Micro climate - 2

Apart from many butterflies and dragonflies there are quite a lot of wasps, too. They are attracted by the bees and their food. They would like to steal some of it but are fought vigorously by the bees. Usually it is always a one to one combat.

A hornet fell down from above on the glass table outside. Maybe it had been attacked by our bees. Now we hope that there isn't a nest in the garden, that wouldn't be so great.

Here a wasp and her relative, the hornet. Nice face, though!

Even two doves have decided to live in one of our trees. 

Nutrition and guard bees

The sugared water which we had poured in small containers before is now in special nutrition containers. That means we don't have to replace or change it so often. However you mustn't put too much because it might ferment if it is exposed too much time to the heat. The nutrition containers don't only have advantages, many bees (and wasps) paid with their lives.

Maybe it will work better with the help of small "wooden bridges", we'll see.

The Apifonda is eaten by the girls as well, but doesn't seem to be really necessary, maybe more advisable if you are off for a longer time and can not fill up the sugar water. We already have talked to different people with more knowledge than us and nobody of them uses Apifonda. They also don't have any interest in selling it to us. Well, when you start something you also have to learn to your cost and economic interest is everywhere.

One basic question we have been putting ourselves is the one if you really need to feed the bees in this extensive manner. Wild bees in former times didn't have any sugar dough and made honey nonetheless. Of course outcome of honey will be less but surely of higher quality. A cow which eats in the pasture and moves outside also provides better meat than the one closed inside and fed with feed pellets.
Here are some pictures of the open hive, everybody working.

 

Das Flugloch haben wir inzwischen vergrößert. Gestern abend haben wir gesehen, dass nicht mehr nur eine sondern viele Wächterbienen über das Wohl des Stockes wachen und vor Eindringlingen schützen:
The entrance hole has been extended. Yesterday we saw that not just one but many guardian bees are watching over the hive and protecting it from intruders.

Controlling the development

:
Our bee expert passed and had a look at our bees. He was quite content. The bees have built really well.

The queen has set her eggs well all over the section. Then we had a look at the newly laid eggs. He also explained that it isn't important to see the queen, you don't have to worry as long as you see freshly laid eggs. That means that she is around somewhere, otherwise they wouldn't be there.

Bee close shot

Bee with pollen

Bee with much pollen

On the left you see the newly born bee which is coming out

Once more close-up, nice face!

Micro climate

Since we have the bee colonies, we also have much more bumble bees, dragon flies, wasps and butterflies in our garden. We see many white butterflies, now we als had the chance to photograph a peacock butterfly.

 

Our pond is visited by dragon flies, very difficult to take pictures of when they are flying but when they rest, we have the chance to take a shot.

 

Development of the bees

How much time to the bees need until they are born:This depends if it is a queen, worker bee or male.
The queen takes 16 days, a worker bee 21 and a drone 24 days.
The size of the honeycomb cells are prepared by the worker bees. If it is a normal sized cell, the queen puts in an egg and fertilizes it with semen which is stored in her bladder. In case, the cell is larger, it is meant for a drone, she puts in a non fertilized egg. 

Have a look at this picture. The white stuff in the open cell is a larva, not closed yet, the closed cells are further in their development and just above the larva you see a bee which is just being born and coming out with her head first.

Dark bee and moonlight mating

The dark bee is is the only endemic bee from Central Europe. Due to the success of interbreedings like carnica and buckfast, it has been extremely reduced and is even threatened to become extinct.

The "Gesellschaft zum Erhalt seltener und gefährdeter Haustierrassen" - a society in the preservation of rare or endangered domestic animals it is listed as extremely endangered. Sometimes it is also called "Nordbiene" - north bee. Find more information here.
For spreading the dark bee again, one of the methods utilized is the "Koehlersche Verfahren) or monlight mating. In simple words - or as we understood it:
The unmated dark bee queen is closed in her hive until dusk. Since she has only very little time for her mating flight, she will mate with the dark drones near her site.

Here is a picture of the dark bee queen:



 For more information also visit Gemeinschaft zum Erhalt der dunklen Biene e.V.

O my god, the bees are starving

Of course, as a beginner you make many mistakes, especially if you don't have enough information and guidance. We thought, that we better leave the bees a little bit alone.
After getting our bee colony, the breeder told us, to put another section in the hive after some time. So we did and then we just left them alone.
As we had been to his place to get our second colony, he promised to pass by and have a look at it.
We would have liked to have the second colony before, but the society didn't help very much as we told them. Tightening also of information can also be a policy. Fortunately there is the internet and advice from other bee keepers who are more communicative.
In any case it is advisable to have at least two colonies if something goes wrong. I also find that it is also good to have a possibility to compare if you try to make an experiment. As we opened the bee hive we found that the bees didn't quite have access to the Apifonda which had dried out already. Usually the 2,5 kilo would have been eaten already. So our bees had to look for their food outside which of course throws back the building and tending to larvae.
Moreover we had been told that this sugar dough is not really so good because the bees have to get the water themselves in order to humidify the stuff. Better would be a mix of water and sugar in equal parts in a container with small twigs for the bees to reach the liquid.
Nevertheless, our girls have built quite well, great praise. So now we left the mix and the apifonda, they can choose themselves.

What have they done to the ... and where our bees are right now

Our bees seem to like the small flowers of wild wine. Near our house there is a large metal fence around a plant, full of it. That's where our girls are right now, together with lots of bumble bees.

Talking about flowers; Jürgen Tautz explains in his book about bees: The buzz about bees that nature generally is arranged in a way that there is a sense in everything and that energy should not be wasted. That explains why a bee during one day always flies to the same kind of flower. So no pollen is wasted and they themselves have less work in transforming it. Every pollen has to be transformed in a different kind of way. If they always changed the type of flower they would have to change the proceedings every time and that wouldn't be very effective.

Not very good to see on the picture: the different honeycombs store the different colors of pollen, there are yellow, orange and blue ones.

New insights

Jürgen Tautz recounts in his book that the bees during their life time have to tend to different tasks:

The young bees in the beginning are hive bees and are responsible for duties insice the hive: build honey combs, feed the larvae, tidying up and cleaning.
The older, more experienced bees are outside to collect. The guard which we saw at the entrance is in the middle between a hive and a flight bee. At least I read that in the internet.
As Tautz says, bees can adapt to adverse circumstances. If too many of the flight bees die, there will be hive bees sent out in order to replace them. On the contrary, it is also possible that the older flight bees return to be hive bees. Then they are again in a position to produce the necessary liquids in their bodies which are necessary for the production of larva food or wax processing.
The wax we scratched from the borders and put beside the hive seems to become less and I have seen several times bees which were sitting on it. Seems that they recycle it somehow.