BBC The Wonder of Bees with Martha Kearney

I'm Martha Kearney during the week I work as a journalist and presenter but of the weekend aqui bees look at that that's fantastic I've had hives in my garden for almost 10 years I've never had any training and I'm far from expert just hope I don't get stung so this year I'm upping my game with help from master beekeeper John effort one of the tricks is to clip one of the wings of the Queen sounds rather cruel to me I'll be exploring the culture and science of beekeeping this is the greatest show on earth the swarming of honey bees and I'll be trying to harvest the best honey I've ever had this is the best early summer and Suffolk a time of pleasure and pain for the beekeeper the weather's finally warming up and the bees in my garden are busy foraging for nectar and pollen wherever they can find it this year I've put three new colonies on an old-fashioned meadow on my neighbor's land at Barton Grange I hope they'll produce my first ever wildflower honey by this time of year the colonies should be expanding fast the fields around the meadow are full of flowers and with so much nectar and pollen available to feed up the young the Queens are laying hundreds of eggs a day but this fecundity can present a challenge the swarm around this time of year swarming is a real problem actually and I've had many swarms over the years and the worst thing that can happen is you just go back to your hive and you realize there's only half of the bees there and they've swarmed and you haven't even seen them when the hive becomes overcrowded the bees have a unique response more than half leave the hive in a swarm they take the old Queen to look for a new home it's a natural form of reproduction while the scouts find a suitable spot the others cling together for warmth I'm sure my hives are ready to swarm and I want to find out more about this extraordinary phenomenon so I've come to Sussex University to ask be expert professor Francis rat Nix so what is it exactly that triggers a swarm a swarming isn't the way that honeybee colonies naturally reproduce where one colony becomes two before half the bees can leave with the old queen they have to make a replacement Queen for those who stay behind what happens is worker bees make Queen cells it should look like an acorn Cup and we can see honey there's a couple of Queen cells in here aren't there yes we can see several Queen cells and when a colony is swarming they normally make you know quite a lot of Queen cells they make an heir and despair plus a few more the larvae in the Queen cell begins life in the same way as a worker bee but the bees feed it with a special substance secreted from a gland in their head the royal jelly has chemicals within air which trigger the larvae to develop as a queen instead of as a worker because both workers and Queens are female and a female larvae can in principle can become either while we're talking the bees in the observation hive in front of us start behaving very strangely what's going on here they're all getting her quite agitated don't they like well the hive here the bees are actually running in all directions and I think is actually we're seeing the early stages of swarming in fact looking through the window I can see quite a lot of bees flying around so I think oh maybe we should go outside of it well let's go outside and see what's happening this is amazing to watch the bees cluster with the old Queen around the entrance to the observation hive they'll wait here until they find a new place to make a home during swarming the bees are not at all aggressive you can stand here without any fear at all Francis is confident enough to handle them with no veil or gloves but I'm a little more circumspect this is the greatest show on earth the swarming of honeybees as it's one of the most dramatic things you can see and indeed I never get tired of the bees they're just so amazing and what they do this unique form of reproduction might be fascinating to witness but for a beekeeper a swarm is a mixed blessing because you can end up losing your bees problem for me is I want to get my world flower honey ready and ready for the end of June so that's quite a deadline and if we get a swarm now that could ruin my chances I can't be at Barton Grange every day checking up on them so I want to find out from my beekeeping guru John Everett how to make sure I don't lose my bees when they swarm okay and well bees seem to been doing reasonably well but let's see how they're getting on right well just give it to puff yeah as soon as we open the brood box of the first hive we discover Queen cells there's another queen cell there the workers have made a lot of them and the larvae are almost ready to hatch lime so many because there are so many Queen cells like this and because the hive is so overcrowded I'm sure it's going to swarm in the next day or two so what's your view of what's the best thing to do about swarms I mean could you just let them go you could but if we don't do anything we may lose the swarm yes which is in essence because that will affect our honey crop yes it certainly will one of the tricks that we can get up to is to clip one of the wings of the Queen so if she does try to swarm so it's like having a plane with one engine on one side and none on the other she goes around in a circle and we're less likely to lose the swarm a40 think I'm very sentimental but it sounds rather cruel to me I don't think so all the tissue that is there is dead it's a bit like cutting nails so it's not going to hurt her at all I don't know I'm not sure about that but some of you you choose well I'm I'm interested to see whether it's effective so I think I'm happy to give it a go so if we see the Queen I will take a couple of Mills off one wing there's the Queen oh there she is and at the moment both the wings are the same length and the trick is just to reduce one by a couple of Mills so you just take a little bit off one of the wings and I've cut off about two Mills of her left wing it doesn't stop swarming but it does mean that it's much more likely that we'll find this one I'm incredibly impressed John by you what you've done I mean it's such a delicate thing I know if I if I had to go myself I think I'd probably end up decapitating the Queen it's quite a range aside quite normal for them to lose the back legs really oh no that's awful it's so cruel now that we've clipped the wings if the bees do swarm I should easily find them as the Queen won't be able to travel far in her search for a new home but for some beekeepers stopping swarms goes against everything they believe Heidi Herrmann is one of them she runs a school of natural beekeeping from her home in Sussex you know we hear so much about the bees are in trouble and then you hear that the queen bees wings are being cut off by a beekeeper I think it's it's a shame that that is being done because you're basically frustrating you're thwarting the colony's instinct in a very crude way I don't think it makes much sense to prevent natural reproduction of a creature when that creature is in decline if you want to practice natural beekeeping in the sense of that you want to get as close in your beekeeping as possible to the natural colony life then you also have to take responsibility Heidi doesn't try to stop swarms instead she keeps a constant watch for them if she sees a swarm she goes out and collects it like this one her husband caught on film last year you know you once Heidi's collected the bees she coaxes them into a new hive and ends up with a brand new colony come on girls a feeder this technique is all part of a natural approach to beekeeping Heidi believes in interfering as little as possible with the bees controversially she doesn't use chemicals to treat varroa she doesn't feed the bees with sugar syrup and she doesn't take any honey and as she's sure that the bees have enough to last the winter when you read other beekeeping books area of the 50s and 60s you find a much more respectful attitude towards the whole being of the colony and what the colony needs attitudes towards keeping bees have evolved over the centuries people have kept bees for honey since at least the time of the ancient Egyptians at first beehives were just hollow logs then woven straw baskets or escapes were used Skip's were common right up to the 19th century but although they now look quaint the only way to harvest the honey was to kill the bees so the wooden hive with removable frames that we use today who's a big advance but natural beekeepers like Heidi now use a new kind of hive that brings the skep into the modern age it's called a Sun hive I've never seen anything like this to be perfectly honest the idea here is that you offer the bees a hive in the archetypal shape in which the bees in the wild would construct their brood nest but why is it hanging high up unequivocally when bees are able to choose their own homes it will be between 2.5 and 6 meters off the ground in other words the bee is not an animal that wishes to live on the earth they only live on the earth because we want them on the earth because we want it how it easy to take the honey out so you don't get any honey you would never take anything out of this hive structure but if your bees are doing very well you will then have the possibility of mounting on the top a Supra and they can put some surplus into that box and the son hives have a unique construction inside - I will wear some simple decorators goggles is just a sensible thing to protect your eyes we are much braver than I am Heidi claims that her non-invasive approach makes the bees much less likely to sting her let us take that little one out very good girls you see you see here the Marvel of bees engaged in the process of building comb forming these chains absolutely the shape reminds me very much of a wild bees nest that I was once shown your Nevis in the Caribbean it's nicely unlike my hives these have no frames of wax foundation for the bees to make their comb instead there are simple curved wooden bars this shape here is actually exactly the shape of the hive it's beautifully thought out yeah while I'm away from Suffolk I've asked the owners of the meadow Matthew and Nick to keep an eye on my hives then one afternoon in June the inevitable happens Martha it's Matthew the bees on the far left-hand hive are swarming they're all piling out in numbers and they're all gathering at the top so is there anything you want us to do Martha so you wanted we put a box underneath and try and brush them into a box is that correct to then think would Nick's got Nick's got a bee outfit so but maybe he can try and give it a go the Matthew is is a little bit um scared about coming too close without any protection with her wings clipped the Queen has only been able to fly as far as the edge of the hive so the swarms easy to find even for a novice have you done this before Nick never no not at all I've never thought that they would be so easy to handle there's one main core which which I guess is where the Queen is Nik pause the bees into a box with just a few frames called a nuke box they'll be happy enough here until the colony builds up a new home closer into the meadow well I think I caught the bug now Nick and Matthew really have done a fantastic job and the wing clipping does seem to have helped make it easier to catch the swarm I now have a whole extra colony but the seeder hive is also getting very crowded and I'm determined not to lose it to another swarm I need to find a way of making sure they swarm while I'm on hand to collect them and John thinks he might have a solution we could make an artificial school so we'll take the old beat of the old Queen out and if we do that that that's that's the swarm is it they'll follow her and we're shakes and bees honor and see what happens ok brilliant there I feel like this experiment I have never actually tried to make the swarm go into a tree or anything but this always the first isn't yeah but this is what would happen in the wild if we left it alone but of course it could just go off to miles and with these the bees and we don't want that to happen first he finds a queen cell ready to hatch then he catches the Queen as she emerges as a brand new queen we'll keep this new queen in the hive to rebuild a colony while we take the old queen and about half of the bees to make the artificial swarm I have put the Queen in this little box so I'm going to close her up without crushing her so if we hung that on there yes and then we'll shake some bees as what about Caitlyn well no one believed swarm before they're like gatepost sent there the Queen's powerful pheromones make the worker bees gather around her they're swarming instinct makes them docile this is exactly what a swarm does isn't it this is a song this looks exactly like a swarm in the wild the only difference between this and a natural swarm is that we've made it happen when we wanted it look at that look at them slinging all around her so just push up at it in the yeah just here go so weird when you do this it's as if they're one substance like syrup or something isn't it they kind of pour themselves onto the card we take the swarm of bees and give them a new home in a new clocks with six frames they can now start to build up a new colony so I've got a queen and some frames of bees so very good days beekeeping actually I'm very glad about this I now have my original three hives and two new fledgling colonies in nuke boxes with a bit of luck I should have plenty of honey to harvest in a few weeks time at my cottage I have one hive which is already heavy with honey these bees are very productive but also ferocious I've asked my beekeeping friend Jen dry bruh who's much braver than me to help work out if there's any honey ready to extract what I want to have a look at today is the terrifyingly angry vicious hive I'm only just going to see whether I'm in a position to extract any honey but I'm not going down into the brood box because they're too frightening right little it the pleasure of honey and the pain of bee stings inspired one of my favorite paintings Lucas cranek the Elders Cupid complaining to Venus at the National Gallery Cupid has stolen some honeycomb from wild bees but when he gets stung he comes crying to his mother it's an old story told by the Greek poet theocritus and it captures the paradox of man's relationship with the honey bee bee but the angry bees they're very productive oh yes whatever people say about it yeah Wow this is fantastic this is really very very heavy this is really good isn't it and all the seals so I think we can assume there's loads in here should we put this over here you able to help me see how heavy it is I couldn't manage this on my own and let's see if there's any worth taking out yeah look more doing it that's enough to take out or not yes I think you probably could we decide to extract the first batch of honey the next day but first we have to clear the bees from the super so I'm going to just put this on for you so this is called a Canadian clearing board the bees can go down and they can't come back up so it'll be nice and clear for me tomorrow when I come and extract them you leave them on for a day when the bees return from foraging they won't be able to get back into the super leaving it be free for the extraction even though they scare me to death they are easily my most productive bees and in one super alone we've got an awful lot of honey a hive can produce a pound of honey in a day the bees will visit about 2 million flowers and fly 50,000 miles to make it it takes 12 bees a lifetime to produce one teaspoon of honey to transform the nectar into honey the foragers transfer it to be e the hive they combine the nectar with an enzyme in their stomach and then regurgitate it which changes its chemical composition then the bees flap their wings to evaporate most of the moisture this thickens the honey and stops it from fermenting this takes a further three days then the bees cap the cell with wax so the honey will be there when they need it for food we've got Tim everything ready here extracted the next day I'm ready to harvest the honey from the hive of angry bees that I left at my cottage this will be the very first crop of the year I roped in help from my husband Chris a rather reluctant beekeeping assistant pretty happy is it really ever yeah ah okay I think I'm going to get all the bees off I hope you got all the bees off yeah so what I'm going to do is the bees will have covered their honey with this cap of wax and I need to cut it off so that all the honey can come out once we put it into into the extractor this really is one of the best moments in the whole beekeeping year but there's something quite satisfying about just cutting off the cuttings with a hot knife revealing the luscious sunny they're lovely okay Chris Riley I get that we're using a centrifugal extractor which takes the frames into the barrel ready to be spun round and you sort of rested against the side like that and you can get six frames in there this is the best set oh no honey yeah that's good so you've got you got to see all six ready to go all right brilliant my favorite bit the one bit I like this kind of honey extractor was invented back in 1865 by an Italian major francesco de Hruska before that the only way to get the liquid was to destroy the honeycomb to crush cos simple invention meant that you could take out the honey without damaging the comb which could then be returned to the hive saving the bees a vast amount of time and effort rebuilding it from scratch it revolutionized the honey industry don't you need me to have a go boom spoon yeah yeah there's plenty coming out of the bottom knife is that good that's all on the sides of the motor just takes me time to get down yeah eversource brush is getting an electric one where's the fun in that I think I might take these out I think they're spent as they say once we've spun all eight frames from the super it's time to tap off the honey and find out how much my angry bees have made there it goes oh yeah fantastic I love this bit so much business wonderful love this this is a lot coming out fattest man yeah mmm-hmm we filter the honey to get rid of any wax or bits of dead bee and then put it in sterile jars first your honey fantastic three we've got five pans out already how much more there is in there and this is loads at the cottage my angry bees have had a productive spring so what's left in that my bad is it one soup please to get so many jars this early on it's good for us isn't it yeah I think what do we get 40 42 for those in Los Angeles of 21 pounds of honey from one sleeper pretty good yes very good yeah I wish gone to business and now the moment of truth right first year the year that I've seen their honey on tercius well I'm really enjoying it it's very I can do by our usual vintage I would say it's free honey classic spring honey yeah classic screaming hmm next time I learn about the secret of the bees unique form of communication this is the waggle dance it's the most sophisticated form of communication that a non human can do I discover the powerful properties of manuka honey in medicine bugs have become resistant to almost everything man-made but never to honey and find out if the bees on the meadow have made my first true wildflower honey thank you many tastes of wildflowers Victoria Koren Mitchell is here in just a few moments as two more teams go head-to-head for smoother path to the semi-finals only connect is next and then Welsh language drama here on BBC four tonight two Aberystwyth for part one of hinterland at 9:00 don't miss it

Channel: serbest ismael

Views: 74,308

Rating: 4.7301207 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 0ksACwcixkc

Length: 28min 47sec (1727 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 18 2014