Queens too blue for birds and bees

SORRY honey, I'm not in the mood. Queen bees are giving workers the cold shoulder after losing their sex drive.

A series of wet springs has dampened the ardour of the hive leaders and they are failing to mate with their drones – or, if they do, the are not mating the required number of times.

As a result, bee populations in Scotland have now gone into sharp decline, threatening the viability of the native colonies and the Scottish honey industry.

'Failing queens', as they are known, are a growing problem for beekeepers, with climate change suspected as the main culprit.

In their natural life-cycle, the queens should emerge from the hive in spring to mate with at least a dozen worker bees. They should then return to the safety of the hive to lay up to 2,000 eggs.

They require fine weather for their mating flights during spring and early summer, but a spate of bad weather has kept them penned in.

Bee experts say the wet and windy weather leaves the queens depressed and stressed as they are unable to leave the hive. When they do venture out, they are lethargic and have become unwilling to mate as normal.

As they only have two to three weeks to mate after first leaving the hive, the number of eggs being laid is far lower than normal, putting the future of the colony at risk.

Worker bees are not up to the job either. As their daily routine involves leaving the hive to gather nectar, the poor weather has also restricted their activities. Since they are not as fit as normal, their sperm count is lower than usual, rendering them less fertile.

This reduction in fertility in both males and females is alarming beekeepers.

Alan Teale, vice-president of the Scottish Beekeepers Association, said: "The past two years have been a very bad time for bees, especially the past winter and this spring in Scotland.

"The appalling summer last year was one of the worst in living memory for bees and that was followed by this cold and windy spring and the bees haven't been able to get out of the hive and do their usual spring activities, like gather pollen and nectar."

The bad weather has also meant that queen bees emerged from the winter infertile.

Teale, who is based near Inverness, explained: "The queen is the colony's reproductive system and it reproduces by swarming. Swarming season starts in the spring and dies off about mid-summer.

"Then the old, fertile queen leaves with most of the bees from the colony and leaves behind queens in larval form."

The colony left behind then has to safely rear the queens, and the one that survives has to leave the hive and mate very quickly with around 12-15 drones.

Teale added, "If they don't mate within a few weeks of emerging from the hive, they don't mate successfully. So if it is bad weather, the drones or the queens can't leave the hive and it can spell disaster for the colony.

"Last year, with the terrible summer we had, the queens either didn't get out, or if they did get out, they didn't mate with as many drones as they normally would have.

"If the queen is not producing lots of young bees in the summer, then it can result in a non-viable colony and not a very bright future."

The rising number of failing colonies, which play an important role in the ecosystem as pollinators, is worrying both beekeepers and the Scottish Government.

Production of Scottish honey, including specialities like heather honey, are expected to be hit, as is beeswax production. Ironically, the hives are failing more regularly at a time when more people than ever are interested in taking up beekeeping.

The SBA has now launched a survey of its 1,000 members to determine the scale of the losses and is demanding that the Government's 18 bee inspectors play a more proactive research role in tackling the problem.

It also wants an increase in funding for bee research, branding the £200,000 given by the UK Government as "pitiful", given the importance of the swarms to the environment.

A Scottish Government spokesman said it was concerned about the situation, which was being "closely monitored".

He added: "We are currently finalising a Scottish bee health strategy, which will consider this and other issues affecting bees and beekeepers."

Growing opportunities

Murdo MacLeod

CLIMATE change is helping Scotland's gardeners to grow plants from the Southern Mediterranean and from Africa.

Warmer and damper weather means that ordinary gardeners can make a success of plants such as olive trees in their gardens in the Scottish climate.

A range of plants that are now much easier to grow outdoors in Scotland will be featured at the Gardening Scotland show at Ingliston near Edinburgh this next weekend.

Species which can realistically be grown by ordinary gardeners all over Scotland include olive trees, rosa banksiae (pictured) – a spectacular yellow flower originating in China and more commonly found in hot climates such as the American South – and various varieties of dwarf chrysanthemums. Although some are already grown, for the first time they can be propagated almost anywhere.

Cameron Elliot, a consultant with Edinburgh firm Primo Landscaping, said: "We are now importing a lot of items from Tuscany which a few years ago we would not have expected to survive. Olive trees in Edinburgh, for example. It doesn't mean we can produce olives in Scotland, there's not enough sun for that, but the trees can grow well."

Jim Jermyn, the manager of Gardening Scotland – which is expected to attract 30,000 visitors – added: "The change in climate means that there are species you can grow quite well in Scotland which maybe 15 or 20 years ago a gardener would never have thought of trying to grow outside here."

The art of pollination

Honey bees are a subset of bees, primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of colonial nests out of wax. Honey is the complex substance made when the nectar and sweet deposits from plants and trees are gathered, modified and stored in the honeycomb by honey bees.

Bees travel from flower to flower, collecting nectar and pollen grains. The pollen collects on the hind legs, in dense hairs referred to as a pollen basket. As the bee flies from plant to plant, some of the pollen grains are transferred onto the stigma of other flowers.

The primary aim for the bee is to collect nectar which provides energy, while pollen provides protein. But when bees are rearing large broods of young, they deliberately gather pollen to meet the needs of the growing masses. There is normally only one adult, mated queen in a hive. All eggs are identical when laid but young queens develops differently because they are more heavily fed royal jelly, a protein-rich secretion from glands on the heads of young workers. As a result of the difference in diet, the queen will develop into a sexually mature female, unlike the worker bees.