I immediately thought of Victoria when I heard of this story. (V I know you love this kind of stuff). Who knew bees are so smart?
international By OLIVER MOORE
Toronto Globe and Mail
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Rodney Dillinger is looking for a swarm of 40,000 honeybees after a coup d'etat that left one of his hives half empty. In a storyline that could have been written by Shakespeare, some of Dillinger's bees are suspected of having become dissatisfied with their queen, tricking her into giving birth to a replacement and then sending her into exile.
The deposed queen left in the past few days, followed by about half the bees in the southwestern Nova Scotia colony. Dillinger, a retiree who has only four hives, wants his bees back and has asked police for help.
"The gentleman reported that he had known the last location of his honeybees, and when he went there they were gone," said Constable Brian Bonnell, of the Shelburne police detachment. Police issued a notice asking the public to keep an eye out. Dillinger said the swarm would look like a black cloud if in flight.
If perched, they might not look like bees at all.
"One person said he thought it was a bear, a small bear in a tree," he said. "Other people saw the swarm and they said it was pretty big."
Queen bees are typically overthrown by workers who feel they are not getting enough of what Tony Phillips, president of the Nova Scotia Beekeepers Association, calls "queen substance."
The rebels first trick her into laying eggs in a specially built "swarm cell."
These young are then fed the nutrients needed to create a queen bee, and not just a worker bee. Meanwhile, the old queen is progressively starved.
When she is slimmed down from her usual large physique and can fly again, she leaves the hive with her followers. She exits a colony now headed by one of the daughters she was tricked into birthing.
"Usually the first daughter-queen will go around and kill her sisters and become the colony head," Phillips explained.
He said the process leaves a younger and more vigorous queen in charge of the hive, but that may be small comfort to a beekeeper counting his lost revenue.
He said the bees may not go far, and can sometimes be retrieved, but these sorts of purges might also be considered simply part of the cost of doing business as a beekeeper.
Dillinger is worried that people who see his bees will be afraid of them, perhaps even attacking them with rocks, sticks or a garden hose.
But he said his bees are honeybees, not the Africanized killer bees that have caused so much alarm in the media.
He said his bees may "look ugly," but they are not dangerous and there is no chance of the kind of carnage portrayed in the campy 1978 movie "The Swarm."
In preparation for leaving the hive, they would have bulked up and be carrying stocks of honey, Phillips explained, leaving them mellow and gentle. In fact, he added, the circus stunt in which people wear the so-called beard of bees is typically done with bees in this state.
Dillinger said that if the bees are found, he will come to retrieve them, trying to shake the queen bee into a box and then waiting for the others to join her.
And how can he be sure they are his bees?
"Here, where I am, I'm the only beekeeper in Shelburne," he said, chuckling at the question. "So I'll know."
international By OLIVER MOORE
Toronto Globe and Mail
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Rodney Dillinger is looking for a swarm of 40,000 honeybees after a coup d'etat that left one of his hives half empty. In a storyline that could have been written by Shakespeare, some of Dillinger's bees are suspected of having become dissatisfied with their queen, tricking her into giving birth to a replacement and then sending her into exile.
The deposed queen left in the past few days, followed by about half the bees in the southwestern Nova Scotia colony. Dillinger, a retiree who has only four hives, wants his bees back and has asked police for help.
"The gentleman reported that he had known the last location of his honeybees, and when he went there they were gone," said Constable Brian Bonnell, of the Shelburne police detachment. Police issued a notice asking the public to keep an eye out. Dillinger said the swarm would look like a black cloud if in flight.
If perched, they might not look like bees at all.
"One person said he thought it was a bear, a small bear in a tree," he said. "Other people saw the swarm and they said it was pretty big."
Queen bees are typically overthrown by workers who feel they are not getting enough of what Tony Phillips, president of the Nova Scotia Beekeepers Association, calls "queen substance."
The rebels first trick her into laying eggs in a specially built "swarm cell."
These young are then fed the nutrients needed to create a queen bee, and not just a worker bee. Meanwhile, the old queen is progressively starved.
When she is slimmed down from her usual large physique and can fly again, she leaves the hive with her followers. She exits a colony now headed by one of the daughters she was tricked into birthing.
"Usually the first daughter-queen will go around and kill her sisters and become the colony head," Phillips explained.
He said the process leaves a younger and more vigorous queen in charge of the hive, but that may be small comfort to a beekeeper counting his lost revenue.
He said the bees may not go far, and can sometimes be retrieved, but these sorts of purges might also be considered simply part of the cost of doing business as a beekeeper.
Dillinger is worried that people who see his bees will be afraid of them, perhaps even attacking them with rocks, sticks or a garden hose.
But he said his bees are honeybees, not the Africanized killer bees that have caused so much alarm in the media.
He said his bees may "look ugly," but they are not dangerous and there is no chance of the kind of carnage portrayed in the campy 1978 movie "The Swarm."
In preparation for leaving the hive, they would have bulked up and be carrying stocks of honey, Phillips explained, leaving them mellow and gentle. In fact, he added, the circus stunt in which people wear the so-called beard of bees is typically done with bees in this state.
Dillinger said that if the bees are found, he will come to retrieve them, trying to shake the queen bee into a box and then waiting for the others to join her.
And how can he be sure they are his bees?
"Here, where I am, I'm the only beekeeper in Shelburne," he said, chuckling at the question. "So I'll know."
