Honey Bees stop flying when the temperature drops down into the 50s (F). They stay inside their hive in what is called a winter cluster which means they get into a big huddle. There is no point to flying outside of the hive as there are no flowers in bloom, hence no pollen or nectar is available and the cold could kill them. The colder the outside temperature, the more compact the cluster becomes.
The object of this clustering is to keep themselves warm, so warm that the temperature in the centre of this cluster, where the Queen Bee stays, is kept at about 80 (F). The outer edge of the cluster is about 46 to 48 (F).
The worker bees create heat by shivering and they also move back and forth between the inner part of the cluster and the outer part. In this way no bee will freeze.
The recent decision by the Government to retrospectively reduce the level of feed in Tariff (Fit) from 43pkwh to 21pkwh is a a huge blow to the UK’s environmental credibility. Originally introduced by the previous Government the latest decision is based on the fact that take up by homeowners and businesses has been greater than expected – in other words the scheme was too successful! Can this really be possible when the aim was to reduce our carbon footprint?
Perhaps the most damaging aspect is the undermining of confidence in legislation relating to sustainable technologies. Potential investors are faced with making an enormous financial commitment in the face of number of uncertainties; longevity of the technologies, capital cost of the installation and financial return on that cost.
For the first time, under the FiT legislation the log jam began to clear; income was guaranteed for 25 years and Government backed, PV technology was tried and tested and had reduced in price and critically (as a result of these factors) the banks felt confident enough to start lending money for PV installations.
The first big step backwards came last year when the Government decided to limit FiT’s to installations under 5 megawatts. This meant that a number of big, commercially driven PV arrays became unviable over night. The second blow came in December with the reduction in the level of FiT’s.
The Government made the following statement in one of its recent publications;
To facilitate the investment in renewables that the country needs, investors need to have confidence in a stable and predictable commercial environment for those investments. The scale and pace of the changes now proposed was a ‘shock’ for the industry and the suddenness of their introduction has damaged investor confidence across the whole energy sector. This damage would not have occurred if the Government had recognised the unsustainable rate of the expansion of solar installations at an earlier date, something which ought to have been identified by Ministers and officials sooner than it appears to have been. The analysis of the impact on jobs in the Impact Assessment is also seriously inadequate.
We in the UK are not alone in introducing FiT’s as a way of reducing our dependency on fossil based energy generation. Most northern European countries have done the same. In Germany for instance it has led to around 13% of the nation’s energy being generated from renewable sources.
So, as the Government awaits the result of a High Court appeal on it’s decision to apply it’s Fit reduction retrospectively we’re left wondering whether the Government now see the UK’s bold carbon reduction commitments as an essential necessity or an unaffordable luxury?
Colin, our Lingfield Point Bee Keeper
In a quiet corner in the Lingfield Allotments there is a hive of activity! As you may already know we are very fortunate here at Lingfield Point to have our very own bees. We have two strains of bee – and Italian and a strain all the way from New Zealand – we’re very continental!
Both hives have produced a decent amount of honey despite early set backs. In September we extracted our fourth batch of honey and Jenny from Marchday was lucky enough to bee there!
“I was a little wary as Colin, our resident Lingfield Point Bee keeper had been stung on a number of occasions, so I donned the bee keeper suit and triple checked it for holes!”
“We start by smoking the bees, this calms them and makes them less aggressive. Then, once the lid is off the hive, it’s time to remove the ‘supers’, these are the frames where the bees build up the hexagonal wax cells (comb) and where the honey gets stored.
“With a little shake and a brush for those stubborn bees, the supers are removed and put neatly into a storage box. The bees are, of course, pretty grumpy about us taking their honey, so they are all around us and it feels like they are trying to get into our suits! One manages to and poor Colin is stung on his hand – poor bee too, honeybees are the only bees that die after they sting.
“We then take the Supers into a clean and sterile room, which is kept nice and warm. The supers are then carefully placed into a honey extractor – this is a manual spinning machine, which requires a fair amount of time and patience to spin the honey out of the combs.
“The honey then has a little time to settle, so all the waxy bits from the comb can float to the top and can be skimmed off (this is re-used to feed the bees). The honey is then put into jars.
“In the end, our Lingfield honey bees produced about 25lbs (50 jars) of honey and with the hives now established, fingers crossed next year will be even better.
Yum!
Interesting facts about honey bees
- There are three types of bees in the hive – Queen, Worker and Drones.
- Queens can live for up to 5 years.
- Honeybees are the only insects that produce food for humans.
- Just a single hive contains approximately 40-45,000 bees.
- Bees can recognize individual human faces.
- The average worker bee produces about 1/12th teaspoon of honey in her lifetime. A worker bee lives for about 6 weeks.
- A hive of bees will fly 90,000 miles, the equivalent of three orbits around the earth to collect 1 kg of honey.
- It takes one ounce of honey to fuel a bee’s flight around the world.
- A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip
- According to Albert Einstein, If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live
| Also posted in General, Jenny Carr, Marchday | Tagged bees, Customer service, Darlington, honey, honey bees, lingfieldpoint, local food production, North East, organic food, sustainability, Value for money |
