More Visitors to the Hive

Recently I've been seeing a few more creatures around the hive. Honey Bees being a part of our ecology naturally interact with other flora an fauna. Whilst they get pollen and nectar from various plants they also tend to get eaten by a lot of things and drop various edible bits along the way.

Common Carder Bee

Previously I found some Common Carder Bees had set up colonies in the ground below the nuc. Unfortunately not long after posting about them and how I was hoping to watch them over the summer it rained and they seem to have died off :(

This evening I found this large black bumble bee investigating the ground below the hives. Annoyingly it refused to keep still to oblige me with a photograph so 3 seconds of video will have to suffice. There's quite a few species of bumble bee and I've no idea which this one was. It seemed to be examining the ground below the hives and had a bit of a buzz against the mesh floors but didn't enter the hives -I doubt the guards would have let it in if it'd tried anyway. I suspect the Common Carders and this Bumble Bee were attracted by the scent of the hive with it's wax comb, developing brood and the queen's pheromones wafting about.

"I wasn't eating your bees, honest guv."

A few years ago I made a pond and once it was stable I introduced some Common Frog tadpoles with a view to them controlling slugs which were over running the garden. It seems to have worked and having added a second pond and more spawn and tadpoles from other sources to deepen the gene pool the frogs are still here 6 years later.

On his(?) way to chomp on some eusocial insects.

Recently I noticed a couple of them sitting about below the nucleus, I haven't seen one catching bees yet but they certainly do eat them. It's be quite handy if they ate the dead bees below the hives but unfortunately they only eat moving things, offer them as many dead bees as you like and they'll sit waitng for a live one to fly over. I gather toads will eat dead bees from the ground though so perhaps I should look into acquiring some of those. Note: Anyone wanting to do something similar should bear in mind that in the UK it's actually illegal to remove frogspawn (and no doubt toad eggs) from natural habititats so if you want to introduce some to your own pond and there's no chance of them getting there naturally you need to find an obliging pond owner who'll help you out.

Red Eyed Damsel Fly on a Water Soldier,
also a discarded nymph skin to the right.

Other pond life that eats bees are the Damsel Flies. Here's a photo of a recently emerged one I took last summer. I'm fairly certain this one's a male Red Eyed Damsel Fly, mainly on the strength of it's size although the red eyes are a bit of a giveaway too. I've not seen any dragon flies round my own ponds but if there are any they'll be happy to nosh on a honey bee too.

It's not just the ponds that provide plenty of predators for my poor bees. I've mentioned in a previous post that I'm sure it's not just a coincidence that the birdbox which remained empty for years became occupied by Blue Tits in my second season of beekeeping.

I've recently been finding spider threads near the hives where an industrious spider with an eye for opportunity must've thought it was going to hit paydirt. Well it might've if I didn't keep brushing them away. On  my last inspection I found a spider in the roof.

"Thought I'd have a bee for tea."

No idea what kind of spider it is, but it's legspan was about 2 inches and it lacks the white cross shape on it's back that would identify it as a Garden Spider.

This little guy was about 4mm big.

Recently I found a couple of small insects with long antenna wandering about on the bottom board. There's plenty to eat on there such as dropped nectar, pollen, sugar sypup, wax, bits of bees, dropped varroa and general detritus. I also sometimes see some really small pinkish spider mites running about on the board. In nature bee colonies are meant to live in cavities in trees and no doubt they'ed share their home with other things like woodlice too.

There's also of course the varroa who attach themselves to bees and suck out haemolymph, as well as these there's a few other mite types that live on or in the bees too, a common one being Tropilaelaps although I've not yet noticed any myself.. I'm currently treating the nucleus for Varroa using Apilife Var -a natural product that kills varroa, dissolves plastic and gets bees pretty angry, so it's not unusual for me to find dead varroa under there at the moment. It's recently been discovered -or more likely rediscovered  or remembered that pseudoscorpions predate the varroa mite and there are currently studies going on into whether or not they can be used as a biological control within hives.

Other creatures that interact with honey bees but so far haven't been a problem for me include mice (hence the need for winter mouseguards), badgers, woodpeckers, slugs and wax moth.

In the UK our bears were long ago hunted to extinction along with boars and wolves -I can't help wondering what the third world makes of that when we're lecturing to them about their elephants and rhinos... So whilst bears would rob hives, it's very unlikely your bees will ever even see one unless your apiary is next to a zoo. There is a popular belief that bees have an inherent dislike of bear shaped things which some argue effect the choice of colour a beekeeper ought to wear whilst working their hives. For example it's often suggested that dark or black clothing and in particular gloves may trigger an angry response from a colony mistaking  the dark beekeeper for bear, albeit a very skinny (hungry?) one. For that reason a lot of beekeepers wear lighter coloured or white protective kit. Any goths out there attracted to the idea of a hobby that involves being surrounded by smoke might want to bear that in mind, although I suspect the sunlight and heavy lifting may put them off anyway. Of course some people think that's nonsense and choose their wardrobe with impunity. I tend to wear black jeans and a green smock when working my hives. Having used both black and yellow rubber gloves and had bees sting through both my own theory is that bees simply don't like people riffling through their hives and don't really care what colour you're wearing for the occassion.