Beekeeper’s Notes August 2017: Bees Countdown To Christmas

Published on: 1 Aug, 2017
Updated on: 3 Aug, 2017

Just about to land on a blackberry flower already laden with pollen. Click to enlarge the pictures.

Hugh Coakley keeps bees in Worplesdon. He talks about how the bees are busy now preparing for the winter season to come.

All summer, the bees have been out there at every opportunity, selflessly doing their duty to their super-organism, the hive.

They have been gathering nectar and pollen to feed the workers (and the lazy drones), propolis to keep the hive sealed and hygienic and water to keep all well hydrated – as the adverts insist that we all must be hydrated, so they sell us bottled water.

Clever bees.

As a side product, they keep us in honey, pollinate our flowers and fruits and give us all sorts of other lovely things like beeswax.

A bee visits a blackberry flower in my garden in early June to collect nectar and pollen.

And we get lovely fruit shortly after in July as a result.

While they work hard, they have the future of the colony in mind.

The queen peaked laying eggs in mid-June. Three weeks later when there is maximum forage available, the hive is at its most populated with up to 50,000 to 60,000 bees working away for the common good.

Average bee colony population against queen laying (from Beekeeping Study Notes by JD & BD Yates).

She then steadily reduces her laying rate, see the graph above, until it is more or less zero during November to January – coinciding with the time of year when they are least able to go out to forage.

So, I suppose that you could say that they have done all their Christmas shopping early in time for a good festive break.

Again, clever bees.