From A to Bee
SEPTEMBER 25
It is now two days on from the first day of the course that changed so many of my ideas about the honeybee and I find that I cannot stop thinking about them. One fact on my course amazed me and I feel I have to look into it a little more. Doing this will introduce me to the practical side immediately and make it all feel a bit more real.
I learned during Wednesday's session that bees can forage up to 3 miles away from the hive. This fact astounds me. Imagine the journey these little bees do, just in the search for nectar and pollen!
I am truly desperate to look at a local map but I don't want to rush into this. I have a notion of sitting down with a nicely brewed cup of coffee with a map spread out in front of me. I will locate where my hives are to be based (have not got a clue where yet) and get a pair of compasses and plot a nice circle around my hives to the tune of 3 miles. There is a side of me imagining a World War bunker-type operation, complete with the map sprawled out over the table, low-level lighting, cigarette smoke hovering overhead and me manoeuvring little bee models around the map with funny-shaped sticks.
I know I have a 1:25,000 map of the local area somewhere so I reckon this will be enough to tell me all I need to know. How many farms are there around here? How many fields for foraging and what types of crops are grown? This is obviously of utmost importance for the bees – I've heard that oilseed rape, for example, produces a very early honey harvest; if you leave it too long it goes rock hard apparently. I hope I don't have too much of that nearby. I feel fortunate to live in the country with lots of room for them to forage. I wonder if there's a difference between urban and rural bees and their respective honey…
SEPTEMBER 27
After a short trip away with work, which meant being out of the house at 4 a.m. and only just arriving home at 11 p.m., I have had enough of my corporate world for today and am very tired. I have worked in the overseas property business for four years now and it involves a lot of international travel. For the first couple of years it was fantastic but now that I can even tell when Gatwick Airport WH Smith has restocked its shelves the travelling has lost its appeal. However, with map in hand, I feel that now is the time to see where my little ones might fly to.
Jo and I get into bed and I bring with me the map and a glass of wine; who says romance is dead?! I also bring a pair of compasses ready to draw a nice circle around a proposed hive location to see just how far my bees will fly. I think this an ingenious plan though perhaps not the best implement to take into the marital bed. I then notice to my utter dismay that we are located right at the bottom of the map; I can therefore only see the top of the 3-mile circle.
Even though I can only see half the story I still know this is a huge area for my bees to forage – a total area of nearly 19,000 acres after some quick mathematics. I immediately realise why they say that bees literally work themselves to death. As I view the area I also realise just how little I know about my local landscape and, due to the fact that I live in pretty much the middle of nowhere, how little I know about the farming and agriculture around me.
I feel that I have to know more about this 'bee fly zone', and that I need to have a drive around to familiarise myself, not least because in that compass half-circle I count about five public houses. Imagine what I might find in the other, more populated half! As I am drifting off to sleep I feel it is entirely justified as maybe, just maybe, my bees might fly into the gardens of the public houses at some point and I might need to go and see what they are like. What a lovely excuse to go and investigate. A job for the weekend I think.
SEPTEMBER 30
It's the second session of the course tonight and again I come away with a great appreciation for the 'humble' honeybee. For such little insects they are unbelievably sophisticated. Essentially the topic for this evening is the colony itself and its structure, but I can see that David is itching to tell us all some amazing facts:
• In just one hive there can be up to 60,000 bees but just the one queen (!).
• To make one jar of honey (you know, your regular 454 gram jar from the supermarket) the bees from a beehive would have made at least 25,000 flights to gather enough nectar to convert into honey.
• The average worker bee, in their lifetime of only six weeks, despite flying for hundreds upon hundreds of miles, will only make one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey.
• At all times of the year, regardless of the outside temperature, the hive is kept at a temperature of between 32 and 35 degrees Celsius. It doesn't matter whether you are in the Arctic Circle or in the Sahara Desert!!