Hi I’m Hayley and welcome to bee love!
As Wrapped in Newspaper’s resident bee enthusiast I am tasked with sharing some insights into the fascinating world of bees. In my posts I record my observations of the everyday ‘toing and froing’ of bees and give them a voice to raise awareness of the issues surrounding their current struggles.
With the considerable loss of bee habitat over the last century, along with the industrialization of agricultural practices (which lead to a rise in monoculture planting and the use of pesticide reliant practices) bees are suffering.
My aim with this blog is to understand the obstacles they face and suggest ways we can support their resilience. I hope that by learning a little bit about bee life, you too will bee inspired to find some love for the bees!
A bit about me …
My interest in bees began after learning about the shocking drop in bee populations all over the world. To find out more I took a beginner’s course in beekeeping run by the London Beekeeper’s Association. On the course they warned us of the danger of becoming entirely captivated by the honeybee and its fascinating ways. Having nurtured a healthy obsession with the life of bees for a while now, I can confirm that yes, for me that danger was oh so real!
As part of the course, a group of us worked with honeybee colonies in a London park under supervision from an experienced LBKA mentor. This involved hive inspections, observing and tending to the bees throughout the year to keep the bees healthy, happy and producing honey. After witnessing an afternoon of ‘queen squishing’ at an apiary one Sunday, I soon became disheartened by the conventional approach to keeping bees. I realised that the practice wasn’t good for the bees (or me) and I started to question whether ‘keeping’ bees is really what is needed at this critical time? With guidance from The Natural Beekeeping Trust and many other wonderful bee folk along the way, I discovered my path towards becoming a ‘bee-guardian’ rather than ‘bee-keeper’.
Wooden frames within a conventional national hive covered with honeybees. To the left of the photo you can see some of the comb being filled with honey.
Being around honeybees unearthed something powerful for me. I am captured by their ways and the time I share with them is always meditative, revealing and inspiring. Following those first enlightening hive visits, I’ve been on a bit of a ‘bee-quest’ to find out more about our pollinating allies; identifying them as they pass by, talking to bee folk, reading and going to lectures etc. with the aim to learn ways that we might support them and learn from them.
This is a photo I took of our now very rare British Black honeybee [Apis mellifera mellifera] spotted during a trip to the beautiful Isle of Colonsay in the Inner Hebrides. The blob of orange on her hind legs is pollen she has collected in her pollen baskets to take back with her to the hive. Honeybees are the folk that live in hives, are looked after by beekeepers and produce all of the honey we eat.
My quest lead me to Schumacher College to study sustainable horticulture where I learnt about bee friendly alternatives to oil and pesticide dependent, monoculture farming. I discovered the importance of ecologically responsible food production and all around me saw the positive impact it had on the quality of the produce, the health and stability of the soil, on biodiversity and the happiness of the bee!
This is a White Tailed Bumblebee [Bombus Lucorum] spotted in mid-flight, busy flitting merrily from flower to flower. Bumblebees are the fluffier variety who live wild in nests and produce only a small amount of honey for their own consumption. There are also many species of Bumblebee and Solitary bee and if you’re interested in finding out more the Bumblebee Conservation Trust has a great summary of bee types on their website.
My ongoing bee quest that I share in my blog posts has been an ecological awakening and has lead me to question the relationship we humans have with our natural world. I have learnt that what is good for the bee is also good for us. We are interconnected with this earth and we shouldn’t see ourselves as separate from these small, beautifully unobtrusive creatures. If they are in trouble, we are certainly in trouble!
The bees lead me on a beautiful journey out of an office in London to the magical Devon landscape where I co-founded the Beloved Sanctuary for pollinators on the Dartington Estate. The sanctuary aims to support the resilience of our pollinating allies by providing the optimum environment for them to thrive in. It provides a stronghold where guests can nurture my relationship with bees and better understand the unique and important role they play in our world. I believe that learning from the bees can help guide us away from our dangerously objective view of our earth.
The Beloved Sanctuary for the wild, the invisible and the small on the Dartington Estate, Devon
Here are links to my posts … happy bee-reading : )
Bees welcome!
Dandelions & Buzzing Blossom
Extra-floral activity
Honey … discuss
How to find bee-friendly honey
Notes from a bee stalker in February
Reflections on natural growing in the company on bees
Sitting by a winter honeysuckle
Spread bee love, not pesticides
The bees of Eden
The Holly & the Ivy
Welcoming honeybees; a true, wild democracy
Winter Bumblebees?
Hi, what is your position on Entomophagy? I studied it as a thesis project for an architecture course. The UN is suggesting breeding bees as a food source for humans. Are there certain breeds which are thriving more than others? Otherwise it seems like the worst thing imaginable!
Breeding bees for us to eat sounds a bit crazy given the many problems bees currently face. Why would we start eating something that is so important to our own survival on the planet … especially when that something is struggling to survive.
I definitely don’t think we should encourage an industry of mass production of bees being shipped all over the place! Maybe we need to address the shortfalls of our existing methods of food production before creating more problematic methods?
A number of European countries do already breed millions of bumblebee nests each year in factories. The nests are sold to farmers all over the world to pollinate tomatoes. Unfortunately a lot of these bees escape and cause all sorts of problems for the local ecology of wherever they end up … in some cases, this has lead to the complete loss of native species through strange hybridised mating! Not to mention the huge carbon footprint involved in shipping bees around the world … and the exploitation … farmers are advised to set fire to the nests once the bees have performed their pollination duties.
Theres a brilliant chapter about the issues around bumble bee breeding in Dave Goulson’s book, ‘A Sting in the Tale’ if you’re interested in finding out more …
I will take a look at that, it sounds quite interesting.
My conclusion of entomology was that it’s only a matter of time. It seemed only countries with a predominantly christian faith don’t eat insects as a source of food (some passage in the bible but I won’t talk about religion it too big a subject!). I liken the idea of eating bees to the comments Princess Ann made about eating horses that regulation and financial incentive encourages greater welfare and something that may have otherwise been neglected receives decent treatment and care.
The way I see it also because the resources needed to grow a kilo of grasshoppers is less than 1% of that of meat we can be less intensive with the need for resources for feeding and watering cattle meaning more land can be turned over for vegetables or back to a wild state which obviously helps.
A lot of these issues go hand in hand, its about making lots of little changes, but I guess you probably know that.
Take a look at this youtube clip its quite interesting.
Thanks Hayley, I bloody love bees now. Oh man, I love bees
Honey Blossom : )
Here is my rap about bees:
I like bees the most,
They call me the feeder,
I Build them a house in a tree,
Run around it like a little monkey leader,
Play host say hey hi nice to meet ya,
Then I greet the queen,
Make her a pizza and bake a pie,
Just to please her
I know what you mean about the captivating powers of bees. Since we did a bee keeping course I know notice them everywhere. Tiny bees, giant bees… I never did before.