then taken off to the Bee Unit for analysis, specifically TaqMan® Molecular Pathogen Screening. Yeah it's not exactly an olde worlde beekeeping technique ;) From what I can gather it involves searching for the DNA of specific viruses in a sample using DNA Probes. It sounds a little Fantastic Voyage to me, but you can always read up on Polymerase Chain Reaction yourself if you're having a slow week.

In the first visits samples were taken from all three hives, in the second samples were taken from Hive1 and a sample of dead bees from the deceased Hive3. In the third visit a sample was taken from Hive1 which the inspector felt showed some signs of varoosis. The first samples also had varroa counts lab checked too.

Varroa Counts on 5th September 2012

Hive	Varroa count per 100 bees
Hive1	0.8
Hive3	0.58
Hive3	1.45

The molecular screening checked for Deformed Wing Virus, Nosema Apis, Nosema Carnae, Acute Bee Paralysis Virus, Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus, Kashmir Bee Virus and Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus. The names of some of these viruses hints at how far across the globe they've spread, that's mainly thanks to people of course.

Molecular Pathogen Screening Results

Hive	5/9/2012	14/4/2012	16/8/2012
Hive1	None	NC	NC
Hive2	ABPV	No Test	No Test
Hive3	None	NA & NC	-

(ABPV= Acute Bee Paralysis Virus, NC= Nosema Carnae, NA = Nosema Apis)

Hive3 had died out overwintering between the first and second visits, and Hive2 wasn't sampled in the second and third visits because there were no visible signs of disease. Hive 1 was only tested as it had shown visual signs of varoosis. When I gave the bees their Oxalyc Acid treatment in late November Hive2 was the most populous.

Last weekend I had a listen to the hives with a stethoscope just to see if the bees were surviving. Hives 1 and 2 seemed to be doing well but Hive3 which contained the captured swarm was a lot quieter. Using a stick I had a poke around in the entrances to make sure they weren't blocked with dead bees.