We Love the Pollinators

We Love the Pollinators Our bookings coordinator came to the gardening group in a panic. She had found a wasp infestation in the ladies' toilet. "Oh no!" exclaimed our gardener, "we have an event happening this weekend, and we can't close them off!" We needed to deal with the wasps. He went to investigate the infestation, making sure there were no ladies in the toilets. Sure enough, he found a lot of wasps flying around. He managed to get some out the window, but more quickly returned. He had to figure out how they were getting in. It didn’t take long to realize they were entering through a gap at the bottom of the wastewater pipe, which we easily covered to stop them from accessing the toilets. At least the event would be safe to use the ladies' restroom.

Further inspection revealed that many wasps were coming through the brickwork to the underside of the building. We contacted the lead of the local wildlife group, who came to assess the situation and immediately recognized the insects as honeybees, not wasps. This was a significant issue because we are pollinator champions! We had already considered getting beehives at the hub, and now bees had arrived on their own but were in the wrong location. The wildlife group leader quickly called a beekeeper, Willy, who arrived at the hub right away. He left a hive overnight, along with some water and sugar, in the hope that the bees would transfer themselves into their new home. However, the queen bee wasn't ready to move.

The next day, our sustainability manager was in his office when Willy, fully kitted out and with a few of his new buzzing friends flying around him, strolled in. He introduced himself as the "Bee Man" (Kenny would never have guessed). As he entered, our bookings coordinator jokingly said, "How did you know this was the beekeeper, Kenny?"

We had to show Willy where the bees were getting in earlier at the women's toilets, as he needed to investigate further to find out where the queen was establishing her new home. He needed the queen to leave so the rest would follow. Unfortunately, it appeared he might have to extract her, as she was reluctant to leave whatever partially-made hive they had been doing, the worker bees were now using the sugary water to help build their new home. Instead of it being a place for their queen to move to

To Bee Continued

Part two

To Bee or Not to Bee: An Easy Question — We at PChub are Pro Bee! Willie the Bee Man had to go away for the weekend, but the great get-together event held at the hub was a very successful community gathering. Surprisingly, nobody who attended even noticed the bees. However, the bees did not go into their new hive while Willie was away. When he returned, we had to implement Plan Bee (pun fully intended). This involved moving the new, unoccupied hive into the ladies' toilet and sourcing some honeycomb that the bees had been making, hopefully with the queen attached. Willie successfully achieved this, and our volunteers were truly amazed at his knowledge about bees. We learned an immense amount from him during this week-long rescue job.

Not all of the information Willie shared was positive. He told us some horrific stories about the global challenges beekeepers are facing. The bees are under threat from predators, diseases, habitat destruction, extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, forest fires, and seasonal changes due to global warming. Damaging cold snaps and damp springs can also significantly affect global bee populations, compounded by the continued use of bee-killing pesticides for crop spraying. While Willie took a break to calm the bees with smoke—after they had stung him—he deodorized his two stings before going back in. He mentioned that he believed these bees could be native Scottish wild bees. He planned to leave them buzzing around in and out the ladies all day. and intended to return at bee bedtime. He left for his own apiary, planning to collect the new hive once the bees settled in for the night.

Upon his return, he was shocked to find far more than 10,000 bees; the problem was that he had brought a hive too small to accommodate that number! He placed another hive on top, hoping the extra bees that couldn’t get inside would now have space. He explained that he would return again the next night at bedtime for the bees. How he found out, we will never know, but the next afternoon he burst into the office in a panic, needing access to the closed-off loo containing the new hive. The bees had decided to swarm and were gathered on one of our fence posts near the gate. With assistance from another beekeeper, Willie managed to scoop the swarm into two hives in our car park. It was fascinating to watch them work away—busy as a bee! We watched from the safety of a closed window.

After a lot of hard work by these busy beekeepers, they managed to get a significant percentage of the bees into two hives. Willie left, stating he now had to find homes for the two hives he hadn’t expected to have. We were just as surprised by the unexpected second hive and hope to find out more about it one day. The ladies' toilets were off-limits for another 24 hours due to the homeless straggler bees that were still lingering. When we finally went in, what a mess! It was a big cleanup job, but we didn’t mind, as we felt good about the part we played in the rescue operation.