Man’s Industrious Servants,, The Honey-Bees

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 65, 9 December 1938, Page 42 (Supplement)

Man’s Industrious Servants,, The Honey-Bees

Summer-Long They Gather Nectar For His Needs

GO into any clover paddock, white-flecked with blossom, or any garden of flowers on a summer day, and you will hear the air astir with the drowsy murmur of the wings of bees—man’s myriad tiny, unpaid, untiring servants, busy gathering and storing the golden honey that his children cat with their bread. Because New Zealand is a land of sunshine and flowers, she is, too, a country of manv bees and much honey; and let you walk into a grocer’s shop half the world away in London Town, you will even there be able to buy yourself a jar of the sweet granulated golden nectar, insect-gathered from this Dominion’s fertile fields.

Just what useful little citizens live in those tiny villages of white pinewood boxes dotted here and there about the New Zealand countryside will be seen when it is recalled that in a single good year more than a million pounds of honey are sent overseas, to the value of more than £30,000. There are some 9000 beekeepers in the country, and 140,600 colonies. The number of bees in a colony varies according to season, but 100.000 is not an excessive number to find in a strong colony in midsummer; so the Dominion's honeygathering population may at a guess be written down as approximately 14,000.000,000 bees. As a last statistic. 5000 bees weight a pound; so the mathematician can easily deduce that each bee annually sends to England a third its own weight of honey, and no doubt produces a similar quantity for home consumption.

New Zealand boasts what is probably the biggest apiary in the Southern Hemisphere. There is a beemaster in the Wellington province whose hives number 3000. who produces more than 100 tons of honey yearly, and who lords it over some 300.000,000 bees. But the visitor to his apiary will be disappointed if he anticipates a vast field of ranged hives, with the hurrying workers hovering over him like a blown smoke. His hives are scattered far and wide across a great area of countryside—a dozen on a farm here, a score in a plantation there, a cluster of little white boxes sheltering under a hedge of yellow gorse, or a few lone colonies enjoying the sweetness of a cherry orchard in a suburb of a country town. Seventy-five miles separate those on one side of his territory from those on the other; yet every colony is visited by motor approximately once a week. Hive Awakens

The beekeeper’s year begins in spring. The bees, which have remained more or less comatose and torpid winter through, begin a new year’s activity on the first warm August day. At first there is little honey about; stores are low in the hive, and if the most is to be made of the flow of honey a big brood of young workers must be raised. So while the queen sets to work on her eternal duty of egg-laying, the beekeeper carefully inspects his multiplicity of hives to ascertain that each has ample food, and plenty of brood-cells to indicate the presence of a fertile queen. If there is less than 18 or 20 pounds of honey in a hive, he supplies more from one with surplus stores, or remedies the deficiency with sugar-candy or sweet syrup.

The uninitiated are always surprised at the cool and nonchalant air of sangfroid with which the beekeeper opens and examines the hives. Bare-handed he removes lids, lifts out frames of comb a-crawl with insects; unveiled, he peers into the bees’ stronghold, apparently unconscious of the swarm whirling and humming round his head, until the whole air seems to vibrate with their vicious high-pitched note. So the layman concludes that the expert is immune from stings.

He is immune, but not in the sense that the bees will not sting him. No one is proof entirely against the anger of the little people. But they who are constantly being stung become innoculated with the poisonous formic acid, so that to them a sting from a bee is no more irritating than the biting of a sandfly. Moreover, they have the confidence acquired by experience, and have learned to move with quiet deliberation, and handle the bees skilfully and gently, so that they will not take offence. For major operations, too, they puff a few whiffs of smoke in at the front door before opening the hive; whereupon the bees hurry to their honey-

pots and gorge themselves. So glutted, they become as docile, placid, and contented as anybody who has just enjoyed a hearty meal.

But if no one is wholly exempt from stings, there are some so susceptible and sensitive to them that a single stab is positively dangerous to them. Such folk, needless to say, have no place in bee-farming, except as consumers of the honey.

When, as the summer succeeds the spring, the nectar increases in the flowers, and the short, precious weeks known to the bee-master as “The Flow’’ set in, the real work of the year begins. By now the swarm has grown tremendously, and the hive will no longer contain it. The raising of a brood of young bees is no longer a primary consideration; the beekeeper has recruited his workers for the season, so the next thing is to direct their efforts solely to the gathering of honey.

The hive consists of a section of four wooden walls, covered with a lid, and set on a baseboard above which it is propped sufficiently high to enable the bees to crawl in and out the crack at the front. Within the walls arc suspended perpendicularly, side by side, the wooden frames on which the bees construct their waxen cells. An Elastic House

When the time comes to enlarge the hive, the beekeeper simply lifts the lid and superimposes on the main hive a further, section of four walls, without top or bottom, but containing also a number of removable frames. On top he replaces the lid. By superimposing still more sections, he can increase the size of the hive until it stands a full five feet from base to lid. and contains perhaps a hundredweight of honey. From these upper sections he excludes the queen by means of a grille through which the workers may pass freely, but she, by dint of her greater bulk, may not. Thus the combs available for rearing brood are only those in the bottom story, the rest being devoted to the storage of the nectar from the flowers.

So there comes a time when the sap is flowing free, and the combs are built and filled and sealed brimful with honey, and are ready' to be taken from the hive. Just before that is done, a partition with only' one or two exits is placed below the section to be removed, so that once they’ have left it the bees cannot return. In this way the comb is cleared of most of the bees, and the few that remain are easily brushed off. The honey' is carted back to the factory to undergo the various processes necessary before it can appear on the consumer’s table.

The frames in general use are not the light wooden structures, about six inches square, that surround the honeycombs sold in the shops. Such are produced only in particularly' thriving hives during the height of the flow, when the bees are filling the combs rapidly and with uniform precision. The production of combhoney' is intensive rather than extensive. Building the Cells The frame then normally used for the manufacture of honey in bulk consists of an oblong wooden structure more than twice tire size of the table comb. It measures about 18 inches by' eight. Like the smaller comb, however, when full it contains a double layer of hexagonal cells of honey, built on either side of an artificial foundation of wax stamped with the bees' own pattern. This wax foundation not only gives the bees an indication of where to build, and so guides them in the construction of orderly, easily-handled combs, but saves both time and honey; long hours of work and the consumption of much honey is needed to secrete that quantity of wax and build that expanse of wail. For the bees do not gather wax as they do honey. They secrete it from glands under their bodies, and the production of a single pound entails the eating of a dozen pounds of honey. The only substances they gather from the flowers are nectar, pollen and propolis. The first is converted into honey' by a chemical process in the bee's honeybag; the second is mixed with honey to make bee-bread for the baby' bees; and on any fine day the workers can be seen carting it back to the hive in the big yellow pollen baskets on the outsides of their back legs. The third substance, propolis, or bee-glue, is used for gumming up interstices in the hive against the chilly' draughts of winter. In proof of the adaptability of bees to modern civilization, they’ have discovered that tar is even more suitable for caulking, as all sailors know; and, in consequence, when hives are adjacent to tarred roads, they will Often gather this substance as a substitute.

Extraction of the honey' from the comb is by' centrifugal force. The caps are first scraped from the cells with a steam-heated knife, and are kept for the honey and beeswax they contain. The combs are then placed in the revolving extractor, which whirls them so rapidly that all honey' is forced out. It is drained off, strained and tanked, and in due course, when mature, it is poured into the jars or cartons in which it appears on the market stall. It granulates of its own accord, through keeping, exposure to air. and low temperature. Chilling accelerates the process. The combs are stored carefully, if intact, to save the bees trouble next season. The broken pieces, damaged combs, cappings and scrapings are placed in the wax-press and crushed under heat, the wax being melted and purified while the honey is strained and blended with that obtained from the extractor.

There are certain inevitable complications that render the honey-making process a trifle less simple than this account may make it seem. The peculiar life-cycle of the bees is not perfectly’ adapted yet to the domestication of the modern apiary. After all, only in the last half-century’ the whole technique of beekeeping has been radically' changed, immensely developed. Today the bee-master has small difficulty in establishing new colonies; he has only' to take a single strong stock, divide it, and place one-half with the oldqueen in a new hive and location, and introduce or rear a new queen to carry' on the original bee community; But the bees have not forgotten their ancient instincts which provide for the foundation of new colonies by their well-known habit of swarming. ' Their instinct is to produce new young queens, and numbers of drones, toward the time when the flow of honey is at its best. When they swami, the prime swarm, which leaves the hive first, goes with the oldqueen to found a new colony' and a new hive. The apiarist checks the gratification of this instinct by' examining the brood combs every ten days, and carefully destroying any queen cells. These are easily' distinguished by their large size. The Queen Bee

The queen is a most interesting individual. From any' worker egg a queen may be reared by' giving it a special queen-cell. The queen mates on the wing, and onlv requires to be fertilized once. The drone perishes, The queen bee lays up to 2500 eggs a day. more than her own weight, in fact; and she systematically’ places her eggs in circles over the surface of the brood-combs. She may' live to the mature age of five years, although her useful days are done before then; a new-queen is essential to the virility’ of a colony.

The drones give no service to the hive other than in fertilizing the queen. As soon as the flow of honey’ slackens and food begins to run short, they' are thrust out of doors by' the workers, to die of starvation and exposure.

In addition to the complications caused by’ the necessity' to keep each colony provided with a suitable queen, and no two queens, the beekeeper’s duties are rendered more difficult by' the danger of parasites and diseases. Foul-brood, a fungoid complaint which rots the brood-comb and kills the larvae, and if allowed to run its course eventually' exterminates the colony, is the beekeeper's worst enemy. Treatment is based on the principle of removing the bees from the infected hive. On account of the need for strict control of foulbrood and other diseases, and to ensure the honey' exported from the Dominion, or eaten in New Zealand homes, being of the highest quality, stringent legislation has been introduced from time to time to govern the keeping of bees. It is an offence to keep an unregistered apiary. It is an offence to keep bees in a box-hive, or. indeed, anywhere but in a proper frame-hive which enables the combs to be examined for any symptom of disease. It is an offence not to notify an apiary' inspector if any sort of outbreak of disease is noticed. Honey for export has to be granulated, and graded and passed by a Government inspector. It has to be packed according to specifications, and in stated quantities, ancl must be suitably labelled. Bees cannot be shifted casually about the countryside. but must first be certified free from disease by the local inspector. Nor can they’ be imported from abroad without special permission. Every' possible measure has been taken to keep New Zealand apiaries the best in the world, and her honey of the highest standard.