About Our Bees
The Importance of Pollinators
It is estimated that between 75% and 95% of all flowering plants need pollinators of some form to be able to reproduce. Of all pollinators, bees are particularly adapted to carry out this vital function due to their specialised morphology and exclusive diet of nectar and pollen.
Pollination by bees is vital for sustained healthy environments and a vigorous biodiversity.
Bees are central to the continued existence of a vast array of plant life. They make a substantial contribution to biodiversity and support the natural life cycles of many birds, mammals and other insects through their incidental pollination of plants providing wildlife with fruit, seeds and shelter.
Bees are vital to agriculture and crop production. It is estimated that a third of the fruit and vegetables we eat rely on pollinators.
‘Pollination is the highest agricultural contributor to yields worldwide, contributing far beyond any other agricultural management practice. Thus, bees and other pollinators make important contributions to agriculture. Pollinators affect 35 percent of global agricultural land, supporting the production of 87of the leading food crops worldwide.
Plus, pollination-dependent crops are five times more valuable than those that do not need pollination. The price tag of global crops directly relying on pollinators is estimated to be between US$235 and US$577 billion a year.’
(2018 Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations)
The commercial value of pollinators to agriculture in the UK for one year was estimated as £510m through crop production alone. (2009 June census data from England, Scotland & Northern Ireland- excluding Wales). In the South East during the same year, insect-pollinated crops were valued at £137.4m, which is 26.9% of the UK total.
These agricultural statistics are focused on food for human consumption and they do not include the vital function that insect pollinators perform in sustaining the wider environment and diverse habitats; the plants, meadows, hedgerows and trees that provide shelter and food for other wildlife.
Pollinator Decline.
Through various research studies, it is widely accepted that insect pollinators are in decline globally, this includes the many wild bee species in the UK as well as the managed honeybee.
There are a number of recognised, high impact reasons for this decline that have been building up over the past 50 years or so.
One of the principal causes of this decline is the general trend for agricultural practices to move away from traditional poly-cultural systems of crop and livestock production to modern mono-cultural systems.
It is accepted that this intense method of farming must be supported by the routine use of fertilisers, insecticides and herbicides. At first glance, this seems to be beneficial for humans as it provides a cost-effective route to cheaper food in larger quantities.
However, this does have a serious negative impact on wildlife and our environment. The variety of forage that bees need and its availability throughout the year is drastically reduced by this way of farming.
Bees now have to compete with each other for the dwindling pockets of forage when it does become available, often after flying for vast distances over large areas of a green grass to find them. To bees, this is the same as a green desert.
Another key reason for pollinator decline is the subtly changing landscape and an ever-increasing shift in global climate that not only creates adverse weather conditions, it also facilitates the migration of alien pests and diseases from one region of the globe to another at a faster rate than any natural resistance can evolve to counter them, which leaves the native species that have to adjust to this change, extremely vulnerable.
An example of this change is the arrival of Varroa destructor, a parasitic mite of the honeybee, that originated in the Far East where its natural host is the Asian honeybee Apis cerana.
From the 1960’s, this parasite has slowly and persistently spread throughout the more temperate regions of the West, despite all efforts to contain it. The Varroa mite is now present in all continents where honeybees are kept. This excluded a few Hawaiian islands and Australia, until June 2022 when Varroa was discovered in New South Wales. There is currently (2022) an emergency order in place as Australia struggles to eradicate the mite.
Varroa was discovered in the UK in the spring of 1992 and is now endemic throughout the UK and Europe.
Unlike the Asian honeybee, the Western honeybee has no defences against this parasite and a colony is severely damaged by the mite and the many virus diseases it carries. Uncontrolled, the Varroa mite will usually destroy a colony within one to three years.
It is an understatement to say that all pollinators are facing substantial challenges; it is more accurate to say that many are facing extinction.
It is understood that we humans, are just as much a part of the wider ecosystem and we are as vulnerable as any other organism. As outlined above, we are heavily reliant on pollinators for much of our food and resources and it goes without saying that if we continue with a ‘business as usual’ attitude and leave things as they are, it is more than likely that in our future, we will be forced to face some inevitable consequences and threats to our own existence.
The following video by Dr. Marla Spivak, emphasises these facts.
Dr. Spivak a MacArthur Fellow and McKnight Distinguished Professor in Entomology at the University of Minnesota,
The Quality of Our Bees
Two Brooks Apiary is focussing on raising the native dark bee, Apis mellifera mellifera (A.m.m), this strain of bee has evolved in the UK environment over millennia. It has learned to live in harmony with this particular part of the world.
A.m.m is also known as the European Dark Bee, the British Dark Bee and is also called the British Black Bee.
Bees have existed close to their current form for at least thirty million years (Tom Seeley et al.) and through evolution by natural selection during this incomprehensible amount of time, they have accumulated many genetic traits that have allowed them to survive and thrive particularly well in the various niche, geoecological areas that they have evolved in.
Over the past 150 years or so, beekeepers in the West have been trying to improve the characteristics of the honeybee by importing bees from other parts of the world, favouring strains such as the Italian bee, Apis mellifera ligustica and the Carniolan bee, Apis mellifera carnica.
As a result of this import history, the UK has become inundated with a wide variation of genetic crosses that may not be particularly suited to the unique fickle climate of this part of the world. With the exception of a few isolated pockets, all the bees throughout the United Kingdom are a mixture of various strains. Importing queens and package bees continues, which puts our native bee A.m.m, in serious danger of being genetically diluted into extinction.
There is a conscious effort at Two Brooks to breed bees that are as close as possible to to our original native dark bee. Given the quantity of other strains in the area, they are best described as near-native bees. They are locally bred and open mated. We produce a large number of our own drones from the best dark colonies to ensure successful mating and to limit as far as is possible, the genetic influence of imported strains.
The search for Varroa resilience in our bees
Resilience is achieved through a combination of hygienic behaviours and genetic immunity traits.
Two Brooks Bees are not treated with chemicals or miticides. They have been allowed to develop their own resistance to Varroa and other diseases and have not had any Varroa treatment of any kind since 2013. This has resulted in some of our colonies dying out, but through breeding from the best of these survivors, some very interesting naturally resilient, consistent characteristics seem to be coming through. A small scale breeding program is in place to select from the best and to accelerate this process.
Desirable characteristics of our bees
The characteristics we aim for in our breeding program:
Resilience. A robust and healthy colony, easily able to resist Varroa and other visible ailments.
Gentleness. Nobody wants to work with tetchy bees. The gentleness characteristic is partly genetic and partly the expression of contented bees, unstressed by disease or environmental pressures.
Queen Longevity. Queens that stay productive in the colony for two to three years and have a preference for supersedure.
Environmental Adaptation. Through the generations, allowing the bees to localise themselves and adapt to the weather, forage availability and the rhythms of their environment.