The Secret Life of Bees in Chiselborough

by Neil Cook

Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

Hello again it’s your friendly neighbourhood honeybee here, reporting again from the North Porch of Chiselborough Church. Well technically speaking I’m not the same bee each time, because we bees don’t live very long in general. In the summer my fellow workers will live about 6 weeks or so, working until they literally drop, usually out in the fields, collecting nectar or pollen. I know as humans you’re probably anthropomorphising us, and thinking that’s terrible, but you have to remember that the life of an individual bee is subservient to the needs of the colony - we live and die as a group and the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (something I think you humans could learn a lesson from). I was born in what you would call early autumn, and my main job will be firstly raising the bees that will overwinter, and after that collecting any of the late nectar and pollen that's available, especially from plants like ivy and himalayan balsam. The winter bees will live much longer - right through to the spring, ready to help rear the first crop of youngsters as the weather gets warmer and the sun gets higher in the sky. You might think I’d be sad that I won’t get to live as long as them, but remember I’m helping the colony to survive and that’s what’s important to me. It’s best to think if a colony of bees like ours as a single organism - that’s why swarming is so important to us - it’s our way of reproducing. You humans might think it’s quite annoying when 20 thousand bees land in a tree in your garden, but next time you see a swarm, think of it as a new colony of bees being born, and maybe you’ll change your perspective!

The sun is definitely getting lower in the sky now, and the nights are drawing in, but on a fine day you’ll still see lots of us out and about collecting pollen (particularly important for raising winter bees - we feed them extra pollen to make them nice and fat for the long winter nights), nectar and even water (we use water to dilute the honey that we’ve stored - having a water source is really important to us in the winter, when we gradually consume the honey we collected in the summer). You may be wondering how we find out way around, and since you asked, I’ll tell you. Some people know that we use the sun to navigate, which is true, but have you ever wondered how we find our way on a cloudy day? It turns out we bees can see the pattern of polarised light that is created by the scattering of sunlight off particles in our atmosphere, (think of our eyes like really good sunglasses!), and we use that pattern to determine where the sun is, and thus where to fly. But, I hear you cry, how do you know where to fly to in the first place? How do we know where the flowers are? Well, we have lots of scout bees who go out and find nectar, pollen and water. They come back to the hive, and they tell us where those food sources are by performing what you humans call a “waggle dance” (we have a much better, cooler name for it, but I can’t tell you or I’d have to sting you! (Only joking…) The waggle dance tells us how far the food source us, and what angle to the sun we need to fly to get there. It might seem complicated, but it’s just natural to us.

Right, enough chat, I’m off to see if that lovely patch of ivy I found yesterday is still in flower, bye for now!

Winter Wonderland

Welcome back, although I am finding talking a bit tricky, because it’s so c-c-cold! Only joking, it’s actually toasty warm in here! I’m currently right in the middle of our winter cluster, where we all huddle together to stay warm. We actually keep the centre of the hive a constant temperature right through the winter (32-35 degrees Celsius), because, even though our queen slows her rate of lay right down, there’s usually a small amount of brood, even in the depths of winter, which we have to keep warm. Imagine one of those David Attenborough documentaries about penguins, except we’re a three-dimensional ball, not a 2D circle. Even do the same trick as penguins - we all spend a bit of time on the outside where it’s coldest, before gradually moving into the middle, and then back out again. Remember, we act as a colony, not individuals, and behaving like this means we can survive even the coldest winters (I heard there are honey bees in a place called Canada where it gets down to -40 degrees C in the winter!). We keep warm by shivering our wings, which generates heat. Of course it also means we’re using energy, so we have to keep eating our stored honey to keep our energy levels up (I think my colleague mentioned that we need to get water to dilute it, which means you’ll see us bees outside even in the winter if the days not *too* cold). We also go outside occasionally in the winter to, ahem, perform our ablutions, as it were (although pretty infrequently compared to you humans).

Apart from that, i.e. shivering and eating, there’s not a lot to do in the winter. So we all spend our time thinking about the upcoming Spring, about first crocus flower we’ll find (crocuses are great for pollen), the first fruit blossom (often a pear tree), and of course visiting the beautiful countryside around Chiselborough. I can’t wait - maybe I’ll see you around on a sunny March afternoon - feel free to give me a wave (and if you feel like planting more crocuses, be my guest!)