Learning from Free–living Honey Bees.

Wild Bees Sydney Australia.

Introduction.

Hello Everyone and welcome to all you new readers who signed up since last week.I’m sitting here on tenterhooks like everyone else in the UK waiting for storm Eowyn to hit. Central Scotland is predicted to be worst affected so schools are closed and transport cancelled in anticipation. I’ve tied down and weighted all the bee hives and will hope for the best.

What Can We Learn?

Studies of wild honey bee colonies have taught us a lot about their needs and preferences enabling us to keep them safely in hives constructed to suit the beekeeper. What else can we learn from observing wild honey bee colonies that we can apply to our own beekeeping practices? This was the question asked on a recent online course that I completed. I reworded the question and I’ve updated my answer.

There are many things that we can do to improve our beekeeping practices based largely on the research carried out by Professor Tom Seeley and colleagues on free–living honey bee colonies in the Arnot forest NY between 1974 and today1. I want to share some of the ways that I’ve changed my beekeeping practice since reading more widely and watching colonies in the wild.

Changing Management.

Knowing that colonies in the Arnot forest tend to be spaced around 0.5 miles apart, and that colonies about to collapse from heavy varroa infestations move into nearby healthy colonies2, we can place our colonies as far apart as we can in our given apiary spaces. At the very least, we can face the entrances in different directions, though generally south facing as in the wild. I have already done this in my apiary. When I first started beekeeping, I had no idea than any of this mattered and I lined my hives up neatly in row like beds in a hospital ward. Little did I know then that I was exposing them to drifting and disease. Based on useful comments from readers, it is worth noting that some wild colonies in the UK have been found living closer together than those in the Arnot forest. Density of wild colonies is probably variable across the world and we are unable to describe the ideal distance between colonies in any apiary.

I now keep the entrances much smaller than I used to all through the season knowing that in the wild bees generally choose tree knothole entrances that are around 2-3 inches square. This has made a big difference to how the colonies defend against wasps at the end of summer, and it means that they are less defensive when I open up for quick inspections, or walk around the apiary in wasp season.

Another big lesson has been colony size. Bees in the wild have small nests. I used to keep my colonies in hives with large jumbo British Modified National brood frames (12” x 14”) which gives a brood size similar to a Langstroth hive with around 72,000 cells. For some colonies, I’ve reverted back to using a single National brood box which has around 50,000 cells. It is still a large capacity in comparison with what bees would choose in the wild (10 gallons/45 litres), but it means that they will want to swarm every year like their counterparts in the wild. Swarming helps to keep varroa levels down.

Swarming.

Swarm From Wall Nest.

 In my early days of beekeeping (over 20 years ago), swarm season was always stressful because one of my mentors said that poor beekeeping was the cause of losing swarms. I used to lie awake some nights trying to figure out what to do for the best so that I could be a better beekeeper and not annoy the neighbours. Then one day I discovered Honeybee Democracy by Thomas D. Seeley and the penny dropped. Swarming is perfectly normal and the main reproductive strategy of honey bees. Learning about the biology and behaviour of swarming bees then was a fascinating journey of discovery for me and I still refer to parts of this best seller often.

One of the wall entrances.

I no longer dread swarm season–in fact, I embrace it. A couple of years ago I got my first swarms from free–living colonies long–established in the wall of someone’s garden. The garden dated back to when it was an orchard with trees espaliered to its walls which were warmed in spring by fires lit in various places along it. The chimneys left the perfect nest sites for bees and last summer I counted four active nest entrances with pollen collectors flying in and out.

The key thing about these ‘swarm’ colonies is that they are managing to keep varroa levels fairly low and I’ve noticed many bitten varroa bodies and some with missing legs and feet. It’s still early days in my study but I am hopeful and shall raise queens from the best of these colonies this season.

Insulation.

US Hives Insulated with Wool-filled Duvets. Author Photo.

Insulation is a much–debated topic in the UK, but knowing that nest cavity walls in the wild are much thicker than our wooden hives means that we have choices. We can use material such as polystyrene (weighing up the environmental costs/concerns) or have double-walled hives such as the WBC (named after designer William Broughton Carr) or a couple of other similar hives used in UK and the ROI (Republic of Ireland). We could wrap the hives in winter with insulating material such tar paper, or use covering quilts made of sheep’s wool like duvets. These don’t seem to be as popular in the UK as they are in the US. I use top insulation above the crown/cover board with old woolly jumpers and pieces of woollen blankets from charity shops. Some of my hives are polystyrene.

Propolis.

Lots of Propolis at Nest Entrance.

When I started beekeeping, it was taboo to keep bees that produced lots of propolis and I can remember the same mentor telling me I should requeen a particular colony whose frames were as gooey as toffee apples. Now we know from Dr Seeley’s studies that wild nests are lined with propolis and the draughty spaces are sealed up with it. Dr Marla Spivak’s3 work informs us that the propolis envelope is key to colony health in terms of hygiene and immunity and she actively encourages us to promote colonies that are great resin collectors.

Reproduction.

In the wild, bees choose larvae for queen rearing but we beekeepers mostly choose for them and interfere with their natural selection, especially if we use instrumental insemination. Some queen rearing methods may contribute to poor quality queens that are less robust and long–living. We could interfere less in queen rearing/breeding and leave the bees to sort it out for themselves. Likewise, in the wild, colonies build more drone comb (10% –50%) compared with less than 5% in managed colonies so there are more drones to increase genetic diversity in the wild. We also cull drone brood in an attempt to reduce varroa. Instead, we could add a couple of frames with drone foundation and increase drone production. Instead of culling drone brood over a season, we could cage the queen for up to 21 days on 3 different brood frames with mostly worker brood and destroy these frames as they become sealed to reduce varroa4.

These are just a few of things that we can learn from bees in the wild, and they offer some food for thought for the upcoming new season.

15 thoughts on “Learning from Free–living Honey Bees.”

  1. Hi Ann, I agree with all of the above after being treatment free for nearly 10 years now and the colonies that I am now keeping are all bred from wild/feal swarms that I have caught over this period. One thing that I have notice however is that I do not use brood foundation but I have one wire through the middle of the frames running horizontally. I manage the comb for straightness by putting these empty frames between previously drawn straight frames. By doing this the bees build comb to suit their needs and almost always they have about 20 to 30% drone brood cells. Occasionally there are more, but this is only short term and once the drones have hatched they revert to worker cells. I can only assume that this is their natural tendency and must be of benefit to the colony which bring me to drone brood removal.
    By doing this, the benefit of having bees who can cope with varroa is lost if the drones can not pass it on through their genes. Another reason why my bees continue to survive and others become more reliant on treatments. Why destroy your bee’s genetics by doing this.

  2. One point: wild nests are not always widely spaced. In Blenheim Forest (70+ tree colonies) Filipe Salbany has found a couple of trees with multiple colonies in. These are really huge trees, centuries old oaks, so definitely different cavities. It’s suspected that they’re closely related.

    In my own village there’s a slate roofed mansion with multiple roof colonies. I saw a swarm come out of one and go into a new cavity in the same building. Interestingly, the beekeeper who lived next door for decades had no idea these colonies had been inhabiting the roof for 30+ years. There are a LOT of wild colonies around – if you look for them.

  3. I think bees in the wild are really interesting, but it depends on where those bees are, doesn’t it? Prof Seeley is un the US, where honey bees were imported by western colonists around 350 years ago. The “wild colonies” are escapes which have adapted to the setting. Many parts of the UA do not have climates Apis mellifera would inhabit naturally. The climate will shape the bees behaviour, as will the rest of the ecosystem. Even where the climate is like the natural range of Apis mellifera, the rest of the ecosystem will exert different pressures. This is relevant when considering how far apart bee colonies choose to be- its likely to be different in countries within Apis mellifera’s natural radiation, so we need to be cautious in generalising from the US.

    1. Hello, Jane. You are absolutely correct. What you have just said is really useful so thank you for that. I’ve amended the blog accordingly, and, as you can see below, Paul Honigmann confirms your comments. Best wishes, Ann.

  4. I have modified my beekeeping practice significantly since learning more about wild or free-living bees from Tom Seeley and others, including some of the measures described in Ann’s blog. But I admit to being reluctant to give up my 14×12 brood boxes with their low swarming properties. Some of my colonies are in a posh ‘leafy suburb’ and I don’t want to disturb the mainly elderly residents with swarming bees. Regarding insulation I decided three years ago not to insulate and allow the bees to become hardier and I select and rear queens from the colonies that overwinter better. I still treat for varroa but only if the loads demand it; some colonies haven’t been treated at all for 2 years indicating that they are developing behaviours to deal with the pest but it’s early days. Unfortunately , the colony population density in this area is such that anything we do in terms of bee improvement is inevitably diluted by our queens mating with the local scallywags, and whilst I try to flood the area with my ‘good’ drones by putting frames of drone foundation in all my colonies there are still an awful lot of others that we have no control over. On the subject of queen rearing methods, having gone down the grafting route largely driven by the BBKA Exam and Assessment syllabi, I have to question the arrogance of any beekeeper who thinks they know better than the bees. This year it will be the Hopkins method on trial in the queen rearing apiary. Watch this space.

    1. Hello Alan. Thank you for sharing your beekeeping practices and strategies with us. It is very useful comparing management goals and sharing information. Best wishes, Ann.

  5. This is a note about the % of comb area that is devoted to drone cells in the nests of wild colonies. When (back in the 1970s!) I dissected the nests of 8 wild colonies, I found that the % comb area devoted to drone cells in the nests of these colonies ranged from 10% to 24%. On average, 18% of the comb area in these nests consisted of drone cells. Will be happy to send you a pdf of this “ancient” paper, if you’d like. Thank you for your interest in my work.

    1. Hello Tom. Thank you for that additional information about comb and drone cells. Yes please to sharing that paper with us. Is it possible to post a link on here?
      Best wishes, Ann.

  6. Having listened to David Evans’s talk on bait hives I am interested to find out if there has been any work on collected swarms absconding from hives that have not been specifically chosen by the colony’s scout bees.

    1. Hello Alan,
      Yes, occasionally it does happen that after a swarm has been shaken into a hive, the swarm will move out of this hive. I believe that this happens when the swarm’s scout bees have finished choosing the swarm’s new home, and are keen to get everyone to their new, carefully chosen homesite.
      The signals used by the nest-site scouts to rouse their swarm-mates to move out of the hive are the signals that the nest-site scouts used to rouse their swarm-mates to leave their original home: piping signals and buzz runs.
      To learn more about these two behaviors, I recommend a new book that has the following title: Piping Hot Bees and Boisterous Buzz-Runners.

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