More from the ladies at the bottom of the garden.

I went to check the feeder this evening and for the first time since the hive arrived it was still almost as full as it was last night. 

The bees are able to access the syrup from inside the hive without danger of robbing by other colonies because the feeder is sealed inside the super by the roof and there is a cone of plastic over the opening which allows the bees to access the syrup but prevents them from getting into the the unused super and getting trapped. The speckles in the syrup are leaves of thyme.

There seemed to be no great hum coming from the hive and unlike previous occasions there was no pushing and shoving to get to the syrup. Of course it's been another beautiful day with plenty of Ivy to forage. Our bees were making the most of the water bath that we have close by so they evidently needed a little more to go with the pollen they were bringing in on their clown trousers.

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By this time in the season there are no drones left in the hive. Drones are the male bees and a friend of mine once said he didn't fancy being a drone much as they got rather short shrift. I hadn't realise quite how right he was.

They eat a lot, have to be cared for by the workers and the nurse bees but they're tolerated by the colony because they may be needed to keep the colony fertile. So they have a pretty easy time until they are needed to fertilise a virgin queen or if the old queen needs to be superseded. They fly out of the hive to the drone mating area which is between 2 and 3 hundred feet up and usually up to a mile away from the hive. There are usually drones from many hives which ensures the genetic diversity and so the health of the hive.

Now this is where things turn ugly. The drone's intimate equipment is barbed and when he has impregnated the queen he is unable to withdraw it so, as with the worker bee's sting, when he tries to pull away his chaps bits, along with significant portions of his innards, are pulled away so he suffers and dies.

The queen mates with numerous drones on her nuptial flight. She stores their seed in her spermatheca and then goes back to the hive where that store of sperm will last her for two to three years. Fertilisation with a sperm is only necessary for laying females. Drones can be born to a virgin queen so a large number of drones can also be a sign that the queen is no longer fertile and needs to be replaced. 

So at the end of the season when there is no need to fertilise queens they stop laying drones which, due to their short and shocking lives, are expected to do nothing in the hive towards the maintenance of the colony.

There is only food for worker bees so they can keep the queen warm, maintain what brood there is, and keep the temperature of the hive constant through the hard winter. So when I talk about the ladies at the bottom of the garden really I'm talking about a colony of ruthless hardworking amazons who serve their queen to the letter, work till they die and exclusively for the good of the hive. 

Really when you compare the selflessness of the bee it puts the human race to shame! We could all take a leaf out of the bee book of dutiful living.

Yours thoughtfully

Katherine