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Archive for the ‘Bee Present’ Category

Bees Can Count!

Posted in Bee Law, Bee Lore, Bee Present, Bee-ology, Beetwixt & Beetween on September 29, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Honeybees are clever little creatures. They can form abstract concepts, such as symmetry versus asymmetry, and they use symbolic language — the celebrated waggle dance — to direct their hivemates to flower patches. New reports suggest that they can also communicate across species, and can count — up to a point.

With colleagues, Songkun Su of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, and Shaowu Zhang of the Australian National University in Canberra managed to overcome the apian impulse to kill intruders and cultivated the first mixed-species colonies, made up of European honeybees, Apis mellifera, and Asiatic honeybees,A. cerana. The researchers confirmed that the two species have their own dialects: foraging in identical environments, the bees signaled the distance to a food source with dances of different durations.

Remarkably, despite the communication barrier, A. cerana decoded A. mellifera’s dance and found the food.

From: http://www.clipmarks.com/clipmark/AC3920A0-F84A-4A34-A1FD-02E2769308F6/

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Magic Presents from the Bees

Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Bee-ology, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on September 29, 2008| Leave a Comment »

A bee comb has six sides,

on each a magic thing it hides:

Take wax, pollen and a spoon of honey 

which will make you healthy and sunny

Try propolis, royal jelly or venom

and you’ll enjoy bee’s poem!

Adapted from: http://www.bee-hexagon.net/

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Bee Law: Possession of Bees

Posted in Bee Law, Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on September 29, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Blackstone Commentaries, Book II divides the entire animal kingdom into two classes.  Domesticated animals (ferae domitia) and wild (ferae naturae).   Wild animals are also divided into two classes — those free to roam at will and those which have been subjected to man’s dominion.

The honey bee that exists in the wild (lives in a tree cavity) is little different from the honey bee that lives within a man-made hive.   However, honey bees do swarm and thus are free to roam at will.  Honey bees do not trespass and the owner of property has no title to wild things using his property.  The owner of property can prevent others from coming onto his/her property and taking them and the property owner has a right to capture a swarm and hive it. Trespassing is a violation of the law and is enforceable.

“So long as bees remain in the hive of the claimant and on his premises or premises under his control, they are his.” (Supra.§ 5).

It is when they leave his/her hive and premises, as in swarming, that complications arise.  Case law has reflected the general idea that as long as the beekeeper keeps the swarm in sight and can identify them has his/hers, the beekeeper retains ownership of the bees. However, in getting the bees hived, one may be charged with trespassing.

From: http://www.gobeekeeping.com/LL%20lesson%20six.htm

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Prehistoric Ape-iarists?

Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on September 26, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Apparently chimpanzees hunt honey in Africa in the same way that people do.  They follow the honeyguide bird to where the bees are.  The males then go up the tree first to collect the honey and they even use tools such as stones and sticks to get at the honey!

One wonders whether the practice of apes collecting honey is more ancient than even our oldest history books give account?  What is Bee Lore without the written word?  Perhaps it is a story that has been handed down (and distorted) through many generations?  Or maybe just a thought about something that is Bee Present like this one?

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Hole in my veil…beeware!

Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beekeeping on September 26, 2008| Leave a Comment »

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Autumn feeding….with all of this year’s honey for the bees!

Posted in Bee Present, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on September 26, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The weather has been good over the past week and I have visited the hives twice……

Two of the hives are not going to make it over winter – the last two swarms that were caught in late June (Kilndown and Hawkhurst).  However, we should get Joy, Harmony, Faith, Grace (weakest of these five) and Prior’s Heath through the winter with a bit of luck….which would be good considering we only had one colony at the start of this year.  That is the good news.

The not-so-good news for those of you who have had honey from us in the past few years is that I have decided to leave all the honey on the hives……we could have taken two supers….but would have left Grace and Prior’s Heath without enough winter stores…..and I am not sure that they would have packed-down enough stores by simply feeding them syrup.

Grace and Faith also showed signs of verroa…..with bees quite diseased flying in and out…..so hopefully the treatment will work on them.

Strange with the credit crunch.  It is somehow that the bees themselves are keeping their liquid assets in the bank and that there is no dividend or bonus for us this year.  The analogies between the bee world and the human world remain fascinating to me as I start a new venture.  I might write more on this.  I am inspired to even write a new section of this blook!  Watch this space!

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Computer Model on the Hive Mind

Posted in Bee Law, Bee Present, Bee-ology, Beetwixt & Beetween on August 25, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Extracted from New Scientist 16 August 2008

“Given a choice between two different flower beds, how can honeybees hunting for nectar be sure they’ve chosen the best patch?  A new computer model may provide the answer, as well as insights into the workings of a “hive mind” that could be used to guide swarms of robots.

To test this hypothesis, Ronald Thenius of the University of Graz in Austria built a computer simulation of a hive containing 5000 independent virtual bees.  Each forager started out visiting one of two different flower patches, but would switch destinations if it had to wait too long to be unloaded or was being serviced by too many receivers.

The idea that bees glean information from the number of unloadings is new, says Francis Rietnieks, a bee expert at the University of Sussex in the UK, but it needs to be verified in the field. “If their simulation suggests a novel means of information transfer, ideally they will devise a suitable experiment that can test the model’s predictions,” he says.

Thenius says the work could prove useful in controlling swarms of tiny robots for sensing and surveillance applications. Such robots could use a similar method of incidental communication to arrive at group decisions that could maximise resources. The system would be robust because it would rely on very simple observations, he notes.

The results, presented at the Artificial Life IX conference in Winchester, UK, last week were promising.  The virtual bees moved to the better nectar source at similar rates and in similar proportions to those observed for real bees.  “It’s like a new pub has opened with cheap beer: everyone’s trying to find it,” says Thenius. “The hive can gain up to 20 per cent more nectar this way.”

Full article at: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19926696.200-computer-model-of-bees-probes-the-hive-mind.html

Also from: http://www.clipmarks.com/clipmark/06C4E037-2CE5-4F6D-83F1-7E36BE29FF8E/

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How to Make a Medieval Willow Skep

Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beekeeping on July 18, 2008| 1 Comment »

An interesting u-tube demo on how to make a Willow Skep can be found at:

http://www.larsdatter.com/beehives.htm

 

     

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Bee Dances

Posted in Bee Law, Bee Lore, Bee Present, Bee-ology, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on July 18, 2008| Leave a Comment »

 

Bees have devised a very effective method of communicating information about sources of food using a ROUND DANCE and a WAGGLE DANCE (or figure of eight). The dances do not appear to indicate the height of the food above ground level and in most cases this is not important since to a bee the source will be obvious.

Round Dance

This is used when the source of food (nectar or pollen) is less than 100 metres away. The bee dancing goes in a circle on the comb first one way, she turns round and then the other way round the circle. Food is passed from the dancing bee to those watching and following giving information about it’s taste and smell. The round dance does not appear to tell the bees in which direction to go to the food source just that the food “is close to the hive and tastes and smells like this”.

Waggle Dance

For food supplies more than 100 metres the waggle dance is used. The bee will run in a direction on the comb which indicates direction relative to the sun’s position. The bee uses the force of gravity (vertically downwards) as the position of the sun and if say the food is 30 ° to the left of the sun then the bee will dance 30 ° to the left of the vertical on the frame. Whilst the bee is indicating direction she waggles her body from side to side to indicate distance to the food source. The more waggles the closer the food source is to the hive.

The waggle dance gives both direction and distance to the food source and by tasting the food the bee knows what to look for.

From: http://www.cheshire-bka.co.uk/Beekeeping/beedance.php

 

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A Year On

Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beekeeping, Bylaugh on July 18, 2008| Leave a Comment »

It was a year ago yesterday that I started writing this blook.  I never dreamt that it would get so big and have so many entries and have received so many hits by now.  It has been a great way to relax in the evenings after work as well as a good place to record some of the happenings in the apiary – though I am still not sure why Tears of Ra, the Sun God is the most popular page by far.  Perhaps it is something to to with the way Google and other search engines work?

The bees have thrived!  Having had a very low period of only one colony through the winter – faithful old Faith, we now have seven colonies in the apiary (plus the one in the roof) making eight!  And June has been a truly memorable swarm-catching month.

I stopped work on 4th July (Independence Day) and have decided to take the rest of the summer off before starting a new set of projects in the Autumn.  So apart from making up a few new rooves and stands for the new colonies, my work-load is at a minimum.  Which is really nice – since I seem to have been at the large organisation grindstone for the past 28 years.

So what plans for beelore in the coming year?  I suppose that I want to write more on Bylaugh – which is the story part of the blook.  So far, I have developed the first chapter – but there is definitely more to be written!  The internet continues to produce interesting bee stories and poems and connections – but I want to explore some of the boundaries of the myth and legend by digging into pre-history a bit more – as well as to research the connection between the health of bees and the state of the planet.  This will probably require me to adopt different techniques to collect the material as well as finding different ways of connecting with those who have the stories.  Any ideas on how to do this would be welcome!

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