January & February 2024 (Issue #24)
Hello and happy (and belated) new lap year! Yes, February will have 29 days this year. Do our bees care? Well, not so much - they follow the 'natural' calendar, not our number-based one. And they will enjoy it... overwintering. The Queen bees on our colonies has already started laying the eggs for the new generation of bees, and we have already seen the bees coming back with hazelnut pollen to feed the new babies. Let us tell you also some more interesting facts for this early start of the spring!
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News from the Beehives
Some of you take walks around the hills and forests of Witikon, and we receive from time to time questions of ' why I cannot find your beehouse'? Well, it is just because we are veeery discreet. Out 100 years old beehouse stands on three sides covered by forest, and on the front, where the bees take off & land, behind an almost 2 meters high hedge - so, as you can see on the photo, it blends in with the forest. And why the hedge? well, to protect both the bees, and the wandering people - the bees then fly well above the heads of the unsuspecting walkers, so it reduces the stress both to humans and to bees. So, next time that you want to check our bees... you know what to look for!
Where is my Honey...?
Your honey is being used to warm up the bees! ) it is still cold (as you can see on the photo of our beehouse), and the bees are finishing with last year's reserves. But, no stress! we still have some honey for you ;-)
We did just check our colonies, and the good news is that all of them survived! It is still too cold to open their houses, so, how do we know? We check the temperature from outside, just laying our hand at the top of each one of the hives - they keep their home at a cozy 30 C - 35 C, so it is very evident when they are alive! Despite this good news, we will have to wait still a month to make sure that all of them made it (remember that up to 30% of the colonies do NOT survive winter, - some of them succumb during winter to diseases, and the ones which die now, it is of starvation). We will keep you posted!
Facts & Figures
It’s Valentine’s Day. Oh, excuse me, the nymphs of the forests and springs want me to correct that: it’s another Spring Fertility Festival! Spring Fertility? Yes. The bees and the historical record agree that long before the Christianization of this day, the festivities of love and fertility were celebrated on the streets of Rome as the 3 day festival of Lupercalia - following even earlier pagan rites. Did you know that Saint Valentine was also the patron saint of beekeepers - replacing Aphrodite in the antique Rome)? Remember that we already wrote about Bees in History and the other various bee-patrons -- Saint Modmonoc ( Wales ), Saint Ambrose ( Milan ), Saint Gobnait ( Ireland ), Saint Bridgit (Austria), ... just to name a few - all celebrated between February and early March. It all goes back to fertility, and when we look at fertility we find the bees. February is when Nature starts to wake up, flowers open their petals and bees begin to buzz, making the sweet ambrosia that has united lovers across time and culture. Cupid’s arrow after all was tipped with either honey or venom. You choose....
Did you know that...?
Bees have two pairs of wings...but they don't flap them up and down, as we may think. Bee's wings twist and swivel, and their movement allows them to take off, fly, land and change direction super-fast. The bees' wings generate at the same time, propulsion (like the engine of a plane) and lift (what the wing of the plane does). In order to do that, the wing rotates through the downstroke and upstroke. The fluid mechanics behind flapping a wing during the flight are very complex, and require different types of muscles, which attach to the thorax and the abdomen of the bee. If you are inclined to read physics, you have all details here. But, if you want to see it in slow motion, these two links will show it to you!
Swiss Bees
The University of Bern has a full team (of more than 20 people) dedicated to the study of bees- not just honeybees, they love all types of bees alike! You can check their website here. Their research team comes from all over the world, and they publish very interesting articles. One of the projects studied last year versed about endosymbiotics . They studied how the Queen-bee passes specific genetic traits to the whole population that can affect the long-term survival of the colony, avoiding problems like sudden colony collapse, and even varroa hygienic behaviors. So humans are not the only ones that follow the motto ' the apple does not fall far away from the tree'.
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