Lincolnshire Beekeepers' Association

On 2^nd November 2011 Riseholme College's Conference Hall was full of LBKA members and visitors who had come to listen to Professor Tom Seeley, the celebrated bee scientist from Cornell University in the USA. His visit to our Association in Lincolnshire had been made possible as a result of liaison with the National Honey Show.

Professor Seeley held us all enthralled by the story of his work that has led him to describe 'The Bee Hive as a Honey Factory'. He started by explaining that he thought this a useful description because in a bee hive raw materials come in with an end product being finally produced using division of labour for work efficiency.

This division of labour creates co-ordination problems between the foragers who form the collecting cycle and the storer bees who form the processing cycle. He has done work to show how a colony uses different methods of communication to manage some of these problems. The main problem is that the supply of nectar is variable and he told us how he had weighed hives to measure these changes. Bees use the waggle dance to increase the number of foragers as needed. In one experiment he moved some hives onto Appledore Island after he had planted some borage plants there and was able to show that after approximately 2 hours the number of bees foraging on the borage significantly increased.

Most beekeepers know about the “Waggle Dance” but we also learned about a shaking dance which is usually seen early in the morning like a wake up call. Apparently Von Frisch, the famous researcher who studied the behaviour and communications of bees in the 1930s, explaining the function of the "waggle dance" thought that this trembling was just some sort of neurosis which did not have any communication significance. Professor Seeley, however, did experiments in 1990 which showed that when he removed storer bees from a colony the waggle dance stopped and the bees began the tremble dance to recruit more storers.

The final signal we learned about was a beep made when the trembler bee goes bump into a waggling bee telling it to stop. His presentation was particularly fascinating as it was interspersed with video clips which helped us really appreciate the communication activity going on inside the hive.

The evening ended with Professor Seeley kindly signing his book 'Honey Bee Democracy' which Northern Bee books had brought for sale. We also enjoyed refreshments and a grand raffle. Thanks are due to those who volunteered to help on the night and to all those members who generously donated prizes for the raffle. Particular mention should go to Thornes for their donation of beekeeping goods, to Paul Vessey and Kevin Burks of Market Rasen District for making and donating a superb nucleus hive and to Jeremy Burbidge of Northern Bee Books. LBKA is also very grateful to the University of Lincoln for use of the venue. Finally,of course, thanks to all of the members who supported the event by buying tickets; it was great to have such a full hall.

Celia Smith