Deforestation and the Dawn of Empire

The area which marks the Western Boundary of Spike Acres has been a bit neglected of late. 

For example...

And...

So it was with some trepidation that LandofSpike and Beekeeper Junior Number 1 made their way through the undergrowth armed only with standard issue machetes, some homemade napalm, a compass and a fully stocked toolbox. 

Their mission?

To clear a space for the Land of Bees.

More wilderness

Actually, it wasn't too bad.

The vegetation put up only a token resistance and in no time at all sackfuls of the green stuff had been hacked away and a clear earth floor had appeared beneath their feet.

Predictably, removing all the ivy, dust and detritus of the ages from the nooks and crannies in the wall and fence revealed some critters so grisly that even the bug-loving BKJ1 had to think twice before approaching them. 

home to some pretty sizeable MiniBeasts

Several of Shelob's relatives seemed to have set up camp in the ivy and leaf litter under the Boundary Fence and they seemed none too pleased to be disturbed. A couple of the brutes even decided to attack each other. We let them get on with it.

BKJ1 also found a grub which was, frankly, enormous. It turned out to be a stag beetle larva. Sadly there's no photo of this colossus as LandofSpike was so flabbergasted by its immense bulk he forgot to photograph it.

One major consideration when setting up the Land of Bees was that the site needed to be as unobtrusive and as secluded as possible. 

A nicely concealed hive makes for a happier human community. It would also give the bees a calm area in which to get on with their work unimpeded, and isolated from the rest of Spike Acres.

So screening the area on all sides was going to be essential and, possibly, a bit pricey. 

Luckily, during the day's excavations, LandofSpike was able to unearth and salvage some willow screens left behind by the previous civilisation that had colonised the area in a bygone age. 
Largely unaffected by the passage of time, the screens were ready to be re-erected and restored to their former glory.

Evidence of an Earlier Civilisation

Perfectly preserved and re-usable relics

Meanwhile BKJ1 made a great job of converting a reclaimed pallet into a sturdy beekeeper platform. 

New slats were nailed into place and then the whole thing was given a liberal coating of weatherproofing paint.

BKJ1 contemplates his handiwork

The reclaimed willow screen was in great nick and with some judicial trimming and a bit of frame construction it has given the Land of Bees excellent protection on its western and northern borders.

Well, at least it looks less wild than it did 3 hours ago

So that's it for the time being...

Before the Beebox can be installed, the southern and eastern boundaries still need to be screened off, the ground needs to be leveled and the wooden bits still need some more weatherproofing. 

We also need a little weatherproof box to keep all the beekeepery kit in.

However, neat and tidy as it is, that bare earth does still look a bit unsatisfactory.

Fortunately, LandofSpike has spotted some big chunks of turf in a skip very close to Spike Towers.

It looks very much like that discarded grass needs to be liberated and given a new bee-friendly home.

Right Suborder, Wrong Genus

Spike Towers is finally home to a colony of insects.

Unfortunately it's not the expected arrival of a 5 frame nucleus of Apis mellifera carnica but a surprisingly robust colony of ants. 

And they've decided to take up residence in the bathroom.

There really are quite a lot of them.

Lots of these

LandofSpike supposes that the higher than average rainfall this month has sluiced them out of their usual subterranean home and into the relatively more arid environs of Spike Towers.

At this moment a bitter struggle for territorial advantage is probably raging between the newcomers and the previously dominant silverfish.

This untimely invasion may, however, be opportune, for on his last visit to the Secret Underground Vault which harbours his Empire's Capital Reserves, LandofSpike couldn't help but notice that the coffers were more than unusually empty.

Not many of these

Consequently, LandofSpike is considering postponing his acquisition of a flight of honeybees and adopting, in their stead, the already installed, and therefore significantly cheaper, colony of ants.

AntsofSpike could make perfect sense.

It would mean that emphasis would shift from honey production to a prospective entry into the fledgling formic acid market. 

A FriendofSpike has suggested that he could even diversify into cultivating and marketing that nutritious fungus that the ants produce. 

With careful husbandry and a couple of well placed features in the Sunday supplements, FungusofSpike could possibly become next year's Groovy New Superfood.

LandofSpike could solve World Hunger at a stroke or, better still, get totally minted by opening the World's First Ant Salon and Exclusive AntFungus Restaurant in Primrose Hill.

Or, conversely, LandofSpike could just stop wasting everybody's time with his nonsensical AntTalk and make sure his next post is actually about honeybees.

Not All Bees are Created Equal... Honeybee Castes

Today the Land of Bees transports you back a few weeks to early April and it's a return to school at Apiary Central with BeeGuru1.

It's 9*C and looking like rain. The lesson is held outdoors.

LandofSpike is now starting to doubt the wisdom of wearing just a tshirt.

Well, it had been really very warm the day before...

However, he is from the East Coast and therefore dead 'ard. Learning about Bee Castes will keep him warm...
So here we go with a quick introduction to the Caste System of the Honeybee with some bite-size facts which, hopefully, aren't too wide of the mark.

Honeybee Society is highly structured and meticulously organised. It follows a strict Caste System in which there are 3 distinct types of bee:

The Queen

The Worker 

and The Drone

The Queen is a fertile female. She lays eggs.

That's her job. Up to 2000 a day. All the bees in the colony develop from her eggs.

The hive centres around the one Queen. As long as she's still laying. If the Queen weakens or dies the colony can replace her with a newly reared Queen. A part of the Beekeeper's job is to control the changeover of the Queen.

Lifespan: 15 days to emerge from egg. Mature for mating after 20 days. Can live 3-4 years.

The Queen is an Egg-Laying Machine

The Workers are females from a fertilized egg but are themselves infertile. 

They do all the graft and the jobs that the individual Workers undertake within the colony change as they get older.

They forage for pollen and nectar, gather water and propolis, tidy and maintain the hive, regulate the hive's temperature, care for the brood and feed the Queen & the larvae. 

It is the Workers who make the hexagonal honeycomb from wax that they secrete.

They use these cells as chambers in which to rear the brood and as stores for their precious stocks of honey and pollen.

Workers make up 95% of the colony and are all sisters.

Lifespan: 21 days to emerge from egg. Can live for up to 36 days. Over-wintering Workers can live for 6 months.

Out all day foraging then has to come home and look after the kids

The Drones, who are stingless, are fertile males from an unfertilized egg. Their function is to fertilize the new Queens. They do not forage nor do they do any housework. In fact by the end of the summer, once they're no more use and are just lazing around on the sofa watching Sky Sports, the Workers have had enough and boot them out of the hive to die. 

Lifespan: 24 days to emerge from egg. Mature for mating after 37 days. Can live up to 59 days.

The drone has similar life skills to the human male

So, Honeybee Society is pretty nailed down. It works because every bee knows it's place and is hot-wired to carry out its pre-destined task with unerring devotion.

It doesn't take much of a leap of imagination to see the colony as the organism and the individual bees as composite parts of the whole.

It's possible to see it as a bit Orwellian, and Huxley, in a fatalistic mood, would recognise the predetermination of the individuals. 

But bees ain't humans so everything works just fine.

There the lesson ends, but before we leave BeeGuru1 and our alfresco learning zone at Apiary Central there's a short Q&A session with a small prize for the student with the most correct answers.

LandofSpike was hoping the prize might be a jacket.

The Land of Bees Schoolroom... A Bit of Latin

Today, the Land of Bees will be taking us back to school.

This will be happening pretty regularly so stop moaning and settle down.

While LandofSpike understands that it's not totally necessary to know which Suborder or Phylum bees belong to when you're tucking into some bread & honey, knowing a bit about which branch of the Tree of Life our bees have built their nests on is no bad thing.

So sit up straight and pay attention at the back of the class, it's time for a bit of Latin.

Our subject is the European Honeybee, Apis mellifera.

Apis is Latin for Bee.

Mellifera can be split into melli meaning honey and ferre meaning to carry.

So Apis mellifera is the Honey-Carrying Bee. 

Easy peasy.

Every organism has its place in the Hierarchy of Biological Classification, bees being no exception.

Our handy chart will guide us through the Classification of the European Honeybee with, hopefully, a minimum of glaring errors.

Those creatures at the bottom of the Classification are just a few subspecies of Apis mellifera, but they're the important ones for beekeepers.

In our next visit to the Land of Bees Schoolroom, LandofSpike will be casting his gaze over these fellers and seeing why beekeepers need to know all about them.

A Box for the Bees and a Day of Sunshine

Finally, some Sunshine... 

And over at Apiary Central this morning the honeybees are hard at it, foraging for all their worth.

It must be a big relief for them after being cooped up for the entirety of, what is surely, one of the rottenest Aprils on record.

Inside the hive, the last month has panned out something like this...

Worker 1:  "Is it still raining?"

Worker 2:  "I'll go and look."

Worker 2 trawls off to the entrance. A minute later she returns.

Worker 1: "Well?"

Worker 2: "It's still rainin' innit. And it's flippin'  baltic... I hates England."

Worker 1: "Fancy some fondant?"

Worker 2: "OK."

They trudge off to further deplete their stores.

Meanwhile, back at Spike Towers, there's been a bit of shilly-shallying on the choice of hive in which to home the bees.

LandofSpike had always assumed that some version of the vertical hive would be the automatic choice, but an excellently informative session about hive types with BeeGuru1 presented him with a seemingly infinite variety of hives to choose from.
As well as the practicalities of the kit, choice of hive is also guided by philosophy. Oh yes.
Your approach, be it Traditional, Modern or Bio-dynamic, will directly inform which hives will be the best fit for where your head's at.

LandofSpike will cover hive types and philosophies in a later post but for now the best way forward was to keep an open mind and decide what might best suit the particular needs of our first year with bees.

Surprisingly, LandofSpike found himself increasingly favouring a simple, rectangular horizontal hive. 

The Tanzanian Top Bar Hive to be precise.
It's, more or less, the modern day equivalent of a hollow log on legs with bees inside.

A lovely piece of Biodynamic-friendly kit which would look just grand in the grounds of Spike Towers and would, no doubt, give the bees a lot of pleasure.

Despite my initial preconceptions this was starting to look like a real contender.

However, some time later that day and after more consultation, it transpired that the Tanzanian Top Bar Hive isn't sold in the UK.

There are plenty of excellently detailed plans telling you how to build one though.

LandofSpike can certainly build a box but isn't sure that he should be building his own bee-specific box in his novice year.

There are enough unknowns without adding "Good-Intentioned-But-Not-Quite-Right-Hive" to the list.

So it's back to a vertical model and, at the moment, even though those Thermo Hives look tasty, it looks like LandofSpike might go for an EPS Langstroth.

A nice, off the peg, cheerfully budget-conscious Beebox.

It seems to have the seal of approval from BeekeeperJuniors1&2, although they also liked the Thermo Hives and the Top Bar with equal enthusiasm.

And it'll require a lick of paint. 

Just the thing to lure Mrs LandofSpike, the esteemed Colourist and Artist of Note, into the Land of Bees.