Life cycle of Asian hornet A poster you can download of the Lifecycle of an Asian Hornet and information on how to report a primary nest. Expand Please save, print and display this wherever you think it would be useful It is important not only to be able to recognise the Asian hornet but also to be able to recognise the primary nest of the species which you can see on the left of the poster above. This looks looks very similar to a wasp nest and starts off about the size of a tennis ball and grows throughout the spring/summer. It may be found be in garages, sheds, woodstores and sides of building etc. If you have found something similar - please contact your local Asian Hornet Action Team, which you can find details of here. -ends-
Identifying Asian Hornet How to identify an Asian Hornet in three easy steps - a poster you can print - an app you can download Expand Vespa velutina, sometimes known as the 'Asian hornet' is an invasive non-native species from Asia. If you find one you MUST report it. It arrived in France in 2004 and has spread rapidly. As a highly effective predator of insects, including honey bees and other beneficial species, it can cause significant losses to bee colonies, other native species and potentially ecosystems It is expected that the places it is most likely to be found in numbers are in southern parts of England (it may be able to cross the channel from France) or in goods among which it could be accidentally imported (such as soil with imported pot plants, cut flowers, fruit and timber). Active between April and November (peak August/September). Three Easy Steps 1. Does it look very black? 2. Has it got a wide orange stripe on 4th segment of abdomen? 3. Do its legs look as if they have been dipped in yellow paint? Animal & Plant Health Agency have put together a short film to help you identify them too: How to report an Asian hornet If you suspect you have seen an Asian hornet you should take a picture and report this using the ‘Asian Hornet Watch’ app: Asian Hornet Watch app for iPhone Asian Hornet Watch app for android You can also report sightings on an online report form Please fill out the details in the form - Non-native Species Alert - at the link, in each of the three sections, before clicking on the Save button at the bottom of the last section. Sound of an Asian Hornet This was recorded in a bathroom at BBKA trustee Bob Hogge's house in Jersey where he is keeping a colony of Asian Hornets for study. The Asian Hornets have a very deep buzz: Hornet_Buzz_(1).mp3 Your browser does not support the audio element. Please click here to download the file -ends- National Bee Unit identification poster These resources can be ordered direct from the NBU office by contacting [email protected] - but to save time and money you can also download the files above and print them yourselves This is the European hornet This is the giant wood wasp This is a wasp
How many eyes does a bee have? Expand Legs – The honey bee has three pairs of legs, six legs in total. However, the rear pair is specially designed with stiff hairs to store pollen when in flying from flower to flower. This is why a heavily laden worker bee is seen to have two golden pouches in full season. The front pair of legs has special slots to enable the bee to clean its antenna. Wings – The honey bee has four wings in total. The front and rear wings hook together to form one big pair of wings and unhook for easy folding when not flying. Eyes – Incredible as it may seem, the honey bee has FIVE eyes, two large compound eyes and three smaller ocelli eyes in the centre of its head. Photo above taken by Graham Kingham, Devon BKA of a more close up image of a bee's set of eyes One of the BBKA's charitable aims is protect and grow the honey bee population in the UK and we would welcome a donation to one of our current appeals: Save the Bees or Apiary and Education
Why is honey important? Expand Shop for honey and you'll see that some are lighter, others are darker. In general, the darker the honey, the better its antibacterial and antioxidant power. Honey was known to the Greeks as the "food of the Gods." Honey was used in WWI to treat soldiers wounds. It is still used in wound dressings today - medical grade honey is found to work against bacteria and fungi by creating a moist healing environment that is antibacterial in nature. Why Do Bees Make Honey? Honey bees are special in that they overwinter as a colony, unlike wasps and bumblebees (see Biology). The colony does not hibernate but stays active and clusters together to stay warm. This requires a lot of food, which is stored during the summer. Although a hive only needs 20-30 lb of honey to survive an average winter, the bees are capable of collecting much more, if given storage space. This is what the beekeeper wants them to do. Bees have been producing honey in the same way for over one hundred and fifty million years How Much Honey Can One Beehive Produce? One hive can produce 60 lb (27 kg) or more in a good season, however an average hive would be around 25 lb (11 kg) surplus. Bees fly about 55,000 miles to make just one pound of honey, that’s 2.2 times around the world. Romans used honey instead of gold to pay their taxes. How Does The Beekeeper Get The Honey From The Bees? The queen bee is kept below the upper boxes (called ‘supers’) in the hive by a wire or plastic grid (called a ‘queen excluder’), which the queen is too large to fit through. As the bees cannot raise brood above the queen excluder, only honey is stored in the supers. As the season progresses the beekeeper adds more supers until the time to harvest the honey. A special one-way valve is then fitted in place of the queen excluder and gradually all the bees are forced into the lowest part of the hive. The beekeeper can then simply lift off the ‘super’ boxes containing the honey comb. The honey is extracted from the comb using centrifugal force in a machine called a spinner, which looks like an old-fashioned upright spin dryer. Do The Bees Miss The Honey That Is Taken? No. A strong colony can produce 2-3 times more honey than it needs. If necessary the beekeeper can feed sugar syrup in the autumn to supplement for the loss of honey. Why Are Some Types Of Honey Clear And Runny And Other Types Opaque And Hard? The type of honey made by the bees is dependent on the types of foliage and flowers available to the bees. Crops such as oil seed rape (the bright yellow fields in the spring) produce large quantities of honey that sets very hard, so hard that the bees cannot use it in the winter; garden flowers tend to give a clear liquid honey. If the beekeeper wants to produce a monofloral honey, e.g. pure clover, orange blossom, etc, the beehive is put out of range from other floral sources. This can be difficult for the hobby beekeeper, who normally produces a blend of the season’s honey. In the autumn, some beekeepers move their hives onto the moors to harvest the nectar from wild heather. Heather honey is thought to be the king of honeys and has a clear jelly consistency. How Do Bees Make Honey? Bees take nectar, which is a sweet sticky substance exuded by most flowers and some insects (honeydew), and mix it with enzymes from glands in their mouths. This nectar/enzyme mix is stored in hexagonal wax honey comb until the water content has been reduced to around 17%. When this level is reached, the cell is capped over with a thin layer of wax to seal it until the bees need it. This capping indicates to the beekeeper that the honey can be harvested. Capped honey can keep almost indefinitely. For the school swot: Sucrose (nectar) + inverters (bee enzyme) = fructose + glucose = honey. Perfectly edible honey comb was found in the tombs of the Pharaohs, over three thousand years old. How’s that for ‘Best Before Dates’. Does Honey Contain Additives? Unfortunately there is a lot of mass-produced adulterated honey around at the moment. The most prevalent problems include: dilution with different syrups harvesting immature honey using ion-exchange resins to lighten colour mislabelling origin If you buy your honey direct from a local producer in the UK, these problems shouldn't exist. It should have it's source clearly labelled and be in its 'raw' form i.e nothing added to it, simply filtered to remove the comb and wax after spinning. You can find your local branch to buy honey from here. Melissopalynology Melissopalynology is the study of pollen in honey. It originates from the Greek, Melisso for honey and Palynology for study of small particles. Palynology is a very established science, allowing the vegetative landscape over millions of years to be analysed through the pollen extracted from soil samples. However, it is not just limited to analysis of historical landscapes, it is equally applied to our modern-day environment, for example in solving criminal cases or predicting hay fever levels (Leitch and Salvage, BBKA News 2018).
How many bees are there in a colony? Expand In the height of Summer there is an average of 35 / 40,000 bees in the hive. Over the Winter this falls to around 5,000.
What do honey bees produce, besides honey? Expand Beeswax Made from the honeycomb of the honeybee, beeswax is the purest and most natural of all waxes. For each pound of beeswax provided by a honey bee, the bee visits over 30 million flowers. To produce one pound of wax requires the bees to consume about eight to ten pounds of honey. They secrete the beeswax from the underside of their abdomens, and then use the wax to construct a honeycomb. The youngest bees cluster in large numbers to raise their body temperature. Wax-producing glands under their abdomens slowly secrete slivers of wax about the size of a pinhead. Other worker bees harvest these wax scales and take them to the part of the hive requiring the new wax. Bees use about 6 lb of honey to produce 1 lb of wax. Bee bread 'Edible grade' pollen or 'bee bread' is a mixture of plant pollen and honey, which bees mould into granules and store in their honeycombs. Plant pollen can make you sneeze and have a runny nose and eyes if you are allergic to it, but people eat bee bread to help try and stop this. Many Olympic athletes eat bee bread in a bid to strengthen their immune system, increases oxygen intake, boosts performance and helps them recover quicker after training. Mead Before people discovered how to brew beer and make wine, they fermented honey with water and yeast to make the first alcoholic drink - mead. Some people call it the 'Nectar of the Gods'. Others think it tasted like cough mixture, which may have to do with the honeys healing properties. Propolis Propolis or bee glue is a resinous mixture that honey bees produce by mixing saliva and beeswax with exudate gathered from tree buds, sap flows, or other botanical sources. It is used as a sealant for unwanted open spaces in the hive. Propolis is used for small gaps, while larger spaces are usually filled with beeswax. Its colour varies depending on its botanical source, the most common being dark brown. Propolis is sticky at, and above, room temperature. At lower temperatures, it becomes hard and very brittle. Propolis also has great medicinal qualities and can be added to alcohol to make tinctures to treat various ailments. Royal Jelly Royal jelly is the food fed to queen bee larvae. It is a creamy white colour and is very rich in proteins and fatty acids. It is produced by the mouth glands in young bees. Each queen needs only a teaspoon of royal jelly to thrive.
Honey Questions and answers about honey. Expand Why Do Bees Make Honey? Honey bees are special in that they overwinter as a colony, unlike wasps and bumblebees (see Biology). The colony does not hibernate but stays active and clusters together to stay warm. This requires a lot of food, which is stored during the summer. Although a hive only needs 20-30 lb of honey to survive an average winter, the bees are capable of collecting much more, if given storage space. This is what the beekeeper wants them to do. Bees have been producing honey in the same way for over one hundred and fifty million years How Much Honey Can One Beehive Produce? One hive can produce 60 lb (27 kg) or more in a good season, however an average hive would be around 25 lb (11 kg) surplus. Bees fly about 55,000 miles to make just one pound of honey, that’s 2.2 times around the world. Romans used honey instead of gold to pay their taxes. How Does The Beekeeper Get The Honey From The Bees? The queen bee is kept below the upper boxes (called ‘supers’) in the hive by a wire or plastic grid (called a ‘queen excluder’), which the queen is too large to fit through. As the bees cannot raise brood above the queen excluder, only honey is stored in the supers. As the season progresses the beekeeper adds more supers until the time to harvest the honey. A special one-way valve is then fitted in place of the queen excluder and gradually all the bees are forced into the lowest part of the hive. The beekeeper can then simply lift off the ‘super’ boxes containing the honey comb. The honey is extracted from the comb using centrifugal force in a machine called a spinner, which looks like an old-fashioned upright spin dryer. Do The Bees Miss The Honey That Is Taken? No. A strong colony can produce 2-3 times more honey than it needs. If necessary the beekeeper can feed sugar syrup in the autumn to supplement for the loss of honey. Why Are Some Types Of Honey Clear And Runny And Other Types Opaque And Hard? The type of honey made by the bees is dependent on the types of foliage and flowers available to the bees. Crops such as oil seed rape (the bright yellow fields in the spring) produce large quantities of honey that sets very hard, so hard that the bees cannot use it in the winter; garden flowers tend to give a clear liquid honey. If the beekeeper wants to produce a monofloral honey, e.g. pure clover, orange blossom, etc, the beehive is put out of range from other floral sources. This can be difficult for the hobby beekeeper, who normally produces a blend of the season’s honey. In the autumn, some beekeepers move their hives onto the moors to harvest the nectar from wild heather. Heather honey is thought to be the king of honeys and has a clear jelly consistency. How Do Bees Make Honey? Bees take nectar, which is a sweet sticky substance exuded by most flowers and some insects (honeydew), and mix it with enzymes from glands in their mouths. This nectar/enzyme mix is stored in hexagonal wax honey comb until the water content has been reduced to around 17%. When this level is reached, the cell is capped over with a thin layer of wax to seal it until the bees need it. This capping indicates to the beekeeper that the honey can be harvested. Capped honey can keep almost indefinitely. For the school swot: Sucrose (nectar) + inverters (bee enzyme) = fructose + glucose = honey. Perfectly edible honey comb was found in the tombs of the Pharaohs, over three thousand years old. How’s that for ‘Best Before Dates’. Does Honey Contain Additives? Unfortunately there is a lot of mass-produced adulterated honey around at the moment. The most prevalent problems include: dilution with different syrups harvesting immature honey using ion-exchange resins to lighten colour mislabelling origin If you buy your honey direct from a local producer in the UK, these problems shouldn't exist. It should have it's source clearly labelled and be in its 'raw' form i.e nothing added to it, simply filtered to remove the comb and wax after spinning. You can find your local branch to buy honey from here. Melissopalynology Melissopalynology is the study of pollen in honey. It originates from the Greek, Melisso for honey and Palynology for study of small particles. Palynology is a very established science, allowing the vegetative landscape over millions of years to be analysed through the pollen extracted from soil samples. However, it is not just limited to analysis of historical landscapes, it is equally applied to our modern-day environment, for example in solving criminal cases or predicting hay fever levels (Leitch and Salvage, BBKA News 2018).
Trends in Beekeeping Expand 1874 - the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) was instituted “For the Encouragement, Improvement and Advancement of Bee Culture in the United Kingdom, particularly as a means of bettering the Condition of Cottagers and the Agricultural Labouring Classes, as well as the advocacy of humanity to the industrious labourer – the Honey Bee.” 1914-18 and 1939-46 – during the two world wars, the BBKA made successful representations to government to secure extra sugar rations for beekeepers, as honey was recognised as an important foodstuff. 1960 - a new Constitution was adopted, after 17 years of heated discussion between the various county associations and membership factions and their representatives. However, fortunately the post-war years proved to be boom years for beekeeping and in 1953 there were 80,000 beekeepers in England and Wales with 396,000 colonies. 1990 - marked the arrival of the varroa mite in the UK, which had a major adverse impact on bee colonies and many beekeepers gave up beekeeping in the 1990s, because there appeared to be no effective treatment. Some years later, pyrethroid treatments were developed, but the mites have developed resistance to these treatments and other forms of control of this parasite have been developed and applied. The Foulbrood diseases continue to be a problem, but beekeepers are better educated to recognise these diseases and call in the Government Bee Inspectors to eradicate each outbreak. 90s - Membership of the BBKA dropped from 15,000 in 1990 to just under 9,000 in 2001. This was primarily due to many people giving up beekeeping because varroa control was difficult and a difficulty in encouraging new members or reflecting the importance of honey bees to the environment. 00s - Pesticides became an increasing concern and lobbying was undertaken by BBKA to the UK Government to spend more on honeybee research and a fund of £9.5 million was established. Time of writing - BBKA membership stands at a strong 25,000+ but with the uncertain future of beekeeping owing to the various threats including climate change, pesticides and the possible incursion of Asian Hornet, honey bees and beekeepers are grateful of your support.
Primary Nests Expand It is important not only to be able to recognise the Asian hornet but also to be able to recognise the primary nest of the species. This looks looks very similar to a wasp nest and starts off about the size of a tennis ball and grows throughout the spring/summer. It may be found be in garages, sheds, woodstores and sides of building etc. If you have found something similar - please contact your local Asian Hornet Action Team, which you can find details of here.