About Two Brooks Apiary

Two Brooks Bees was developed by Jonathan Brookhouse and is located in the Surrey Hills of Southeast England.

The inspiration behind the apiary is twofold:

• To improve the quality, health and resilience of our honeybees.

• To assist in making beekeeping a delight for the beekeeper through innovative products.

Surrey Hills

View from Hurtwood towards the forage area of Smithwood Common and Two Brooks apiary.

The search for Varroa resilience. 

Natural resilience in bees is achieved through a combination of hygienic grooming behaviours and genetic immunity traits.

The bees at Two Brooks are a localised, near-native strain and are naturally open mated. They are not treated with chemicals against the parasitic mite, Varroa destructor, nor are they managed in any way to reduce Varroa numbers, such as drone culling or intentionally creating brood-free periods.

These bees have been allowed to develop their own resilience to Varroa and other diseases. Over the years, this has resulted in our colonies developing some very interesting characteristics and exhibiting consistent markers of natural resilience.

A queen rearing program is in place to accelerate this process from the best stock.

My interest in resilience.

I joined the National Bee Unit as a Seasonal Bee Inspector in 2013 and was part of the Southeast Team, and managed the Surrey area for four years.

This was an extremely interesting role and a thought-provoking time for me. I became very interested in the health of honeybees and their innate ability to develop survival strategies against the pests and diseases they had to face, particularly the Varroa mite (Varroa destructor).

The Varroa mite originated in Asia and its natural host is the Asian honeybee (Apis cerana). It is thought to have jumped host species to the Western honeybee, (Apis mellifera) in the 1960’s in the Philippines when the two honeybee species were brought into close proximity to each other.

The mite is now endemic throughout the western world apart from three Hawaiian Islands.

It was first discovered in the US in 1987 and in the UK in the spring of 1992. The mite was even found on the continent of Australia just recently in June 2022 in a sentinel hive at the Port of Newcastle, New South Wales.

In September 2023, Australia decided to transition from eradicating the mite to managing it. This shows how difficult it is to control this parasite.

Unfortunately, the Varroa mite is a vector of many bee viruses and it is considered to be the biggest single threat that the Western honeybee has had to face throughout its existence.

The mite’s whole lifecycle is dependent on the honeybee. It reproduces inside the sealed honeybee brood cell, where young mites feed on the developing bee larvae. It damages the young bee brood which impairs the development of the colony’s immune response, thereby weakening the colony as a whole. The most damaging and prevalent virus associated with a heavy mite infestation is Deformed Wing Virus (DWV). This virus severely shortens the infected bee’s life and prevents wing development so that it cannot fly.

Unlike the Asian honeybee, the Western honeybee has not evolved sufficient defences against this parasite. The colony is severely damaged by the mite as it feeds on the bees, spreading the many harmful viruses it carries.

If left uncontrolled, the mite will cause the destruction a colony within one to three years. Beekeepers try to control the numbers of Varroa mite through the use of miticides and various treatments which inadvertently also damages the bees.

The spread of Varroa throughout the world is recognised as the main cause of the steady decline of the Western honeybee. It has been identified as a key component of a new phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

Surprises.

A full-time Bee Inspector in the UK, will usually visit between 600 to nearly a 1000 colonies during one season and will encounter a wide range of bee health conditions. The inspector will also meet many different beekeepers that have many different approaches to beekeeping. This in itself is quite rewarding, and sometimes amusing. It certainly gives a lot of food for thought about what is good management and how to best look after bees.

As experience grows after many seasons, one can develop an intuitive sense of what to expect when visiting an apiary, even before opening the hives. This intuition is informed by impressions the apiary, the bees and their behaviour as well as the attitude of the beekeeper.

There were also some interesting surprises such as occasionally coming across hives that had not been opened for many years. Some of these hives were either just neglected through thoughtless beekeeping, or were actually abandoned or forgotten.

Some of these hives were hidden deep inside overgrown weeds and brambles. Some had - as expected - died out and some were weak or struggling with disease. Occasionally however, one would be found that was brimming with activity and seemed perfectly healthy, even though the comb inside was black with age and the hive body practically glued together with thick propolis. Some of these colonies could have, of course, died out and had been subsequently re-populated by a new swarm seeking a home, but seeing these virtually feral colonies in such a healthy state, increased my curiosity and deepened my interest in what was actually going on.

If these bees had indeed survived throughout the years and managed to stay so healthy, some key questions arise: What was different about them? What had allowed them to flourish?

The conventional view posits that Western honeybees cannot survive without treatment against the Varroa mite and that they will decline and perish without our intervention.

Some examples of abandoned hives.

Survivors

Some of these bees not only survived but seemed to have positively thrived in these ‘neglected’ conditions.

I had seen this a few times before with healthy feral colonies. It is apparent that they must be developing a resistance to Varroa, perhaps precisely because they have not been treated with miticides. Untreated bees are given the time and the freedom to rely on their own inherent, genetic resources to develop their own resistance to this threat.

Honeybees have been in existence for millions of years and have not only managed to survive but to positively thrive, despite many threats inevitable in the past.

If we stop to think about it for a minute and ask a simple question; are we going to continue to treat our honeybees forever? I think the answer to that must be; No!

And other questions arise; if we continue to ‘help’ our bees to overcome this parasite by dosing them with synthetic or natural substances two or three times a year, or carry out manipulations to disturb the mites’ reproduction cycle, are we not forcing our bees to develop a total dependence on the beekeeper? is this not a weakness in our bees? Also, is there are some interesting research articles that look at the long-term damage that treatments cause to the bees’ internal organs; the gut microbiome, the queen’s fecundity and the drone’s fertility.

Furthermore, are we not encouraging the Varroa mite to evolve a resistance to the treatments through the survivors of the treatments breeding?

I think the conclusions are obvious. We need to stop treating and allow our bees to manage Varroa themselves as soon as possible. Therefore, the real question is, if we are not going to stop treating now, then when?

Feral Colonies

There are four feral colonies that I know of around Two Brooks Apiary which are all within than a couple of miles. One of them is in a fallen tree just half a mile away. The closest, as illustrated below, is high up in a tall oak just 140 meters from the apiary. This feral colony has been there for at least ten years. I discovered it 2008, whilst walking in the woods. I only noticed it by chance because it was emitting a small swarm as I walked underneath it at the time. I visit this colony regularly and the bees’ flying activity can be seen clearly from the ground. Judging by their regular emergence each spring and their foraging activity throughout the year, this colony appears to stay healthy year after year.

Flying bees in the early spring is a clear indication of surviving through the previous winter. This colony may well have been there for many years before I discovered it.

2020 update- This particular colony did not survive the winter of 2019 - 2020. The tree will be closely monitored to see if will be re-inhabited in the future.

Feral colonies that are living quite happily without our intervention are telling us that our conventional view about their capacity for survival is mistaken.

Advantages of breeding native dark bees

My aim is to use only bees that are as close as possible to our native sub-species, Apis mellifera mellifera.

This approach is quite simple; I aim to create conditions that support and enhance the natural qualities that our native bees have accumulated over millennia, as they have already successfully adapted to our environment and to our climatic rhythms. They are already genetically acclimatised and can easily adjust to local conditions.

The honeybees’ total existence and well-being depends on the equilibrium between the colony and its environment. Bringing in imported bees from different countries and climates is forcing them to be in conflict with their inherent genetic instincts, impulses and responses, where the instincts are telling them one thing, and the seasonal facts in the environment they live in, are telling them something quite different. Moreover, mixing up genetic messages by cross-breeding with other sub-species seems to me, inflicting on them a huge amount of genetic chaos creating confusion and unnecessary stress. 

Stressed bees are not very happy.  

To put this into perspective, we need to look at the history of where our native bees came from.

The Western Honeybee.

According to Ruttner, Milner and Dews (1990), the Western Honeybee, Apis mellifera, naturally occurs throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Europe and parts of Western Asia.

This species began to migrate from Africa northwards and eastwards after the last ice age, somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago.

Today, there are at least 28 recognised sub-species that have been classified throughout the range.

These sub-species evolved as the ice sheets gradually receded and plants and wildlife began to colonise the land. As more and more ecosystems began to emerge that were diverse enough to sustain the migration of honeybees, the bees steadily migrated northwards, moving into Western Europe and then further northwards into the land that later became known as the British Isles.

In the UK, our native honeybee is the subspecies Apis mellifera mellifera, named the North European Dark Bee. It is also now known as the British Black Bee.

There is ongoing research that aims to determine more precisely the origins of A. mellifera and to outline more clearly which routes it took as it migrated from Africa.

Currently there are three main theories about this, which are not necessary to describe here, although it is recognised by researchers, that A. mellifera has evolved into four major lineage groupings.

These groups are A, M, C, and O. Their evolutionary differences are supported by analyses of ecological, physiological and behavioural traits as well as genetic DNA evidence.

Group A comprises the sub-species throughout Africa.

Group M includes the sub-species from Iberia, western and northern Europe and the British Isles.

Group C includes the sub-species from eastern Europe and the northern Mediterranean regions.

Group O includes the sub-species from Turkey and the Middle East.

Although they may have the same origins, the genetic makeup of these groups and the subspecies within them are quite different. They have each developed a diverse array of genetic traits and characteristics in response to the ecological niches that they have evolved in over thousands of years.

Breeding near-native bees

The lineage group of each sub-species needs to be considered when breeding bees. Those within the same group are more compatible with each other as they are historically more closely related. Cross-breeding between groups tend to produce unsatisfactory results in the longer term for the beekeeper. For example, it is well known that hybridised daughters of imported queens from other sub-species creates hybrid vigour which tends to manifest as defensive or aggressive behaviour in the second or third generation. These bees are not very pleasant to work with. 

Depending on what part of the world they came from, other strains often display genetic characteristics that are not suited to our seasonal cycles. Examples of this is a colony that continues to produce brood during the winter months, or a colony that creates a large amount of brood too early in the year. Both of these behaviours put the colony under stress and are in danger of running out of stores if the cold winter is overly drawn out.

Over the past 150 years or so, some UK beekeepers have been importing honeybees from other countries in their search for desirable characteristics and traits that some of these other strains of bees possess. Today, queen imports are rising year on year from countries such as Denmark, Greece, Italy, Malta, Romania and Slovenia. The total number of known imported queens, (the ones that were declared and went through the legal channels) in 2018 was 15,946. In 2019 it was 20,021. (Data from the NBU - National Bee Unit.) This shows an increasing trend towards importing more and more queens.

The most popular imports seem to be the Italian bee – Apis mellifera ligustica and the Carniolan bee – Apis mellifera carnica both belonging to group C. Also very popular is the so called Buckfast bee, as developed by Brother Adam from Buckfast Abbey in the UK. The Buckfast bee is not actually a strain of bee, it is in essence, a hybrid.

There are however, unforeseen and unintended consequences of this practice. The genetic make-up of most of the bees in the UK has become a complex mix of random hybridised crosses and back-crosses that occurs through the process of swarming, open matings and the general non-containment by beekeepers, which becomes more complicated and chaotic with every new batch of imports each year.

It seems to me that this genetic confusion just adds an extra layer of unnecessary stress to our bees. They already have to cope with the new burdens that we humans are imposing on therm; new pests and new diseases introduced through our global trade practices of moving food, plants and products around the world, on top of the general mismanagement of our countryside and our natural resources, brought about by the pressures of our profit-focused, monocultural farming practices that we impose on the countryside.

To me, it makes more sense to try to work with bees that have been localised over a long period of time and are as close as possible to our native bee that has genetically evolved and naturally adapted to live in the variable climate of this part of the world.