The entrance to this Langstroth-style hive is in the bottom brood box; two honey super boxes sit on top.

Life of Honey Bees.

Bees are a truly fascinating species and one that deserves much more respect than is generally given to them. Around 35 per cent of the world’s food crops rely on pollinators such as bees to turn flowers into fruits and vegetables that we can eat. When you think about it, that’s a huge responsibility for our buzzing friends. These guys get a lot of credit for their delicious honey, but often their job of pollinating plants is overlooked.

To say we would be in serious trouble without pollinators is a huge understatement. Imagine taking away 35 per cent of the food that is on our plates worldwide! That’s a good enough reason for any of us to want to help keep bee populations strong and steady well into the future. I believe that bee conservation needs to start on a local level. Whether it’s maintaining your own backyard beehive, growing bee-friendly plants or supporting local people who sell honey at the markets, we can all do our bit to help these guys thrive.

LEARNING ABOUT BEES

The history, biology and day-to-day life of bees are all fascinating topics, and there are many books dedicated to them. Let me tell you about my experience with bees, and hopefully it will entice you to do some further reading to get to know these little guys some more, or to even become a beekeeper yourself.

My first real experience with a swarm of bees was a memorable one to say the least. Back when I was studying horticulture at college, I received a phone call from the owner of the local restaurant where we grew produce and kept chooks and bees. He said, ‘Mate, your bees are swarming!’ My friend Grant and I dashed out of class and across the city to locate our swarm. We soon found them hanging from a lemon tree a couple of gardens away from our hive. It was a big, dripping basketball of buzzing orange bees. I’d never seen or heard anything like it before!

We hadn’t actually caught a swarm of bees before, so we phoned a friend – Doug, the self-proclaimed ‘beevangelist’ – for some on-the-spot swarm-catching tips. With bee suits on, a trusty pruning saw in hand and a box at the ready, we removed the branch that was holding the ball of bees. With a good shake of the branch, the bees fell into the box and we closed the lid. We then transferred our buzzing friends to a brand new hive right next to the original hive in the garden. So, now we had two beehives, one headed up by Queen Beryl and the other by Queen Daphne. The experience for us was a thrilling one, but also one that inspired me to continue learning and sharing what I know about this spectacular species.

Bow to the queen

Before I knew much about bees, I thought that a swarm was the entire family of bees leaving their hive to find a new and improved home. But, in actual fact, a swarm of bees is a portion of the family moving out and finding a new home. A swarm is great news for the bee population. It means a particular hive is healthy and environmental factors have allowed a new queen to be born. Swarming is the bees’ basic strategy for survival and for diversifying the gene pool. The new queen takes the throne in the existing hive, while her predecessor and friends swarm off to find a new tree hollow or similar camp, increasing the bee population.

In the case of my college-day hive, Queen Beryl laid her worker bee eggs in the hollow hexagonal cells of the hive, but the worker bees fed a special diet of royal jelly to one of the developing larvae, thereby hatching a queen instead of a worker bee. When Queen Daphne hatched, Beryl hit the road with some of her workers. And this is precisely how this super-organism moves around the land and keeps its species alive. So, if you see a swarm of bees, know that they are often at their most placid, as they are full of honey and not protecting a hive. Luckily, this makes catching a swarm of bees a relatively calm procedure rather than the frantic one most people would imagine.

HARVESTING YOUR HONEY

Hive maintenance and honey harvesting are similarly meditative activities requiring close observation and constant learning. What I love most about beekeeping is that when you open the lid to the hive, you can immediately see the female bees busily working away inside, some flying in with pollen and others on their way out to forage on flowers up to 8 kilometres (5 miles) away. You might witness baby bees chewing their way out of the brood cells to begin their 40-day life, or see the male drones with their big eyes or worker bees tending to the honeycomb and brood cells or doing other daily hive tasks. The hive is a busy place, full of activity. It fascinates me and everyone else who’s experienced it alongside me.

Harvesting honey is the ultimate joy. Once you’ve inspected the health of the hive, and if there’s enough honey for both the bees and yourself, you can get cracking on harvesting your share. We sometimes cut the honeycomb off the frames and keep it as is, or we spin the honey out of the comb so we have normal runny honey in jars.

If you have a healthy hive and the local nectar flow is adequate, you will have enough honey to keep you happy through all of winter. In a good season, you might get 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of honey. This liquid gold can become your bargaining power to encourage your neighbours to grow bee-friendly plants. Once they taste the sweet delicacy of fresh, local honey, they’ll be happy to help.

LOOK AFTER YOUR FRIENDS

A few different hive styles are available, with the Langstroth hive being the most common. Whatever hive style you go for, your dedication to the bees and constant observation will naturally make you a good beekeeper.

If you’re not quite ready to commit to a hive, you can still support the local bee population by planting a bee-friendly garden. Creating an organic, pesticide-free garden with year-round flowering plants will assist in keeping bee populations strong. You can buy ‘bee-friendly’ seed mixes at your local nursery containing a variety of flowering annuals and perennials for the garden. As an added bonus, the plants encourage a natural balance between beneficial insects and pests in your garden.

GO NATIVE

If you feel that European honey bees might be a little busy for you, have you thought about keeping a native or endemic bee species? In Australia, for example, the stingless bee species Tetragonula carbonaria is most commonly kept by people for pollination and conservation purposes and for the simple fun of watching them buzz around the home garden. These bees are as small as a grain of rice and fly at temperatures above 18°C (64.4°F) to forage up to 1 kilometre (⅔ mile) from their shoebox-sized hive. I’ve installed these hives at local schools and community gardens where the students and locals were fascinated by them and gained a new respect for bees.

A hive for native bees is a positive addition to any organic garden, but check that your area has diverse plant species to allow bees to forage successfully. You’ll enjoy having native bees working by your side, pollinating your plants and keeping you company on those balmy days in the backyard.

Bees have mesmerised me ever since I caught that swarm and observed their social life over a few years. I have so much more to learn and appreciate from bees that honey isn’t the motivation anymore. I’m just in awe of their way of life and want to help sustain a species that is vital to life on this planet.