Conservation & Ecology
changing their working practices to embrace ecological concerns to help increase bee activity on their golf courses and grounds. This has come in the form of changing mowing regimes, creating wildflower areas and planting flowering plants and trees that attract bees for their pollen. Ed Ainsworth, Course Manager at Avro Golf Club in Stockport, is one such greenkeeper who has taken the extra step and, through his own dedication and learning, has become something of a ‘bee expert’ over the last five years. He has even been offering his services to fellow greenkeepers to help set up new bee colonies. Ed now advises at five golf clubs who have shown an interest in keeping bees or allowing the set up of bee colonies on their course. These include The Belfry, Cheadle Golf Club and Wilmslow Golf Club. Regular readers may remember that we
featured Ed’s work in issue 53, in which he explained how he was attracted to beekeeping in the first place. I caught up with Ed again at Wilmslow Golf Club where he has successfully set up a thriving bee colony out on the course. Course Manager, Steve Oultram, had been keen to get involved and take on the responsibility of a couple of hives on his course. In recent years, the club acquired additional land, which is currently being managed as a conservation area, with new hedges being planted and grass being managed on a cut and collect regime to introduce wildflower meadows to provide the ideal habitat for wildlife and bees. Steve has, for many years, been managing his course in a way to provide an essential wildlife corridor where both golfers and nature can enjoy the assets of this prime land asset collectively. As soon as Steve had decided he was going
to set up a new bee colony, he enlisted the help of Ed to undertake the work and two hives were purchased. Next was to source a supply of bees. It is important to understand the principles of beekeeping and being aware of the hard
work, commitment and responsibility required. Initial costs can run into hundreds of pounds; a typical cedarwood hive will cost in the region of £500 to build. A mature colony is usually housed in a
three or four tier hive - the ones at Wilmslow currently have two tiers - housing a brood box and honey box. The queen bee remains in the brood box and is prevented from straying into the honey box by a filter grid or queen excluder. This metal frame structure allows worker bees to pass, but prevents the queen from moving upward in the hive, ensuring that all upper hive levels are reserved exclusively for honey storage. The Wilmslow bees were collected from
local swarming bees. A typical beehive will accommodate between 60,000-80,000 bees, of which there is only one lone queen bee and around 400 drone bees; the rest are worker bees. Honey bees swarm because they are looking for a new site to form a new colony. It is a natural means of population increase and each swarm contains a queen bee and up to 20,000 worker bees The swarming season is from April to July, but the peak is from early May to mid June; swarms are not dangerous unless disturbed or aggravated. After surviving a cool winter, a bee colony can expand up to 50,000 worker bees in the warmer weather, living with a queen bee, which produces a “queen pheromone”. With thousands of bees living together, not all of them receive the queen’s pheromone signals - and so create a new queen.
The old queen and flying bees then leave their home to establish a new nest, however, before leaving, they gorge on honey, which means that, when they are swarming, they are usually in a semi-docile state. There are three ways to populate a new
hive; getting bees from a supplier (via the post), where you are sent a queen bee and up to 3,000 bees; catching a swarm of bees or splitting an established hive. With the swarming season in full swing, Ed was able to acquire a swarm of bees from
Cheadle Golf Club, which were then put into a nucleus box (a small six frame transport hive box) and re-housed into Wilmslow’s two new hives.
Since their implementation, Ed has been
instructing Steve and Tim Johnson, one of his assistant greenkeepers, on the rudiments of beekeeping, making sure they have a hands- on approach. The two new hives have been sited underneath the canopy of a large oak tree, providing the shade they will need during the summer. The site is very important as hives need to be in an area that offers them plenty of foraging material. Additional to this, the hives need to be in a place that protects them from the elements, particularly strong winds, should be kept away from the general public and, most importantly, the bees need access to water. Why water? Bees need water to dilute their own honey before they can eat it. During production, the bees drive off the water from nectar, whilst it is converted to honey by enzymes. The finished honey becomes stable when the water content falls below 20%, making the sugar concentration high enough to prevent fermentation by natural yeasts. At this concentration, however, the bees cannot eat the honey. The adult bees dilute the honey before they eat it and when preparing the brood food (a dilute mixture of honey or nectar and pollen). The worker bees also use water to help regulate the temperature of the hive by releasing water inside, which evaporates to cool the hive. A colony that struggles to find sufficient water will often not survive. The opportunity to see a bee colony close
up was a new experience for me. Ed proceeded to get us dressed with bee suits to protect us and, additionally, the bottoms of my trousers were gaffa taped. Once we had slipped on the gloves, we walked calmly towards the hives and, after a couple of puffs of smoke to calm down the colony, were able to open up one of the hives to reveal the active bees. The first job was to inspect and check that the bees were in good health. Both the
The new hives at Wilmslow have been sited under the canopy of a large oak
Transportation hive boxes PC JUNE/JULY 2014 I 113
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