Bees in France

We’ve had a sabbatical!

2012-05-13T11:06:02Z

Our new baby!

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last few months – real life took its toll and we had a business to launch that has taken up every waking hour it seems! If you would like to see what we’ve been up to then you can check out our magazine Living Poitou-Charentes which we now publish every other month.

But we haven’t been ignoring our bees, we just haven’t had the time to blog about them so we hope to make amends over the coming summer.

Jon and Kathryn

Protecting your home

2012-03-29T20:52:17Z

The unseasonably warm weather that we have been experiencing has meant that the phone has been constantly ringing over the past month. I wish I could say that I was out, happily picking up swarms hanging from branches in trees but not so. In fact, I’ve only had one external pick up, the rest of the calls have been from home owners with bees where they don’t want them.

The great news is that there really does seem to be an increase in the awareness of the plight of bees and people seem to be genuinely trying to find ways to extract the bees live. However, with the greater awareness of the truth about bees has come a more relaxed attitude to swarms. In the past, we would be rung as soon as a swarm descended in the garden but several cases I have been out to recently watched the swarm arrive, marvelled at the natural phenomenon and wished them well as they flew away to establish their new home in the surrounding countryside. Or so they thought. It took a couple of days to realise that chimneys are far more interesting places for bees (hollow, protected and dark) than any surrounding trees, particularly given that humans won’t be interfering with them.

Here’s a picture I took on a windy roof earlier in the year – broken mortar round the chimney had given these bees the perfect nesting place. With the chimney blocked at the bottom and the chimney stack being nearly 5 foot tall, there is nothing that can be done to remove this nest safely even with a cherry picker. Coning was impossible given the roof slope and situation and the nest was too deep to get out by hand. I had to leave the home owner contemplating taking down the chimney or destroying the nest.

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So the moral of this post is to remind everyone to be vigilant. Unless you are confident that you have no hollow spaces in your walls, roof or chimney which can be accessed by a hole (which can be less than 1cm in diameter), call a beekeeper as soon as the swarm arrives. They will remove the swarm quickly for minimal cost and the bees will be rehomed. If you leave them to fly away, you never know where they may make their new home….

Wild plums

2011-03-29T18:48:16Z

Our wild plums have been fantastic this year – the great weather has meant that we have had a full 3 weeks of sequential blooms getting the bees off to a flying start.

With over 30 plum trees round the garden, at times it has sounded as though we are about to take off and I’ve had to resist the temptation to sit back and just watch all the comings and goings!

So, here are a few photos of the past few weeks before we move onto the cherries and pears that are already flowering!

As soon as the first buds opened, the bees arrived…

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Here are a few photos of the visitors although they don’t do justice to the sheer volume of insects arriving and departing….

The bumblebees and butterflies enjoyed the blossom too…

But it went as fast as it came, leaving a blanket of white petals on the ground.

Wasp season starts

2011-03-27T10:21:31Z

Another insect that likes Box is the paper wasp and it too has been bought out by the recent warm weather. They overwinter in groups and at times, we saw up to 50 individuals on the Box hedge.

Generally, these wasps do not attack people unless their nest is threatened so as long as they are away from busy areas, they can be safely left to keep the garden free of aphids and other unwelcome insects. By watching out for the start of nests at this stage of the year, you can destroy any nests that may cause problems later on for instance near doors or eating areas.

They are fascinating creatures – their nests themselves are works of art, carefully constructed from wood/plant fibres mixed with saliva, and nest mates are able to recognise each other although the mechanism for this is not yet fully understood.

Ours are most probably Polistes dominulus, one of the more common varieties which is often confused with Polistes gallicus - the orange antennae is one way to distinguish them.

Ashy Mining Bee

2011-03-27T09:42:06Z

Earlier in the season we disturbed a little Ashy Mining bee whilst doing some earthworks around the house. Our dry, crumbly earth has been disturbed in many places by our resident moles, providing the perfect habitat for several types of mining bees. We’ve been having a great start to Spring here (hence the lack of posts!) so all the bees are out and preparing for the year ahead.

We saw this tiny Ashy Mining bee laden with pollen checking out possible places to nest and watched her as she dug her way in….

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We’ve seen these solitary bees on the violets and common field speedwell as well as on the plum and cherry blossom. They don’t stop for long on each flower and spend a long time flying around between stops. Getting photos of them feeding is proving hard as they are both timid and fast!

If you want to find out more about this bee, check out the info sheet on BWARS.

The Hairy Footed Flower Bee

2011-03-12T10:59:40Z

What a fabulous name! The Hairy Footed Flower Bee is one of the early bees here, zipping around the garden and settling briefly on the dog violets. Officially known as Anthophora plumipes, they are closely related to the black and white fur bee we saw last year . They form their nests in old walls and ruins so we have the perfect habitat for them with the crumbling walls around the main garden and the dry barn walls.

So far, we’ve seen plenty of the rusty / silver variant, the male, but have yet to spot the black female.

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Given the speed of their flight, we only managed to get a few passing shots – for fabulous close-ups, head over to Mark Fellowes blog. You may also enjoy Valerie Littlewood’s Pencil and Leaf , a blog full of wonderful insect observations and sketches.

Spring is in the air…

2011-03-15T11:38:02Z

We’ve been enjoying some fantastic weather here – days full of sunshine and temperatures rising rapidly. The honey bees have been out in force, making the most of the flowering box (Buxus sempervirens) which we have in large quantities all around the garden. They’ve already been busy with the early flowering willow on warm days through January and February but the volume of pollen entering the hives now is much larger – the sunshine and the box must be to their liking!

At the base of the box hedge is a mat of violets which the honey bees only visited fleetingly, heading to the many flowers on the box instead.

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This weekend has also heralded the first bumblebees of the season – an enormous queen Bombus terrestris fighting to enter the tiny stemmed common dog violet (Viola-riviniana) and then being frightened away by little white faced Osmia cornuta. These small solitary bees nest in bamboo (again, something we have an increasing grove of) and flit quickly from flower to flower. Getting a picture of anything other than their back end protruding from the violets took time as they are timid and fast. We saw a few white faced males but none of the black faced females so we will keep a watch out for her.

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If you want to know more about the tiny Osmia cornuta take a look at the beautiful garden blog by Lucie – even if you can’t speak French, the pictures speak for themselves and the one of a female moving her egg is particularly impressive.

And finally, just to show how close we are to spring being here – here are the buds on our first damson tree, threatening to open any day now. Fingers crossed that the cold weather has really gone for this winter….

Black & White bees

2011-02-27T19:02:07Z

Digging in the garden earlier this week, I disturbed this little black and white bee. She’s most likely an Andrena cineraria or Ashy Mining Bee, a solitary bee that lives in the soil normally emerging in March.

I obviously disturbed her a little bit earlier than normal but as it was a warm, sunny day, we’re hoping she managed to fly away and find somewhere to shelter. She spent a while taking in the heat before cleaning herself and heading off….

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Mild weather brings out the bees

2011-01-27T14:06:14Z

Apologies for my recent silence – when the bees are in their quiet season, I get to start my long list of things that don’t get done during bee season. However, I was very pleased to see that in the recent mild weather, all our hives showed some activity as the bees came out to stretch their wings in the sunshine. They seemed to be particularly interested in the autumn leaves beginning to rot down, especially on the kids’ slide (perhaps it was a bit warmer being plastic). This behaviour is reminiscent of the behaviour we saw here and I can only think they are searching out minerals and nutrients that they need following winter.

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Having said that, all our hives were healthy this time last year and then we had a late cold snap which killed a couple of the smaller colonies, so I won’t be counting my chickens until the fat lady sings!

The double-whammy

2010-11-08T11:28:52Z

This is the photo that ruined my weekend – the sort of sight that strikes fear into any beekeepers heart.

Not only are the bees being picked off as they leave or return to the hive by the huge Asian hornets and torn limb from limb, but this one also has a varroa mite – you can see the mite falling off the bee (the brown blob between the bee’s legs) as the hornet gets to work.

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As we don’t believe in introducing any chemicals into the hive nor interfering or meddling with the colony, we have to hope that the Asian hornets haven’t weakened the colony to the point where varroa tips the colony over the edge. Our fingers are firmly crossed that the bees are strong enough to get through the winter ahead.

I did check the next few bees leaving and entering and saw no other mites – I’ll be watching closely over the coming days.