Life Before Death

Martin of Aardvarchaeology asked me to write about what beekeepers give the bees to eat throughout the winter. A very good question, considering beekeeping is all about stealing the colony’s store of food that it worked so hard to accumulate.

Adult bees are all grown up: they don’t get bigger and they don’t renew tissues (to any great extent that I know of, anyway). All they need to survive is energy, and energy they get from carbohydrates - sugar. Honey contains (as I recently explained) glucose and fructose, which are derived from more complex saccharides present in nectar. The alert reader will now have surmised that honey is actually partially digested. The reader who has some knowledge of the chemistry of carbohydrates will also have figured out that the basic components of honey are also the basic components of table sugar - sucrose.

As it turns out, bees are perfectly happy to accept sucrose in return for honey. In the summer, it is common for beekeepers to give the bees table sugar, either dissolved or in its crystalline form to hives that are weak and need an extra boost. In the winter, all hives need sugar dissolved in water, as they can’t possibly gather enough water themselves to dissolve solid sugar and store it.

Practically, this means that sometime in late summer or early autumn, the beekeeper has to remove every bit of honey in each hive that can possibly be extracted. Immediately after this, one has to start giving the bees their supply of winter fodder, or the hives will start starving. There are a few ways this can be done. I give my bees their entire supply in one go, utilising a method that essentially involves a plastic bag in a box on top of the hive, filled with straw for the bees to walk on (otherwise they would drown in sugar!) and a column of air on the side so the bees can get into the box. The bag is filled with approximately 21 kilos of dissolved sugar. This is a lot more than some beekeepers give their bees. The advantage of giving the bees a lot of sugar is that there’s no risk that they’ll starve in the spring. On the other hand, if spring comes and the colony has already died, you’ll have wasted a lot of sugar. Many beekeepers therefore give the bees less sugar in the autumn and check in on them early in the spring and give them extra food then.

For ten years now my dad and I have had four hives, which has meant that simply buying table sugar and making the winter fodder ourselves has been entirely manageable. This year, we decided to drastically expand our apiary and are now the proud owners of ten hives. It turned out that making our own winter fodder was NOT as manageable anymore. Next year, if we still have that many hives, we will most likely be buying already prepared winter fodder by the bucket. Of course, this means no more fun comments from random people as we buy huge amounts of sugar from department stores…

So what do the bees DO all winter? Well, mostly, they sit around and try to keep warm. Nature documentaries are rife with the image of male emperor penguins shuffling around in winter storms, well, bees do essentially the same thing. The queen stays in the middle of the colony, and the worker bees take turns at being on the outside of the winter cluster. The drones are ostracised in the autumn and forbidden to enter the hive at all, and hence die from cold and starvation. Some beekeepers try to isolate their hives and help the bees keep warm, but most research seems to say that the bees really don’t care at all. Scandinavian stock is very adept at keeping the temperature up inside the cluster and the most important thing a beekeeper should do is make sure there’s adequate ventilation, to prevent stagnant air and condensation (which leads to mould), and obviously to prevent asphyxia.

On a final note, it’s interesting to note that bees actually seem to winter better on a pure sucrose solution than on honey. Honey contains various indigestible ingredients and given that bees can’t fly out into the cold air to relieve themselves, they end up having to store those contaminations all the way through the cold season. A common winter problem is therefore dysentery; the bees relieving themselves inside the hive. This can kill a colony if it gets bad. But pure sugar solutions, free from these indigestible ingredients, vastly alleviates this problem.

Please note that all this is about Swedish bees and Swedish beekeeping. Certain sources (*coughwikipediacough*) seem to indicate that the situation may be different in other parts of the world.

bees, apis mellifera, honey, sugar, beekeeping

NEFA foundation has published an Al Qaeda speech in which the Vilks caricature is mentioned. The pertinent section is this:

Others who had previously claimed to be neutral also have attacked the Muslims. An excellent example of this is the degenerate crusader country of Sweden, where they published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed portrayed as a dog… We are witnessing every single villain attacking us—from the worshippers of the cross all the way to the worshippers of the cows—we are witnessing our blood and honor being taken away. We are being stabbed in the back every time we try to stand up tall and fight to regain the price of our ancestors. We say now, to all of you—slaves of the cross and material possessions—that we are a nation blessed by Islam. You will learn how to kneel down in humiliation. You will learn how to officially apologize for your crime against our Prophet Mohammed. We know how best to force you to back down and apologize for your actions. We reserve the right to punish those who committed the crime. If you do not apologize, then your industrial giants will be attacked. Companies such as Ericsson, Scandia, Volvo, Ikea, Electrolux, and others will be legitimate targets. You have been warned… [Additionally], on this day forward, we call for the killing of the cartoon artist Lars who committed these despicable acts against our Prophet Mohammed. We announce a reward of $100,000 for anyone who kills that infidel criminal. The reward shall be $150,000 for anyone who beheads him as well. We also will give $50,000 to anyone who kills the chief editor of that newspaper. O’ Muslims, you shall seek this reward, ask for forgiveness, and kill these two infidels…

Read the full transcript here (pdf).

They claim to be under attack because someone drew a cartoon. And the retaliation is murder, terrorism. I really don’t know what to say. What’s wrong with these people?

mohammad caricature, al qaeda, terrorism, islam, lars vilks, sweden

Anyone who follows Pharyngula will know about the movie Expelled (loathe as I am to link to them and thus increase google ranks, the page is actually really funny in a morbid sort of way). Now, New York Times reports on the baffling dishonesty of the makers: Scientists Feel Miscast in Film on Life’s Origin. The first few paragraphs explains the issue pretty neatly.

A few months ago, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins received an e-mail message from a producer at Rampant Films inviting him to be interviewed for a documentary called “Crossroads.”

The film, with Ben Stein, the actor, economist and freelance columnist, as its host, is described on Rampant’s Web site as an examination of the intersection of science and religion. Dr. Dawkins was an obvious choice. An eminent scientist who teaches at Oxford University in England, he is also an outspoken atheist who has repeatedly likened religious faith to a mental defect.

But now, Dr. Dawkins and other scientists who agreed to be interviewed say they are surprised — and in some cases, angered — to find themselves not in “Crossroads” but in a film with a new name and one that makes the case for intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism. The film, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” also has a different producer, Premise Media.

An especially lovely part of the article is this:

There is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the complexity and diversity of life on earth. And while individual scientists may embrace religious faith, the scientific enterprise looks to nature to answer questions about nature.

This isn’t a balance quote, it’s directly from the author of the article. No pandering to religious sensibilities here!

evolution, creationism, expelled, dawkins

I’ve now joined Mojoey’s Atheist Blogroll. There should be a marquee at the bottom of the right sidebar scrolling some 400 atheist blogs, but it seems like it’s having some problems at the moment. Hopefully it’s sorted soon!

blogging, blogroll, atheism

Tangled Bank #89 up at Aardvarchaeology now. I haven’t had time to look through all of it but so far I really liked the entry about dogs and wolves.

Found this through Slashdot: USNews.com reports that Germs Taken to Space Come Back Deadlier.

“Wherever humans go, microbes go, you can’t sterilize humans. Wherever we go, under the oceans or orbiting the earth, the microbes go with us, and it’s important that we understand … how they’re going to change,” explained Cheryl Nickerson, an associate professor at the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at Arizona State University.

Personally I can’t get over the feeling that what really happened was that some biologists went, “Hey, I wonder what happens if we put some bacteria in a spaceship!” It’s always possible to retrospectively invent a perfect justification for why a specific experiment was useful to us, but really, I think biologists just like to poke at things and see what happens.

biology, bacteria, space flight, salmonella

I have a guest post on Aardvarchaeology. It’s about bees! Go read it, the rest of this post will make more sense then.

Above, one of “my” bees can be seen diligently working on what I think is a Centaurea phrygia. The picture was taken sometime mid-summer, after the rapeseed bloom and before the heather. The Centaureas seemed to be popular with the bees, as were white clover (Trifolium repens) and the entirety of the rose garden. As a beekeeper you learn to pay attention to where the bees are going, and eventually you learn why they go where they go - roses don’t yield much nectar, but they are excellent pollen sources. And since we built the rose garden, we have definitely seen an increase in stored pollen in our hives, which should mean they winter better as they can start a new brood season earlier in the spring.

In reference to my post on Aardvarchaeology, we did end up getting heather honey after all. About 15 kiloes of it remained firmly stuck to honeycombs after extraction, and many combs broke from the pressure of the honey that wouldn’t unstick (honey is extracted from combs by putting them in a kind of centrifuge).

But it’s not all bad: Heather has a special taste that many people seem to favour. This means our autumn batch tastes subtly different from the honey extracted earlier this summer, which makes it more interesting to sell. It’s my experience that people are more keen on buying something if there are two versions and they like one better than the other. Not that I’m in this for profit, of course …

Now the beekeeping season is pretty much over, as far as this part of Sweden is concerned. What remains is removing the yearly treatment of varroa, and then the hives are closed for the winter. Sometime early in the spring, we take a quick peek inside to see that the colonies aren’t starving, but beyond that, no real beekeeping is done until, say, May.

Thankfully, talking about bees is an activity that can go on all year round!

bees, apis mellifera, honey, pollen, beekeeping, heather

In the future, instead of having to go through the hassle of telling you, dear reader, if a link is in Swedish or English, I shall adopt a brilliant colour-coding scheme instead.

From now on (and retroactively if I’m really bored some night), links to Swedish-language sites will look like this, whereas English links look like this. (Swedish sidebar links are marked with an (S).)

I really hope I have no colour-blind readers.

I participate in my first carnival, join Planet Atheism and make Pharyngula’s mile-long blogroll (look for me among the “People of Reason”), and what happens? I get sick and don’t post anything at all for a week.

I’ve had plenty of ideas and inspiration and would like to imagine that I’m now about to go off in a frenzy of blogging about all sorts of erudite topics. Problem is I seem to have had most of my ideas while in a fever, and now I can’t remember them.

While I gather my thoughts, those of you who read Swedish should hop on over to Nordic Dervish and read his posts on the seminar about freedom of speech with Lars Vilks that happened last week. I had planned on going, but it didn’t seem like a good idea seeing as I was having trouble staying upright at the time. Apparently, some muslims turned up to tell the people present that “we love the prophet more than our parents, we love the prophet more than our wives, we love the prophet more than our children and what would you say if I called you a dog?” Given how unlikely Swedes are to suffer from religion-induced cynophobia, I doubt the response from the audience was particularly understanding of their point. The muslims proceeded to vaguely threaten the artist in arabic. If you don’t understand Swedish you can still see some pictures from the seminar here.

ETA: Apparently FOX reported from the seminar. I’m doubtful that everything in the report is true, but I guess it’s accurate enough.

Also, check out Bob - he’s not as scary as the mohawk will have you think. He’s been writing some good stuff about alternative sexualities clashing with churches recently. I have this devious plan that perhaps more traffic will make him blog more often.

In other news, I just discovered that Panda’s Thumb has a hot new layout (which for all I know may be a few weeks old, as I can’t remember when I last visited them) with a bee in it! This makes me happy.

lars vilks, freedom of speech, illness

So what was that about honey again?

Yesterday I spent some five hours at a small event at the local mall talking about bees and selling honey. The municipal government wants to encourage environmental thinking in its citizens and apparently, bees do that. So there I was, with a couple of associates, a small demonstration hive with live bees, various merchandise and a few different kinds of honey.

Now, when you’re participating in events like this, present in some sort of expert capacity and informing people about something you have plenty of experience with, there’s a rule that says that a certain portion of your audience know more about your own bees and honey than you do. And they love to tell you about it. This wouldn’t be too difficult to deal with if it wasn’t for the fact that some of them consistently, every year, accuse us beekeepers of putting table sugar in our honey.

One particularly grumpy man pointed his hand at our honey jars and said, “That one contains 10 % sugar cubes, that one contains 50 % sugar cubes, that one contains 90 % sugar cubes.” (He seemed to judge them by runniness, where the newly extracted, uncrystallized honey was the least tampered with; the solid, fragrant linden honey was the biggest villain; and the pale gold, creamy summer honey was somewhere in the middle.) When we unanimously and rather tersely stated that no, we don’t put any fracking sugar in our fracking honey because that would be illegal, he ignored us and blurted, “Oh yes, I know, I bought this jar of honey and two days later there were sugar lumps in it!”

Uh-huh, that’s conclusive evidence, that is.

This is what I told those who actually listened to us when they asked if the honey was “real”: Honey contains two kinds of sugar, glucose and fructose. How much of each depends on which flowers the bees have gathered nectar from. Fructose will always remain fluid, whereas glucose, once the honey is extracted from the hive, eventually crystallizes. How quickly this happens and how hard the honey gets depends on the relative proportions of the two sugars, as well as temperature and other factors. For example, rapeseed honey has a notoriously high glucose content and sometimes crystallizes in the hive before extraction - pure, it can get so hard you have to carve it out of the jar with a knife.

If you leave the honey unattended between extraction and crystallization, the glucose will form large, lumpy crystals at the bottom of a solution of fructose. The honey is essentially inedible at this point, at least it is considered such in Sweden. Which is why Swedish beekeepers never sell uncrystallized honey, but always take care to make sure the honey crystallizes evenly, by stirring or other methods. We desire fully crystallized honey that is completely free from crystals so large that they can actually be felt on the tongue - if the honey feels like sand or gravel on the tongue it’s sub-par.

Now, the area I live in has a very high proportion of immigrants. I haven’t seen any figures for a long time but it’s well over 50%. Most of them are from the middle east, a fair few from south america and a minority from africa and far east. In many of these parts of the world, there are several species of plants that yield honey with such a high fructose content that it never crystallizes (acacia and orange being the most common ones). Hence many of these people are used to honey always being clear and runny, and I suspect get rather suspicious when they see our opaque and creamy-to-solid honey. We have also heard anecdotes from various countries about how common it is for beekeepers to cheat and either mix sugar in their extracted honey, or give the bees sugar and then extract that from the hive.

In Sweden, doing something like that would be completely unthinkable. A beekeeper caught cheating in such a way would be immediately ostracised, if not lynched. We may not be that many, but we are extremely proud of our all-natural product and the fact that it isn’t necessary to add or do anything to it to improve the taste or increase shelf-life. (At the blogmeet earlier this week I was asked if we pasteurise our honey. I was really confused - firstly I don’t understand why it would be needed, and secondly heating the honey ruins it!)

honey, honeybees, beekeeping