When WIll This Winter Come?

Last year we had three winters for the price of one in northern England.  After cold weather in January and through into the middle of February we thought we were out of the woods with very fine weather in the second half of the month.  One of my hives did as well (the strongest one) and started brood rearing with wild abandon.  Then in the last week of February we were visited by a wet cold blast (dubbed by the media as The Beast from the East) which saw unusually low temperatures, high winds and snow.  Again this was followed by a very fine period and it was felt spring had sprung for a second time, before another arctic blast at the end of March with more snow and low temperatures, although this only lasted a few days this time.

-9C (16F)

These false starts really hammered one of my hives.  The previous year they’d been the busiest, well behaved colony and I was looking forward to getting into them.  On first inspection it was obvious something wasn’t right.  They’d survived, but it had been a difficult winter for them.  The bottom board was full of dead bees and larvae.  I think that they’d been caught out during ‘The Beast’ believing spring was here only to be knocked back and not being able to keep on top of housekeeping.  The later arctic blast would normally have been a walk in the park, but because of their poor state it added further to their woes.  First inspection in April and I had a hive full of dead bees – what were alive covered a couple of frames.  They didn’t really recover until the end of the season when I could re-queen them, so although it was one of the best summers (weather-wise) in a long time, Hive 1 were playing catch-up throughout.

I’m writing this in mid-January and we’re still waiting for winter here. Daffodils are starting to break cover and my Rhododendrons are starting to show signs of buds - and the bees are flying (see the video). It would be foolish to think it won’t come, but sometimes we just don’t get those cold/wet/windy winters we're supposed to. It's rare, but it does happen. This year I can't remember two mornings in a row when temperatures were below freezing - 0C (32F). The effect that would have on my bees would be potentially catastrophic - they'll use up all their stores before nature kicks in to provide and I could start losing hives. Or, like last year, the bees start to think spring is on its way and start brood rearing, only for an arctic blast to come long late doors and kick them in the butt.

As an experiment, I’ve decided to feed Hive 1 with Candipolline Gold – a mixture of candy and pollen.  At the beginning of March they’ll be brood rearing in any case, but this should see them able to get through any late blasts, or keep them topped up with food if they’re low due to mild weather.  Hive 2 is now my strongest colony, so I’ll see what effect no Candipolline has on them.  They’ve proved far hardier a colony, but at the expense of being quite bad tempered at times, but prolific honey producers.  So we’ll see.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

Harry isn’t bothered by arctic blasts.  It snows, then he plays in it for a couple of hours, and then that’s enough for him until next year.  Just as all beekeeping is local, I think the same can be said for autism to a lesser degree.  Harry likes being indoors where it’s warm – but I know plenty of kids with autism who will happily spend the day outside in the cold.

This time I’m struggling to see what beekeeping can teach me about autism.  Harry’s not a twin (as much as I’d like him to have a sibling) so I can’t experiment with different levels of nourishment – but then I wouldn’t anyway – he’s my son and this isn’t some terrible eugenics research from the 1940s.  I guess it shows that I’m open to trying new things and seeing how they go and taking the occasional risk.  Harry’s always at the front of my priorities and the number one thing that I care about in the world, but it’s a good idea to shake it up a little bit every now and then and throw the occasional dice.  I just need to find his Candipolline.

Hairy Bees (Not Hairy Knees)

I don’t have much in the way of hair. In my 20s and even into my 30s, I’d spend a stupid amount of time fashioning my hair – and money. But it became evident that it was retreating and then one day at the barbershop it got a bit shorter than I would normally have it and it didn’t look too bad. And then the next time I went the full hog and shaved. For a long time I paid someone to shave my head – which is a bit silly because there’s no skill involved and you can save money by doing it yourself. Now I sometimes treat myself to a haircut (a lovely Romanian lady called Claudia) but usually I do it myself. But I say I have no hair – that’s not quite true. I have little hair on the top of my head, but the less it grows up there, the more seems to sprout in other parts of my body. Especially those places where hair has never grown before. I don’t understand the logic of hair in ears, but I’m very good at growing it. My back is another place?? And in the past year I’ve successfully grown a beard – something I failed to do any time before my 40s.

(c) neurotypicalbeekeeper

Autistic people have sensory issues which make having a haircut something like torture – like being pricked by a pin millions of times and all the time you have to remain still. But people need haircuts – or at least most do. At first Harry would have to be held down whilst the barber did his/her job. It was traumatic for everyone involved. Some barbers specialise in difficult children, and sure enough they were better, but no one had the patience/skill/commitment to be able to handle Harry. Until we met Susan. Susan is a men’s hairdresser who happens to have a son of her own who is on the spectrum. She has the patience of a saint and knows how to avoid (which is the real skill) pushing the wrong buttons. After three years, we’ve finally reached the stage in which Harry will sit still in the chair and let Susan do her stuff, even moving his head to one side or the other when asked. Susan is incredibly good at her job and I love her for it. She doesn’t understand, I’m sure, but just something like this makes a massive difference for autism parents.

 

Bees are quite hairy as well, and lose their hair as time goes on. The great “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” that is nature means that bees go from flower to flower to flower and pollen gets attached to the bee’s hairs and then is passed to the next flower. How did that happen? Was evolution aiming for that, or is this just a step on the road to something else? And it didn’t happen overnight, so how did evolution encourage bees to grow hairs, before the pollen was being passed by hair? The truth is probably the pollen stuck to their skin and then hairs was just an improvement, but who knows. But just like humans, bees go bald. I don’t know if their hair falls out because of age, or because of the constant rubbing on flowers and within the hive.

 

Anyway, the result is a very bald bee, who stands out because she’ll be quite shiny. It looks odd. But then, maybe so do I with my own shiny bald head. But the one thing I don’t know is, if as the bee goes bald, does their hair start growing more on other parts of their body?

Drugs and More Drugs

Like most people, pharmaceuticals play a regular part of my life.  I only take the odd pain killer, but my bees generally take two treatments for Varroa Destructor every year – one in the summer and another in winter.  Traditionally the winter treatment is between Christmas and New Year although more and more beekeepers are coming to believe that it should be done earlier than this – those treatments that require there to be the smallest amount of sealed brood should possibly be carried earlier in December as there is evidence that the queen starts to increase laying in December and sealed brood levels have already started to increase by the end of the month.

 

(C) National Bee Unit

I treated my bees on Boxing Day, 26 December.  And I used the oxalic acid trickling method – so already I’m not following my own advice as the method requires the least amount of sealed brood to be successful.  But life got in the way.  Anyways, opening a bee hive on Boxing Day is totally unnatural and the bees know it.  The odd bee was flying (it was about 10C – 50F) but the bees are fully aware of what time of the year it is and they know no good news comes from some big hairy beekeeper opening them up then either.  So my good old bees showed me their displeasure – who has ever heard of a person getting stung by a bee on 26 December?  Actually, it wasn’t as bad as last year (the temperament of my bees deserves its own blog) when I had to retreat and give it up as a bad job, but it still wasn’t a fun job.  Job done, I put on some fondant and barring any emergency that should be the last time I need to go in the hive until spring – here in Northern England from the end of March, but more usually, early April.

 

Boxing Day Flying Bees

Harry has his own relationship with the pharmaceutical industry.  It is quite typical for children with autism to have problems with sleeping and when Harry was about five years old it was normal for him to get by on four hours sleep a night.  Which meant that everybody in the house was getting by on four hours sleep a night.  It was upsetting to see him so tired and be trying to sleep, but it just not happening.  So along came Melatonin (after considerable medical consultation – quite rightly, they don’t make it easy) and sure enough he quickly established a routine.  The human body can build up a tolerance to Melatonin so it should be given in the smallest quantity, but what that is is largely left to the parent/carer.  Harry’s amount is miniscule and at the most he only has it five times a week (and during school holidays it may only be two or three times a week).  That is our choice.  Other parents take a more liberal approach – I’ve encountered parents who freely admit to administering ten times the amount we give Harry and every day of the week regardless.  I don’t judge – I just count blessings.

 

Happy New Year.

Fibonacci or Maybe It's Just Really Random?

A bee colony is headed by a queen who near the beginning of her life mated with a number of male drones.  The spermatozoa are then stored by the queen and she uses it throughout her lifespan to fertilise eggs.  She has the ability to decide which sperm (from which drone) to use to fertilise the egg, or not fertilize it at all.  Unfertilized eggs grow into drones – a male clone of the queen – who will then hopefully go out of the hive and mate with other newly hatched queens and pass on her genetics to that hive.  If ever I believed that there was someone/thing behind all this and ultimately in control – some God type figure – it is in the next bit.  These drone bees have no father (because they’re born from an unfertilised egg) although they do have a mother (the queen that laid the egg).  That mother queen has two parents (because it’s female) – a drone and a queen – and the next generation will be three great grandparents (two queens and one drone), and the next (great great grandparents) will be five individuals – three queens and two drones.  So on and so forth.  So the actual number of individual bees in each generation is this: 1 (the current male drone bee); 1 (queen); 2 (drone, queen); 3 (queen, queen, drone); 5 (drone, queen, drone, queen, queen); 8 (queen, drone, queen, queen, drone, queen, drone, queen).  The sequence being 1,1,2,3,5,8 and on and on and on.  The sum of the two lower numbers always make up the next number in the sequence.  In maths this sequence is named after its discoverer, Fibonacci, and can be found

throughout nature such as in the shape of the leaves on a stem or the arrangements of a pinecone, to the curves seen in shells or the shape of a hurricane.  This seems to be some type of signature of life on Earth – and has been used as an argument for the existence of God (although I don’t know which one) as it points towards chaos not being as chaotic as you would think.

Harry, my wife and I spent some time over Christmas with my sister and her family.  My niece was there with her partner, who had brought his brother along – someone I (nor Harry) had ever met before.  I don’t know if he was pre-briefed on Harry but this guy (we’ll call him Josh) was great with him.  Harry was asking about his tattoos, pulling his beard, jumping on his lap.  Harry’s nine years old – getting a bit too big for this type of play, but Josh took it on the chin.  It was Christmas after all and Harry was the only child in the room.  Well done, Josh.  It’s appreciated.  You should think about having kids of your own – you’re a natural.  It’s good for Harry to meet new people – and play with them.

But it made me think – that’s not Fibonacci is it?  This doesn’t adhere to nature’s code.  My niece meets a guy, this guy has a brother, this brother gets on really well with Harry.  Doesn’t that say that this random meeting of people and whether we get on or not, has all to do with chaos and nothing to do with formulae?  Measuring and classifying Harry’s autism is something I’ve been asked to do in the past: “Just how autistic is Harry?”  It’s impossible to say with such a range of characteristics, but it doesn’t matter to us – the people he loves or the new people he meets.  He generally makes a good impression with those people who take the time to interact with him, but not always – some people he just doesn’t like.  No matter how hard they try.  All this chaos and at the end of it we have a nine year old boy with autism, who had a great Christmas, played with some new people and brought joy and love into lots of peoples’ lives.

 

Go figure that out Fibonacci (Fibonacci died some time in the 13th century).

Merry Christmas

Occasionally my life doesn’t involve bees or autism.  It’s good for everyone involved – we all get a break from one another and then come back more loving and committed than we were before.

‘Tis the season and all that.  A few years ago I went drinking during the festive season with people from work.  I don’t drink very often, but Christmas is probably the one time I do let rip.  I took the train home and when I got to my stop I decided to walk to a take-away and get some food.  It’s not busy (it’s not very late – I’m a lightweight) but there are a couple of teenage girls in there, drunk and talking loudly to each other.  One has just split up with her boyfriend and the other is telling her that she’ll do a lot better without him.  The friend grows quiet, maybe tired after giving the newly single buddy all this support.  She’s talking about going to London and getting a job, being famous and becoming a millionaire.  The supportive friend is now silent.  And then the aspiring millionaire starts talking about “now her modelling career is taking off” and that seems to be the last straw for the friend -

Blaydon Carpets

“Joanne, give it a rest will you.  You’re the face of Blaydon Carpets, not f****** Kate Moss”.  I couldn’t hold in my amusement and start laughing.  At first they just look at me, but then they start shouting and swearing at me, making threats.  I continue to laugh – too drunk to realise it could get nasty.  After a minute or so the guy who runs the place throws the two out – without whatever food they were waiting to be served.  I’m still laughing when I get my chips and leave.  I can see the two down the road – fortunately walking in the opposite direction in which I need to go.  I’ve had ten minutes to eat my chips and stop laughing by the time I get home.  Only it’s not ten minutes, because when I get to the street where I live I start to feel the Christmas spirit, so decide to take photos of all my neighbours’ Christmas lights.  I get home, go to bed.  The next morning I awake and look at my phone, just to see about 20 pictures I’ve taken, all with my thumb over the lens.

So if you’re an autism parent what do you take from this?  Well, take a break once in a while.  Do something typical people do.  Go get drunk, go to the cinema, take the wife for lunch.  You’ll feel better for it – we’re not saints.  And if you’re a beekeeper – don’t mess with bees after you’ve had a drink.  They’ll likely kick your butt.

Merry Christmas.

Bananas

A few years ago I saw a Youtube video which showed the correct way to open a banana.  It’s fair to say that it wasn’t exactly a life-affirming event, but it did shave a few seconds off the time it takes – those seconds add up and who knows, when I’m on my deathbed I might get to do that one extra thing because of all the banana time I’ve saved.  I eat a lot of bananas – I love bananas.  So much so, that when my wife bought a dehydrator so as to preserve summer berries to be used over the winter, when she was looking what else to dehydrate she came across bananas, their high content of potassium and how this can be concentrated through dehydration.  Potassium makes for great fertilizer and my banana skins are now being put to a better use than ending up in a landfill.

Bananas came up again this week when I read about a beekeeping myth that feeding bananas to your bees will aid them in overcoming any possible disease or parasite they encounter over the winter months: “…potassium in bananas will help the bees flex their wings, and the gases released from ripe bananas will kill pathogenic spores. A similar posting on Facebook claims bananas will kill Nosema, varroa, and chalkbrood, and a link on Twitter claims your bees will live up to nine times longer on a winter diet of bananas.”  Rusty, the blog author, went on to debunk the myth.  I’d never heard it before, but it never surprises me what some people, sometimes beekeepers for many decades, can believe the oddest theories.  Don’t get me started on lay lines.  The subject came up again when The Bush Bee Man did a Q+A a few days ago - he hadn't heard about bananas either (or rather using them on bees), so it's not just me.

I think the problem is that if we don’t understand something, we think up ever fanciful explanations to help the human mind understand why/how something is happening.  It’s the same with autism.  I’ve heard multiple theories as to the causes of autism (vaccines being the famous one) and multiple hypotheses as to how autism can be cured, or the symptoms of the condition reduced (from gluten free diets, to simply beating the autism out of them).  The truth is, if we care enough, we cling onto hope that someday an answer will be found and our children will turn neurotypical overnight.  Lorenzo’s parent found their oil, after all.

I’m all for research, and I know as many researchers in the field melittology as I do autism.  I’m happy to listen to your theories, but I won’t be buying a surfeit of bananas any time soon.    

Unwanted Visitors

We’re selling the house.  Or I should say, we’re trying to sell the house – it’s been on the market for two years.  There are regular viewings and a number of offers have been made, but we haven’t got the price we’re asking for.  We’re not in a hurry.  I think the main issue is that it’s an unusual house – we like quirky and odd, but most people don’t.  They see it and like the idea and then go and buy a characterless box on a new-build estate.  There are regular viewings and Harry has gotten used to seeing people he doesn’t know traipsing through his kingdom.  There is the occasional problem when people bring their kids with them and naturally they look at his toys (read: dinosaurs) or make a comment about a poster on the wall.  Or one time when they were wearing a t-shirt that he liked and he stared at them none-stop for 30 minutes.  We love him dearly, but he’s no salesman.

It made me think about how the bees deal with visitors to their hives.  It’s been a bad year for wasps.  Or a good year for them, but a bad year for anyone who doesn’t like wasps.  Even at the beginning of the year wasps were in the hive – I’d pull off the super and there’d be at least a couple in there somewhere, feasting on nectar.  There’d be some argy bargy at the entrance of the hive, but once inside the wasps would be left alone – it being too much hassle for the bees to through them out.  A strong hive can defend itself, but a strong hive doesn’t need to go to war to conserve the resources a couple of wasps will finch off them. 

But not all hives are strong – sometimes purposely.  Beekeepers use mini-nucs to raise new queens.  This is a small hive, probably made up of just a couple of hundred bees (usually a cup full) that are used to tend to a queen cell.  The benefit is that fewer resources are taken away from the hive, but the downside is they can’t really defend themselves.  This year my mini-nuc was a disaster.  Wasps quickly found its location, although I made their life as difficult as I could the mini-nuc couldn’t defend itself – its reserves were plundered and the bees were left with nothing.  The queen hatched, but the colony absconded – it wouldn’t have lasted long on its own, but it thought its chances better than staying put.

After the initial argy bargy, Harry usually lets the people get on doing what they want.  He knows what they’re going to do and knows the path of least resistance is to let them get on with it and then they’ll leave.  I hope that means we’re a strong hive.

Poo - Of Various Sorts

A toy - NOT a real poo.

Poo is a big thing in our house.  It's not uncommon for kids with autism to have issues with bladder and bowel and sure enough Harry is in there - not exactly with the greatest, but he gives it a good run for the money.  He'll happily urinate (until the cows come home), but when it comes to "dropping the kids off at the pool" he'll go through long periods of failing to keep it regular.  They can medicate for this, but the trick is to give them as little (leading to none) as possible so as to make it a regular as possible.  He'll get to the daily stage so we roll back on the meds and he'll be fine for some time, and then a set back (some minor illness, such as a cold or something like a trip out of town that doesn't go well) and he'll hold onto it for days.  He last went on Saturday (I'm writing this on a Friday).  So we're getting to the stage of medical intervention - which can make him go almost instantaniously.  But that doesn't help the long term, so it leads to daily pressure (I don't mean physically) to get him to go to the toilet and give it a "go".  It's not clear why Harry's "voiding" is an issue.  I read something that suggested that kids on the spectrum have issues with "letting go", but with Harry I think it's more to do with transition - from going from one activity to another.  He has to be slowly steered from one activity to another, so this sudden "need" to do something has to be fought and he has now found that if you fight it hard enough, it will soon pass.  At least temporarily.  And of course when he does go, it's uncomfortable - because he hasn't gone for so long.  Which teaches him to not want to go.

Before beeing a beekeeper I never thought about insect poo.  That also is an issue.  During the warmer months it's easy for them to defecate outside, but when the temperature drops these cleansing flights have to be brief and it's not unusual to find a number of bees dead outside the hive in winter who had to go poo, but just quite didn't make it back.  They can go many weeks without pooing, so with the arrival of spring their evacuation becomes something quite obvious, so if you park your car near a hive or if the neighbours hang out their washing, it can become very noticeable.  It's yellow and sticky (they eat honey -who'd 'a thunk) and some beekeepers refer to it as yellow rain.  Pooing inside the hive is a no-no, so if they do, it can be a urgent indicator of poor bee health, especially if it appears to be diarrhea and may require intervention.

So we'll see.  Both with the bees and with Harrry.  But I hope Harry gives in first.

Do Reindeers Sting?

We went to see Santa’s reindeer at a local garden centre on Saturday. There was a small Christmas market with food and the reindeer could be fed by the kids. We had breakfast there and it was just starting to get to the busy stage – busy enough that Harry was on edge – which put me on edge. His mum went to get some cutlery, leaving Harry and me for a few minutes and as luck would have it Harry then announced we wanted to go to toilet. No big deal, but Harry’s starting to be a bit more independent. We walked past the queue for the breakfast café towards the toilet. Harry’s already standing out because he’s wearing his ear defenders and then just as we’re about to go into the toilet he starts shouting at me. He doesn’t want me to go into the toilet with him and start shouting it at the top of his voice – if front of the whole queue. Like I’m some kind of paedophile. I’m not embarrassed – I don’t get embarrassed any more. But I am on the verge of dropping the C Bomb on everyone who’s staring at us. I didn’t. This time. I have done before.

So H&S Britain means signs like this appear, even though you’re encouraged to buy food to give to the reindeer. Wild animals bite – go figure. Especially when you’ve got reindeer food in your hand. It made me think about the most common question I get asked when people find out I’m a beekeeper – do you get stung? Yes, is the answer. Some times more than others, but on a bad day this season one hive got through my gloves seven times. They needed re-queening – and I was actually doing a manipulation to do that on that day. But seven stings is a lot. People react in different ways, but generally I get a bit of swelling and the site is itchy for a few days. And then it leaves a small red dot where the stinger went in – usually lasting a couple of weeks. The worst stings I get are to the head. Bees know to go towards the CO2 when they’re planning to sting, so it’s not uncommon to get head stings. But it doesn’t put me off. I’ve never been bitten by a reindeer.

Girls Are Mean...

Girls Are Mean...

99.9% of bees are females.  I'm exaggerating, must the vast majority are.  There's the queen who lays all the eggs and then there are workers who... well, do all the work.  And then there are the drones (the males), who are kept around for their genetic input.  They do nothing but consume the hive's resources and mate.  But that means that they can't sting (their stinger is replaced with a penis - apparently nature won't let you have both), so if you're ever stung by a bee, you know it was a girl.

In November there's not much to do for the beekeeper, but tidy up and make sure everything is in place for the winter.  I had to fix the stand my hives are on, which involved using a cordless drill.  Even though the bees weren't flying (it was about 8C) I had my bee suite on, just in case.  And good job I did - as soon as the bees felt the vibration of the drill, they came out to attack whatever was disturbing their slumber.  I had a few stings in my gloves, but none got through to the skin.  I don't blame the bees - they know that at this time of year if they had to deal with moving location or loosing their honey stores, they would surely die.  They know winter is on the way and what they have now needs to keep them going until the spring.

These were just a couple of the ladies who came out to greet me.  See how clean they are?  All that hair and their wings look perfect.  These are guard bees.  In the summer they would just be getting to the stage when they would be going out to forage for nectar and pollen.  But seeing as it's autumn, they'll stay in the hive, hopefully until next spring, keeping the queen warm.  Only coming out on the occasional cleansing flight and maybe to deal with invaders like me.

So they're not mean - just concerned citizens looking after the greater community.  My son, Harry, suffers from development learning delays because of his autism.  Harry is Harry, but I notice his autism the most when the neighbours' granddaughter comes to visit.  She was born a couple of months after Harry and is neurotypical - doing all the things you'd expect a nine year old girl to be getting up to.  She has a sister who is about two years old.  This weekend Harry and the two girls were playing hide and seek in the house.  Running after each other, taking turns to hide, screaming and shouting.  And because Harry has the largest dinosaur collection on the street, the younger of the two girls starting playing with some of them, to Harry's dismay.  I don't know if this is because of Harry's autism or because he's an only child, but Harry doesn't like to share.

It was lovely to see them all playing together.  Girls aren't mean.