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I've spent a while now developing / designing the maps of YSP showing all my bee records for the summer. I've had to go back through my note book and decipher my writing, which isn't neat at the best of times. When i was out surveying YSP looking for bees I would take with me a net to catch the bees; a small glass tube to look at them; camera; magnifying lens; ID book; specimen jars; bottle of water; notebook and pens (and various other tat). I tried to record all the species I found and make a note of location and also what plants they were feeding on. But, now i'm going back through my notebook i'm having to remember the code i used.
I'm also still attending the BBKA beekeeping course. I missed one on the beekeeping year, but the last two sessions have been on queens and swarming and have been really interesting. The more i go though, i know i'll not become a beekeeper myself.
I've started in the print rooms at Uclan. I'm printing views of Yorkshire Sculpture Park in b&w so i can overlay an impression of how the blue and yellow meadows could look.So, with the help of Magda i did some test prints the other day to try grades of colour and also try out different sizes of dots in the print. The different tests are now on my wall so i can choose which to go with.
On another note, i just finished a wonderful book about insects Insectopedia by Hugh Raffles. One of the chapters Language is about the work of Karl von Frisch and his life-long research about bees. I was recommended the book by a friend Anny and it was one of the most fascinating books i've read for ages - chapters on Chinese cricket fighting, crush fetishists, the traditions of beetle selling and collecting in Japan - i loved this book.
I'm into a new phase of the Bee Project - with there being no bees around for the winter (apart from a few honey bees feeding on the ivy on occasional sunny days).
I'm not based at YSP any more and am now spending all my time sifting through all the research, developing ideas and trying stuff out ready for the exhibition in April next year.
I am also still attending beekeeping classes in a church hall at the other side of the city - the electric sockets weren't working in the last session so our teacher couldn't show us her powerpoint presentation and instead had to resort to telling us about the history of beekeeping through the medium of dance. It was enthralling. And the karate class were on half term so i could concentrate for the whole 2 hours.
Thursday night is Bee Club night - and i know i'm breaking the rules of Bee Club when i write about it on the blog*, but i must say i am really enjoying learning so much about beekeeping.
All us novices test the teacher time and time again with loads of questions such as can a honeybee mate with a bumblebee (no kidding) and she always tells us the many answers (no, in that instance). I'm still finding the karate club activities in the next room a little distracting, so i think i missed the bit about how to look out for when a queen is getting ready to swarm, but i expect it'll be covered again in one of the next lessons.
The next session is in the back of the church, so unless the karate class are practising in the aisle i think i might have a better chance of concentrating.
* Rules of Bee Club:
1 You do not talk about Bee Club
2 You DO NOT talk about Bee Club
3 When someone says stop, or goes limp, even if he's just faking it the Bee Club is over etc...
I was back at YSP this week after some time away and Ivor came to deliver the honey that our hives have produced. I've been so excited waiting for the honey. He said that the bees have produced about 25 jars and for two new colonies that's not too bad. The mixed summer weather didn't help too much either.
It smells and tastes of all the flowers of the park: rosebay, lavender, lime and bramble all mixed together. It is a pale, slightly cloudy golden colour.
I couldn't wait to get home and try it - dipping crusty bread in and getting sticky fingers. Yummy, yum.
I've drizzled it onto almost every meal since (feel a bit sick now).
I've signed on to a British Beekeepers Association Introduction to Beekeeping course here in Preston and it was the first session at the end of last week. It was two hours and the course leader, Viki Cuthbertson, told us masses of stuff about bees.
There are about 15 of us on the course and we're all keen to learn more (i seem to be the only one to confess that i will probably never keep bees - only from seeing what a responsibility and commitment it is during the YSP project). Everyone else either has a garden or allotment big enough to accommodate hives.
We did a quiz at the end of the session to see who had been listening and although there was a time during the evening when the grunting of the karate class in the next room was a bit distracting - we all seemed to do quite well (self marking).
Can't wait for the next session.
Bee are in the news today: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-11472104
So, things are being done for the rare bumblebees of UK (with reference to the bbc article please see points 1 and 2 in blog entry below 'Proposal')
So, I've spent the spring and summer at Yorkshire Sculpture Park researching the subject of bees. In that time i've been constantly thinking of how to translate all the information gathered and reveal my findings.YSP is 500 acres in size - mainly grazed areas, with woodland around the lake and some arable. The house has virtually no formal planting schemes anymore - but there is a couple of boarders near the YSP info centre planted with shrubs. Being on the site all spring and summer made me realise that habitat for bees is very scarce and usually by coincidence (i.e nothing is deliberately planted with wildlife in mind). The size of YSP could accommodate a wider range of habitats that are highly valuable to bees (and therefor for other insects, butterflies and moths, birds and small mammals etc too) and also to the visiting public who come to experience and enjoy the surroundings.
With everything i found during the research i decided to propose a planting scheme that will redress this unbalance within the YSP landscape and that will have a visual impact on the site.
So, my idea for the future of the Bee Project is that two meadows, each an acre in size, will be planted on the YSP grounds. One will be made up entirely of yellow flowering plants and the other entirely of blue flowering plants. The two meadows will be an acre each to help make a difference to the local populations of bumblebees, solitary bees and also to honey bees in the area.
Almost every inch of land in UK has a financial value and this limits the usage that a landowner is prepared to manage it for. Why would you plant an area with wild flowers for bees with no financial gain when you can rent the land out for grazing or plant consumable crops and earn money?
To set land aside purely for the benefit of wildlife, a landowner would have to be one of the following:
1) a conservation charity / organisation supported by donations / funds to cover the costs
2) paid by someone else (usually the government) for the loss of value
3) rich with lots of land and lots of money and a passion for wildlife (possibly only Prince Charles fits into this category)
4) brave / bonkers (see above)
We are all aware of the threat to bees from the loss of habitat, but who is prepared to do anything about it?
I'm finding the subject of solitary bees quite tricky - there is over 200 species in UK and trying to find them has been far more complicated than looking for the distinct bumblebees or familiar honey bees. Looking for and catching solitary bees in summer with Brian (the ecologist) revealed that their behaviour and how they look is entirely different from what i was expecting.
Here is one of the bees we caught in summer: Andrena subopaca. It's a common small black bee and even though we caught it in July we were only able to name it after taking it to Liverpool Museum to be able to identify it properly. As you can see from the image it is tiny and not at all what i thought bees look like.
Last Thursday I went with Brian, the ecologist, to Liverpool Museum to meet with Carl Clee the Honorary Curator of Aculeate Hymenoptera (bees, wasps and ants). We took with us the solitary bees we'd collected at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in July. Brian had identified them, but needed confirmation form Carl.
What an amazing place - and it was really great to meet with someone so knowledgeable on the subject and who is keen to share that knowledge. Identifying solitary bees is a really complicated, tricky subject - one of the collected bees turned out to be a solitary wasp!
Carl also showed me some the collection of bees, wasps and ants in the cabinets - i loved it.
Our solitary bees identified on Thursday are:
Anthidium manicatumAndrena helvolaAndrena denticulata
Andrena subopaca
Halictus rubicundus
The collected wasp was a Crossocerus tarsatus.
Brian has written out lots of info for me which i will put on the blog when i've also taken some close up shots of the bees.
Ivor, the beekeeper, showed me the pollen in the cells of one of the frames in the hive the other day. All the different colours representing different sources in the local area. Colours of the landscape.Pollen is a rich source of protein and fat and is fed to the growing larva in the colony. At this time of year the workers feed very heavily on pollen so they are ready to live over the winter - instead of living for the usual 36 days, the winter bee lives for as much as 6 months.
While watching the hives the other day i saw a worker bee and a drone (male bee) having a fight. The worker didn't stop attacking the drone until it was pushed over the edge of the base of the hive. With their only task of mating with new queens being over by now, I suppose getting rid of all the drones seems like good hive management. The rest of the hive will not look after the drones over the winter and so they are all thrown out or executed.
It seems a bit brutal being a drone: you either mate with a queen bee and in the process rip your genitals off and die; or you don't get to mate and get executed at the end of the summer by the female worker bees for being of no use anymore.* I'm aware these images aren't quite in focus - as it goes when i have my bee suit and hood on I can't clearly see what i'm taking images of.
* I can think of a couple of people who i hope come back as drones.
With summer ending there isn't many flowering plants that the bees can feed on now. However, there is a large late-flowering fuchsia bush near the Camellia House at YSP that both honeybees and bumblebees have been able to feed on.
While i watched the bees flying around the fuchsia and then landing on the flowers I noticed that the bumblebees were piercing the top of the flower to be able to poke their long tongue in to feed - they can't reach up along the long flower head otherwise. I then noticed almost all of the flower heads had a little puncture wound where there had been previous visits.
As it goes, i've noticed they do that with comfrey flowers too.
Watching the hives so closely i've noticed that wasps are often hanging about. I've seen quite a few go into the hives - they are trying to rob the honey. This is when guard bees of the colony will challenge the wasp, and the wasp will either fly off or they will fight with each other. The fight may end in the death of one or both of them.Here I saw a wasp and a bee having a fight just outside the entrance to the hive - the wasp was the winner in this case - the bee hardly visible in the photos.
I've also watched wasps clear up any dead bees from the ground around the hives. I used to gather any dead bees in early summer for my collection, but noticed there weren't so many in the last month or two. I then observed wasps picking up dead bee parts and flying off with them. As much as the thought of wasps eating bees isn't a great one, at least they are keeping the area around the hives clean of carcasses.
Earlier this month I mentioned that we had no queen in one of the hives and that we were in danger of loosing the whole colony (if we didn't do something about it). On friday Ivor and I did a check of the two hives, plus the two smaller ones, and we were relieved to find a new queen in hive 2 that is already laying. Just in time i think.There aren't many flowering plants left now, apart from the Himalayan Balsam, which continues to attract the honeybees. But i didn't see many bumblebees this last few days - a few B. pascuorum, B.terrestris, B.lapidarius. The small plot with the rosebay, meadowsweet and scabious has been cut so there isn't much about to feed on around the grounds.It's september tomorrow - summer seems to have gone so quickly...
Top image taken by Adrianne Neil - getting as close to the hives as she possibly dare.
A while ago I mentioned on the blog that we were chuffed that the hives both had new queens (that we marked) and saw were laying etc. But since then, for reasons we can't figure out, we have lost one of the queens and it's taken far too long for the hive to replace her. Here are the entries into the hive log book about hive 2:
17th July 2010: Hive 2 - Queenless. Sealed queen cells. All but one destroyed. 2nd super mostly drawn out.
30th July 2010: Hive 2 - No laying queen as yet. Remaining brood all hatched. 2nd super mostly drawn and part full.
12th Aug 2010: Hive 2 - Still no laying queen. Bees are working the balsam (off white pollen).
Presumably with no new brood being raised eventually we'll loose the whole hive. Bees only live on average for 36 days (worker bee) or 22 days (drone) in the summer. With this in mind, and the dates in the log book, we're very close to loosing the whole colony. Arse.
On friday I went back to use the microscopes at the University of Central Lancashire to get more shots of the dead bees i've been collecting. It's been ages since i was last there, with being so busy and also away from Preston. I really love looking at the bees under such scrutiny - examining their wings and hairs and eyes and stings.
A big thanks to Adam for his time and patience (and bad insect related jokes).
Himalayan Balsam Impatiens glandulifera is a tricky plant. It's an invasive species and can create large stands on riverbanks shading out and suppressing grasses and native plants. When it dies back in autumn and winter it leaves the riverbanks bare and therefore liable to erosion. It grows to 2m in height and the explosive seeds can fall up to 6 - 7 m from the original plant. Each plant can produce up to approx 2,500 seeds.
But talking to Ivor, the beekeeper, he said he loves that there is Himalayan Balsam on the YSP site as bees absolutely love it. And, if it wasn't for the presence of Himalayan Balsam in the past two dull, rainy summers bees would have been in real trouble. However, research is being conducted on the effects caused by bees preferring to feed on the balsam instead of other native flowering plants in any given area.
The bees at YSP do love the balsam, but i'm not convinced that any monoculture in the landscape is a good idea. It's not just about bees is it? Surely if Himalayan Balsam spreads so much, to the detriment of other native plants, then lots of other species, like insects and birds etc, will decline too. Isn't it all about the whole picture, not just supplying honeybees with an easy food source?
