wild bees update

[enrico]

I don't know if some of you remember I got called to a swarm in a mill a little over a year ago. The bees have set up home inside the old wooden door that used to house the gears for the mill wheel, Look at the top of the door and you can see the comb. (With pollen I think but it does look like brood ....unlikely) The area they are in is about 1 cubic meter. Inside the house, there is a window that faces in to the area where the bees are. It is difficult to get to as you have to balance on the old stone grinding wheels, I have tried to take some photo's of the bees inside, unfortunately the glare of the glass has detracted from the photo's but I am sure you get the idea. The owners of the mill now have their own wild observation hive that they can watch the bees at work whenever they want!
I took the photo's today, sadly there is not much evidence of stores and I think they may have been robbed out by wasps but they survived last winter so they are into their third year if they make it through this one.
I am so jealous!
E

 

[For want of a better word]

Should have implemented a Miller Feeder !


Hope they come back... feral colony sites often do get repopulated.

 

[enrico]

Should have implemented a Miller Feeder !


Hope they come back... feral colony sites often do get repopulated.

They are still there! I am not sure if they have enough stores for winter though!

 

[BeeJayBee]

Any reason why you can't give them some fondant? You could do it from inside, when it gets a bit colder and there's almost no risk of wasps.

 

[beehive1234]

This is what makes the forum so great.
Thank you for taking the time to share Enrico.

 

[Chris Luck]

I don't know if some of you remember I got called to a swarm in a mill a little over a year ago. The bees have set up home inside the old wooden door that used to house the gears for the mill wheel, Look at the top of the door and you can see the comb. (With pollen I think but it does look like brood ....unlikely) The area they are in is about 1 cubic meter. Inside the house, there is a window that faces in to the area where the bees are. It is difficult to get to as you have to balance on the old stone grinding wheels, I have tried to take some photo's of the bees inside, unfortunately the glare of the glass has detracted from the photo's but I am sure you get the idea. The owners of the mill now have their own wild observation hive that they can watch the bees at work whenever they want!
I took the photo's today, sadly there is not much evidence of stores and I think they may have been robbed out by wasps but they survived last winter so they are into their third year if they make it through this one.
I am so jealous!
E

The level of stores needed is in my perspective often overstated as different genetic strains of honey bee will have different colony population sizes and nutrition requirements. In my experience it is rare for an un-managed colony to starve apart from when there has been a catastrophic summer / early autumn.

If the colony had been robbed out as you think possible then it would have ceased to exist, wasps or other robber bees don't say "Oh well, we better leave something for the bees"

Chris

 

[enrico]

Unfortunately I can't feed them because the interior glass was a solid sheet and they have put rough filler round it to stop the odd errant bee getting in, their grandson watches them for hours through the glass! And on the outside I can't open the wooden hatch as they have stuck the comb to it! The only reason I think there may not be enough food is that I can't see any capped comb in there at all, but ....... Maybe there is none on the outside and it is all tucked in the centre. The comb is not deep but it must be quite wide to be reaching the door. I will watch with interest to see how they cope with varroa with no disturbance from man. It's just as well it isn't in my house I would be sat watching bees instead of .....watching television!!!

 

[pargyle]

It's just as well it isn't in my house I would be sat watching bees instead of .....watching television!!!

Damn sight more interesting than what's on my TV most of the time ...

Perhaps with the masses of old non-flat screen TV's going to the landfill someone should be recycling these as bee hives ... long entrance tube instead of an aerial lead ... sat in the corner of the lounge - endless entertainment !!

 

[beeno]

Hi enrico,
How cute is that! Makes me want to move to the country. Probably got lots of stores in there as no humans would have been able to steal them. Thanks for sharing.

 

[BeeJayBee]

I'd spend all my time watching them too, a fantastic thing to have.

Any way of gaffer taping a bag of fondant over the crack, so they could chew their way through some comb to get at it? If so, you'd soon learn for sure whether they eat it, or whether they store it.

 

[itma]

For some reason I am reminded of that Phillips design project indoor hive that we were all so scathing about ...

 

[Neil]

I was called out to a swarm earlier on in the year. The bees were nesting above the bay window of a house I was informed that they had been there for more than five years. So to me this proves that feral colonies can survive and must be combating Varroa.

 

[charlievictorbravo]

I was called out to a swarm earlier on in the year. The bees were nesting above the bay window of a house I was informed that they had been there for more than five years. So to me this proves that feral colonies can survive and must be combating Varroa.

Whilst I'd like to believe your conclusion - I have a swarm from a feral colony - there is another explanation; that two or three colonies have died out and been replaced in a warm and dry location by new swarms from a nearby and possibly recently treated colony.

I live in hope that you are right!

CVB

 

[Chris Luck]

I can say with certainty that feral and un-managed colonies can survive with continuous occupancy here in France with what one would expect to be a normal average "colony life" and failure rate.

It's not really any different from how I keep my bees with minimal interference or manipulation and no treatments.

On balance of probability I would speculate that there must be large numbers of such colonies in the UK, untidy maybe but living quite happily.

Chris

 

[Neil]

Chris I find it fascinating that you don't treat and yet your bees seem to be doing ok. I think throwing all these different treatment's at bees could be doing more harm than good.

 

[charlievictorbravo]

Steady - say that sort of thing very quietly around here. You know what happened on your Varroa thread!

CVB