Welcome

 We were treated to a fascinating talk from Clare Densley and Martin Hann.  Honeybees have been an important part of life at the Abbey since medieval times. As well as the culinary and brewing uses of the honey, the beeswax was highly prized for making candles which burn with a pure, smokeless flame. 

Early in the twentieth century a young monk, later to be known as Brother Adam, arrived at the Abbey. In 1919 he took over the running of the Abbey apiaries and was instrumental in restoring colony numbers after 29 of the 45 colonies were lost to a mysterious illness. Hives were kept close together, and this resulted in disease spreading quickly between them. A breeding programme was started with the aim of producing bees that were gentle, hardy and good honey producers. This was successful but is no longer practiced as traits that help the bee’s natural resistance to disease were being lost. There are fewer hives now and they are spread around the estate to limit the chance of spreading disease.

Winter: In winter bees sole aim is to stay warm and survive. They eat their honey to give them energy and huddle together into a ‘winter cluster,’ vibrating their flight muscles to generate heat to keep the colony warm.

Spring and summer:Bees are at their most active during these seasons. A virgin queen will fly from the hive to a ‘drone congregation area’. Here, she will mate with 10-20+ drones all of whom die at the point of mating! On her return to the colony if she has not mated with enough drones to ensure a broad gene pool that will keep the colony healthy and diverse, the workers may force her out and make a new queen. Eggs develop into drones or worker bees. Worker bees are sterile females and live for about five weeks. Spending the first few weeks on housekeeping duties, they keep the hive clean and feed the larvae. During their last few weeks they fly, foraging for propolis (a sticky substance produced by trees which they use to seals cracks and crevices in the hive), nectar and pollen, laying down stores for the autumn and winter. Workers communicate the exact location of nectar and pollen each day through the wiggle dance. Chemical signals, pheromones, produced by the queen, are passed to all the workers in the colony to reduce their urge to build queen cells. If the hive gets too crowded, then the bees will swarm. The old queen, and about half of the colony feed up on honey and take flight to find a new home. A new queen will be created by the bees remaining in the hive by feeding a young larva with royal jelly. Bees prefer open flowers that give easy access to the nectar. Flowers that have rapidly refilling nectarines are particularly favoured. In spring these include tree flowers of Sycamore, Willow and Horse Chestnut and flowers such as Dandelions, Borage, Clover, Echiums and all the herbs. Many flowers signal to bees when they have been pollinated and no longer have nectar. For example, the center of a Forget-me-not that is white has been pollinated whereas if the center is yellow, it has not been pollinated and nectar is still available.

Autumn: In autumn Ivy can provide the nectar and pollen needed to take the colony through the winter. The drones are expelled, and will die, as they contribute nothing to the well-being of the colony. 

And so, another year in the life of a bee colony comes full circle. On warmer days bees may take short flights from the hive but the focus for the next few months is to keep the queen warm and to stay alive until spring when the whole cycle will start again.