I went into Lincoln to visit the Bee Auction on Saturday, and attended a training day on Bee Husbandry today, in a small town/large village. Traveling into the city, I was struck by the abundance of flowering trees and shrubs in the gardens, and was actually a little jealous of the forage available to an Urban Beekeeper.
Here in my village we have about 150 homes. There are some flowers out, but there are four other beekeepers within flying range, and all of those bees are competing for a limited number of plants. We have quite a few trees, but the variety is quite small. In Lincoln almost every garden had something in flower, and whilst the size of some gardens were quite small, the number of gardens made up for it. There seemed to be Ornamental Cherries everywhere, Forsythia, masses of Heathers, and many others that I would have had to get out of the van to identify. Hives sited around the periphery of the city would have access to those gardens and still be able to make use of crops like Oilseed Rape (Canola), grown just outside.
It reminded me that Bees are one of the few creatures that we use for producing food, that we just let free, and that they provide one way of producing food from quite a limited space. Whilst there are structural concerns about growing vegetables on the roofs of urban buildings, siting beehives up there make a lot of sense. Their flight lines are above head, and vehicle height. The weight will not be a concern, they do not require daily access, nor constant watering. On top of that, the market for hive products is all around. If I wasn’t working to reduce the amount of vehicle travel that I do, it would make sense to start looking at potential apiary sites further afield. The nearest towns also have quite a good selection of forage, but we have quite a few beekeepers already located there.
The contrast between Urban forage, and Rural is quite staggering. We are in a large arable farming area, with high useage of herbicides. Most of the arable crops provide little forage for the bees, and there are no wildflowers in the fields either. Most of the hedges are ‘scalped’ annually by a contractor paid by the council, so that they do not produce flowers. It’s only along the roadsides, and in the waste ground that we see the sort of flowers that used to sustain the bees. Luckily we do have some organic pasture nearby, and the White Clover in those fields is a real blessing later in the year. It should flower in June/July, but it’s often cut for hay/silage then, which makes the Clover give a later flush of flowers.
My solution is to plant as many early and late flowering trees as I can. I’ve written about this in my earlier post, Thinking Outside of the Box. The downside is that some of these trees take a while before they start to produce flowers. On which I have high hopes for is Eucalyptus Perriniana. It flowers in August, which is great for setting stores for the Winter. Eucalyptus generally produce large quantities of nectar, and it starts to flower after just four years. Some of my plants are a year old, and I have several trays planted for this year. Eucalyptus oil is also used in some Varroa treatments, such as Api Life Var, and I hope that if the bees are bringing a lot of Eucalyptus nectar into the hive, that it will have some impact on the varroa mite. Here is a link to Dave Cushman’s website page that deals with Essential oils.
http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/naturaloils.html
Whether or not there will be any benefit in the fight against Varroa or not, the Eucalyptus should help to widen the availability of forage.
Returning to the Urban versus Rural theme, I cannot see myself ever living in a town again, but there are certainly opportunities there for new beekeepers, of which there are many more coming into the craft. There are also opportunities to make a profit out of the fashion for gardening that has been spreading for some time. It almost seems like a shame not to make use of all of those flowers, lovingly tended by adoring gardeners.
Until next time
Deano