Many thanks to everyone who is reading and reviewing this little fluff-fest of a fic. So glad you're enjoying it. :)
Chapter Seventeen
William sat under his favourite apple tree, watching the busy bees coming and going, to and from the hive, bringing pollen and nectar to swell their stores. Foraging bees were rarely, if ever, aggressive so he didn't need to wear his suit to sit this close to the hive. Occasionally, a bee would land on him, attracted by the bright pattern on his t-shirt, mistaking it for a flower perhaps, but they quickly realised their error and flew off, buzzing away, in search of the real thing.
Mr Hedges had come over again, earlier in the week, to check out the result of the 'icing sugar treatment' and conduct the second part of the colony health check. During the first session, they had covered the main brood diseases but barely touched on the threats to adult bee health, with the treatment of Varroa mites.
In the second session, they had talked about Nosema, a fungal infection which affected the hind gut of the honey bees. This was one of the most dangerous diseases of bees because it could be present in a hive but asymptomatic. But when combined with other factors, such as prolonged confinement during bad weather, rapid brood increase or poor nutrition, could spread rapidly through the whole population, leaving the bees unable to fly, crawling around on the ground, confused and disorientated.
William was relieved that there was no evidence of Nosema at the present time but, as the queen stepped up her laying and the colony continued to grow, it would be something to keep a lookout for. He could do this even from school, thanks to the webcams that Daddy had fitted inside the hive.
There were other viral diseases, like the aptly named 'Deformed Wing' virus; Black Queen Cell virus, which turned the queen larvae black; and a number of paralysis viruses, including Chronic, Acute and Kashmir. But these could also be spotted via the webcams. So, William would continue to play a role in the care of the colony even when he wasn't at home, though Mr Hedges would be responsible for the actual management of the hive, carrying out the regular weekly inspections.
The icing sugar treatment had produced a very favourable result. The Varroa burden proved to be quite low and Mr Hedges was confident that they could control the mite infestation by regular monthly icing sugar dustings.
The final task of their last inspection was to fit a queen excluder to the top of the brood box, confining the queen, and add a honey super over that, where the workers could store honey, and it would give the colony room to expand without over-crowding and – hopefully – discourage swarming.
Today was the last full day of William's Easter holiday. Tomorrow he would be packing his bag and returning to school by five o'clock in the afternoon. So, he would make time in the morning to sit in the orchard and commune with his bees.
It was surprising how much the apple trees had changed in the three weeks that he had been home. All the bare branches were now covered in pinkish-white blossom and the foraging bees weren't wasting a single second of daylight, in their mission to fill their crops with nectar and bring it back to the colony. Apple blossom was an ideal nectar source for honey bees because the open aspect of the flowers gave them easy access to the nectar. And the benefit for the trees was the pollination of their flowers and the resultant apple harvest, in the Autumn, which the family would enjoy picking and eating.
William was fascinated by the science involved in the conversion of raw nectar – which was essentially sugary water – to the thick viscous substance that humans called honey. It was a complex process and many individual bees played their part. The collecting of the nectar was just the beginning.
Each honey bee needed to visit about a hundred flowers, sucking up the sweet, sugary solution using her tongue, which was like a hollow straw called a proboscis, to collect enough nectar to fill her crop, which was a kind of stomach specifically designed for honey production. Once in her crop, the nectar began to be broken down by the enzymes she secreted, into simple sugars. When her crop was full, she flew back to the hive and passed the nectar to a household worker bee, waiting just inside the hive entrance, whose job it was to continue the conversion process. Having off-loaded her nectar cargo, the foraging bee could fly off again, to collect more nectar. So honey was made, essentially, on a production line.
The receiving household worker would take itself off to a quiet part of the comb and begin to continually manipulate droplets of nectar in her mouth parts, by regurgitating a small amount from her honey stomach and sort of stirring it with her tongue before swallowing it back and regurgitating another drop. By repeatedly exposing the nectar to the air, the water content was gradually reduced from sixty percent to twenty percent. At the same time, the enzymes in the bee's stomach changed the chemical composition of the nectar.
The main sugar in nectar was sucrose, which was a disaccharide molecule. This was converted in the bee's honey stomach, by the enzyme invertase, into two smaller monosaccharide molecules, called glucose and fructose, and these were very soluble so they could combine with water to make the eighty percent sugar solution, honey. This whole process took about half an hour from start to finish but once complete, the household bee took the converted honey to the comb and regurgitated it into one of the wax cells used for storage and, when each cell was full, it was sealed with a cap of wax until the whole comb was airtight. The honey inside would then keep for weeks or months to feed the colony over the winter – or to be harvested by the beekeeper. Because of all the set-backs they had experienced the season before, William hadn't taken any honey from his hive last year so had never tasted his own bees' honey but he was hoping that, this year, he might.
William found the degree of cooperation and division of labour within the colony, along with the work ethic of each individual bee, quite amazing. Foraging bees had been known to travel up to five miles from the hive to collect nectar. Fortunately for William's bees, they had a good source of nectar right outside their front door at this time of year but, perhaps later in the Summer, they might need to fly further. During the Easter break, he and Mummy had sewn lots of seeds of nectar-rich annual plants in seed trays. They were currently germinating, under cloches, on the patio behind the house. Later in the season, when there was no more risk of frost, they would plant them out in the garden or in baskets and containers so their colony would have a convenient source of nectar throughout the Summer and early Autumn, too.
Each foraging worker, in her lifetime – which was about five to six weeks in the high summer - would visit thousands of flowers and produce just one and a half teaspoons of honey. So, by William's calculations, it would take five hundred and fifty-six honey bees visiting a total of two million flowers to fill a 450-gram jar of honey. And, assuming that each one of those bees had to fly the maximum distance of five miles to and from the nectar source, that would equal fifty-five thousand bee-miles to produce that one jar. Which was truly awesome.
Life within the colony was generally harmonious, the cohesive nature of the colony maintained and controlled by the queen's pheromones. Consequently, if a colony had a placid, good-natured queen, the whole colony would be placid and good-natured. But if it had an aggressive, bad-tempered queen, the colony would take on those character traits, too. William was glad that the queen in his colony was of the placid variety.
While he was deep in contemplation of bee society, Molly stepped out from the dining room, through the French windows, and came down the garden. It was a constant source of wonder and delight to her how much like his father William was. And here was a perfect example. She managed to walk right up to him before he registered her presence and blinked then smiled a greeting.
'Hello, darling. Mind if I join you?' she asked.
'Of course not!' William exclaimed and shuffled around the base of the tree trunk so that Molly could sit down beside him and lean against the tree, too.
'Have you had a nice time this holiday?' she asked.
'Yes, thank you, it's been lovely,' William replied.
'And are you ready to go back to school tomorrow?' she enquired.
'Well, I still need to pack my bag but I've done all my holiday Prep and some revision for a Maths test on Wednesday,' he assured her.
'The Summer Term is quite a short one, isn't it,' Molly remarked, inadvertently reflecting how much she missed seeing William every day when he was away at school and that she would be counting the days until he would return home again. And this was not lost on her eldest child.
'Yes, the first half term is only six weeks and we have an exeat weekend in the middle of that. Then there's a week off for Whitsun and, after that, only five weeks to the end of term. So not long at all,' he declared. He tactfully left out the fact that he might – or might not – be selected as one of the new trebles to join the cathedral choir on its summer tour of Scandinavia. They would be away for two weeks, visiting Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. So it would be quite a whistle-stop tour.
But Molly hadn't forgotten.
'Do you think you might be chosen for the summer tour?' she asked, as nonchalantly as she could manage.
'I don't really know,' William replied. 'I think there are three of us being considered. I'll just have to wait and see.'
At that point, their intimate little chat was rudely interrupted by a high-pitched squeal from the vicinity of the dining room, signalling that Violet was having another emotional crisis. These meltdowns seemed to be getting more frequent. Just the night before, she had had a whopper just around bedtime.
Sherlock was escorting Violet upstairs for her bedtime bath and she was walking up the stairs on her own, using the spindles of the balustrade for support as she wasn't quite tall enough to reach the handrail. They had just reached the first landing when Violet turned to Sherlock and said,
'Up, Daddy.'
Being a dutiful and obedient father, Sherlock reached down and lifted Violet into his arms but, unfortunately, that was not what Violet meant. She immediately stiffened, pushing against his chest with her hands, and repeated,
'Up, Daddy, up!'
Sherlock was confused. Until this very moment, 'Up, Daddy' had always meant 'Pick me up, Daddy,' but, suddenly, it didn't. And he had no idea what the new meaning could possibly be. In the time it took to process these thoughts – only a matter of milliseconds – Violet had tipped over the edge into a full-blown tantrum. So, he had no choice but to carry her into the nursery and let her thrash out her anguish on the carpeted floor. The incident had been quite distressing for everyone.
'Oh, dear,' Molly sighed and went to get up but then changed her mind and sat back again. Sherlock would be dealing with the situation and this was her time with William. In six months or so, she would be splitting her time four ways, not three, so it was important to share that time as fairly and evenly as possible.
'How are the bees?' Molly asked.
'I think they're very happy,' William replied. 'Our Spring planting has given them a good start this season. We didn't find any signs of disease. There are a few Varroa mites but nothing to worry about and the queen is laying really well.' He paused for a moment, reflecting on something, Molly assumed, then said,
'You know, Mummy, people think that different bees do different jobs in a colony, as a kind of career choice, and that is sort of true but it's a lot more complicated than that. Or perhaps more simple.'
Molly thought that was quite a profound statement for an eight-year-old and was curious to know exactly what William was alluding to.
'How does it work then?' she asked.
'Well, when a new adult worker bee hatches, she doesn't immediately start working. She spends the first few hours grooming, to make herself all clean and fluffy. Then she hangs around the comb, begging for food off the other adult bees by sticking out her tongue until, eventually, one of them regurgitates some honey from their stomach and feeds her. After about three days, she starts feeding herself from the honey cells and pollen stores, still not really doing much actual work. She might start cleaning out some of the old brood cells, ready for new eggs to be laid in them. But just the fact that she's there, combining her body heat with that of the other bees, helps the colony maintain the optimum temperature in the hive for brood rearing, So, she's already making a contribution to hive life.
After about four days, she might start to feed some of the larvae. To begin with, she can only feed the older larvae with regurgitated honey and pollen but, around Day Six, she's mature enough for her hypopharyngeal glands to start converting pollen to brood food, which is really rich in protein, so she can start to feed the younger larvae.
At ten to twelve days old, her brood food glands are pretty much worn out but around the same time, the wax-producing glands on the underside of her abdomen start to produce wax so she's able to help build and repair the comb.
And its around this age that she begins to leave the hive for short periods of time. On her maiden flight, she'll pooh for the first time, because no healthy adult bee would ever pooh inside the hive. Some people believe that it's the need to pooh that makes the bees leave the hive in the first place.
When the weather is warm, the young bees make short flights in the middle of the day to get to know the location of the hive, starting off by hovering just outside the hive entrance but eventually flying a bit further and a bit faster, as they get to know their location better.
After that, for the next couple of weeks, a young bee spends her time hanging around just inside the entrance of the hive ready to receive nectar from incoming bees - so they don't have to waste any time before heading back out to forage some more. The young bees also collect the pollen that foraging bees dump just inside the hive entrance and they store it away in the comb. At the same time, it's the young bees who are mostly responsible for keeping the hive clean and tidy, cleaning out the old cells and removing rubbish, including any larvae that might have died in the comb, any dead adult bees or unwanted drones.
It's not until a worker bee is three or four weeks old that she becomes a forager. At that age, she'll start to pay more attention to the scout bees who go looking for new sources of nectar and then return to the hive to perform the waggle dance and show the other bees where the new source is. It takes a few hours or even days for the young bees to learn to read the coded instructions of the waggle dance but, eventually, they do and then they can begin to go out and forage.
A few bees take on the job of guarding the hive. They wait at the hive entrance, standing with their front legs off the ground, ready to challenge every returning bee, to keep out intruders, like wasps and honey robbers from other hives, trying to steal from the colony's stores. But most of the newer bees will become fulltime foragers and spend the rest of their lives collecting nectar and pollen and bringing it back to the hive. They literally work themselves to death. Which is a bit sad but they don't know that. So you see, Mummy, it's complicated but also very simp...'
William stopped speaking rather abruptly and adopted what John Watson liked to call – when Sherlock did it – a 'buffering' face. Molly knew this to be a complete misnomer because, at such times, Sherlock's brain was probably working its hardest, processing lots of seemingly unrelated pieces of information and organising them into a coherent whole. On this occasion, it was William who sat motionless and unresponsive for several seconds and then suddenly said,
'Actually, Mummy, I think I know why Violet keeps getting upset.'
ooOoo
Lots more bee facts, curtesy of my Collins Beekeeper's Bible. I wouldn't be without it for the world! :)