NEWSLETTER #20 (English) from Urs & Izzy: We are flying, we are flying!
- Izzy the busy bee....
- Apr 29, 2023
- 6 min read
March & April 2023 (Issue #20)
Our bees had a difficult start of the year, with the warm weather that pushed them to wake up and fly already in February...but there was no flower to be seen. Of course, the pollen of the hazelnut trees was already available, so the Queens started producing baby-bees!
All of the colonies (except one, who did not survive the winter) are now happily already harvesting nectar, and they are growing strong by the day. Keep on reading, to know what the bees are doing now.
Are you enjoying the newsletter? Don't be shy, tell us at baerenhonig@gmx.ch , or whatsaupp us, if you prefer. We'd love to hear from you!
News from the Beehives
Have you seen the interior of a swiss bee cottage? it is nothing spectacular, we don't have interior designers... but it will give you an idea of where we spend some of our weekends working. Here is where about one million bees - and two humans interact. Not really fancy... but someone has to do the dirty job! :-) To the left of the photo are the actual hives, which we access through the rear door. To the right of the photo, the storage area for all of the tools. The metal chariot helps us holding the frames when we are working in each hive. And yes, we have even a window, which we open when we work with the bees, so they have an easy way out to come back to their homes if they decide to leave their hives through the rear door!
Where is my Honey...?
Your honey is on the making! Well, kind of. Technically speaking, the bees are already making and storing honey, but for themselves. First things first! How do we know which is their honey, and which is our honey? Easy!
Look at the picture here to the left. This is the frame of the brood chamber. (In our next issue, we will show the same, but for a natural hive). These big frames are located on the lower part of the hive, and are where the Queen lays eggs and the baby-bees are born. The Queen will start laying eggs on the center, and move around freely, checking the cleanliness and suitability of each cradle for the baby bee (this is serious) before she lays an egg in it. The zone within the black circle is roughly where the nesting area is. Each nesting area can hold about 2,000 babies. That's the number of eggs that a Queenbee can lay...in one day! In a hive, there are 12 brood frames, the Queen will lay eggs in about 8 of them - the other four are full of honey reserves. Above the nesting area, you see that there are two more areas. The one within the red shape, is pollen, and is located immediately above the nests - why? because this is the ' feed' for the babies; pollen is pure protein, and that's what the eggs need to be fed with to grow at the speed to create a new-born bee in 14 days. Above the pollen there is another zone (the two triangles). This is honey - this is the honey that they will be storing for themselves (together with another 4 full frames on the A-area. In total, there is about 16 - 20 kg of honey stored on these frames -- and that's all for them. This is the honey that they are harvesting now, from March to May. We do not touch this honey, as it is essential for their winter survival.
You can see on these second picture, two other frames. (This is a photo from August last year).
These are located above the brood frames. These frames are smaller - each one, 1/2 of the brood frame. The cells on these frames are filled only with honey. You can see it because the colour is very white. This honey is the ' extra' reserves; the bees start filling these cells with honey when they have their own basic reserves for the winter filled. So that's why we don't know how much ' extra' honey they will give us and you!) every year.
So... your honey is on the making...as of next week!
Facts & Figures
The honey bee antennae (one on each side) house thousands of sensory organs, some are specialized for touch (mechanoreceptors), some for smell (odor receptors), and others for taste (gustatory receptors). Bees can also ' hear' with the Antennae. But I bet you couldn't imagine that they have an additional function, that has been copied later by Airbus and Boing. The antennae also have specialized receptors that tells the bee how fast they are flying, using the pressure of the air flow around them. Because bees can fly fast. Very fast. Actually, much faster than what you can run! Bees can fly up to 32 km/h. That's pretty close to the speed of the Olympic 100m gold medallist, Usain Bolt. So.... don't try to overrun a bee...she'll always win!
Let's come back to the subject of copying nature on industrial designs -- Yes, the planes also have small antennas (actually, similar in shape to the bee's antennas, as you can see in the photo), called pitots (invented in 1732 by Henri Pitot). These are the speedometers of the plane. They read, like the antennas of the bees, the differential air pressure, and correct it by altitude and humidity. If you are interested, you can read more here. Even the most modern planes have them, as a ' double reading' , together with more other GPS-based speed-measurement techniques. Check them out next time to are close to an aircraft! On the old planes, the pitots are located under the wings. On the new (or big) ones, the pitots are on the belly, underneath the pilot's cabin.
Did you know that...?
Aluminium is Earth's most ubiquitous eco-toxicant and is already known to be responsible for the death of fish in acid lakes, forest decline in acidified and nutrient impoverished catchments, and low crop productivity on acid sulphate soils. Aluminium is a known neurotoxin affecting behaviour in animal models of aluminium intoxication. And when we say ' animal models' we mean also human! A value of 3 ppm (parts-per-million) would be considered as potentially pathological in human brain tissue.
Scientific research suggests that when bees forage for nectar they do not actively avoid nectar which contains aluminium. Data have shown significant accumulation of aluminium in exposure areas during the pupae cycle, which suggests the possibility of another stressor contributing to the decline in its numbers Bees rely heavily on cognitive function in their everyday behaviour and these data raise the intriguing spectre that aluminium-induced cognitive dysfunction may play a role in their population decline -- are we looking at bees with Alzheimer's disease?.
Swiss Bees
Let's talk today on how our Bees contribute to the sustainability of the Climate in Switzerland! Urs is specialist on climate sustainability, so we follow a net-zero approac, (aka carbon neutrality), on all of the work with our bees, and around the honey.
Let us tell you how we achieve it:
We only deliver the honey of our bees by bicycle to your mailbox (that's why sometimes we are a little bit slow)
During the harvest, (this is the heaviest part of the work), we take a mobility electric car (no, we don't have a car ourselves) to move the heavy frames from the beehive to the centrifuge
When we go to the market, we take everything on our bicycle trolley -- here you can see Urs pulling the trolley on the way to the market...and I am behind him also on my bycicle!
We recycle the honey glass pots as much as we can. Please help us with that! We are happy to (on our bicycle) to pick up the pots from your mailbox. Our labels can be easily detached once you finish the honey, and before you wet the glass).
We use solar energy to melt the wax (this is part of the ' back office' ) work
We minimize the usage of ink in our labels (that's why they are small, but compliant with the Swiss legislation for labelling)
We minimize the usage of energy. We do NOT heat our honey at any stage. Our honey is raw, not processed, so it keeps all of its benefits. (Heated honey is sold as ' creamy honey', which does not crystallize. Our honey crystallizes naturally)
Let us know if you have any idea on what else we can do to minimize our carbon footprint while making honey!
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