Welcome to the world of Wild Bees!
Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you.
— Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Living wild. Naturally.
In May of 2014 I started tracking wild honeybees having come upon my first wild nest. Its entrance was well concealed, deep within a cleft of a rocky outcrop. It captivated me and my curiosity. I was mesmerised by the sounds of a colony; their frequencies and fragrances; the different roles that honeybees have in the course of their short lifespans; their choice of plants as a source for pollens, nectars, resins, and waxes; their microbial terroir. I had a sense of sheer wonderment at how they fermented their food to break down cell walls and complex carbohydrates and proteins and make everything more nutritious and more bio-available.
Since then I have documented over a hundred wild honeybee nests, mostly found by squinting eyes against sunlight and following a bee line. These nests occur under rock, in rocky crevices, in holes in the ground, in the roots of huge fig trees, in tree cavities, on cliffs, in caves, or simply hanging from a branch.
Over the course of my research I have realised that there are important symbiotic relationships between honeybees and other creatures within the nest environment, and that there is a dependance of other creatures on honeybees as a source of food. In environments adapted to fire, honeybee colonies survive by using propolis as firewalls and receding into the deepest recesses. Fundamentally I have realised that the ultimate source of vitality, health, strength and longevity of a honeybee colony is the wild nest environment itself, found in natural, wild habitat.
Wherever we find ourselves we do not need to alter what’s there already, but have a perspective on what’s there and how crucial it is to nature and the ecology of so many species.
My current focus is on the Great Karoo – an area considered a desert having less than 200mm of rain on average per year. The lack of rocky outcrops and trees, and forage and cavities as a limiting factor, yet still with a good presence of honeybees, raises numerous questions around this wild, fascinating, and intelligent cavity dweller, its nest sites, adaptability and ecology. Join me on this journey as I document both the wild honeybees and solitary bees in a tough place to be a bee. Through this fieldwork I hope to illuminate important relationships, behaviours and the beauty, while deepening our understanding of these vital elements and the survival tactics of solitary bees and honeybees.
Mission
We are dedicated to protecting and preserving the natural habitat of bees in their unique biomes, safeguarding their diversity, and sharing the magnificent world of wild bees.
Honeybees
Honeybees are cavity dwellers, often choosing nest sites under rock, in rocky crevices, in tree cavities or under brush. In the desert region of the Karoo, cavities are hard to come by and honeybees choose burrows dug by aardvark (antbear) to nest in. All of these cavities are the natural habitats of wild honeybees. It is this diverse habitat each with their own ecology and complex interactions that have helped Africa’s wild bees to remain resilient. It is within these wild spaces that honeybees have continually adapted and evolved through natural selection to changes in their environments, and are able to deal with pathogens and mites without human interference.
Solitary Bees
South Africa is home to over a thousand bee species, the majority of which are solitary, with most living in holes in the ground. Amongst them are the stout-bodied leafcutter bees, carrying pollen on hairs on the underside of the abdomen and cutting semi-circles from leaves and petals to line their burrows. They often nest in pre-existing cavities or in hollow stems. Anthophora bees, also known as ‘digger bees’, are ground-nesters and fast-flying. One example, Amegilla, construct their nests in clay-rich soil, building a turret as an entrance which extends up to 7cm above the ground. There are also the carder bees, often seen gathering nest materials like plant fibres from leaves and stems.
Carpenter bees nest in dead wood, and the seldom seen Fidelia bees nest in soil and are often almost white in colour. On a hot day, solitary bees can be seen blowing nectar bubbles to reduce the water content. The variety of bees, their colours, characteristics, and their behaviours, are fascinating.
Bees play a crucial role in maintaining biodiversity. The vast range of bee species contributes significantly to the diversity of the flowers we see, the medicinal plants we find, and the food we eat. Their influence extends to our cultures and to our languages.
The true bee-keeper
It is a misconception that honeybees need beekeepers in order to save them. As humans we have a natural inclination to want to save things. But bees have been around for millions of years and were thriving and evolving without us. Their adaptations to different climates, geology, flowers, altitudes, ecosystems, predators, even weather (like wind!) is remarkable. To save our bees we need to let them be free to bee. We need to stop wanting to control or manage every aspect of being a bee, which inevitably changes their natural behaviour. Bees don’t need us to box them in hives or determine cell size and shape of comb through frames and foundation wax; bees don’t need us to medicate them and in so doing, kill all healthy and symbiotic microfauna living in the leaf litter and nest debris that can be beneficial in the fight against disease and Varroa mite, and at the same time kill off bees’ natural ability to develop coping mechanisms. Bees don’t need us to take and eat their honey, which really is their food and therefore their energy. In wild nests one does not find vast quantities of honey. There is always just as much honey stored as the bees may require to tide over bad weather days or drought so that they can continue all their colony functions, like caring for their brood, producing wax and bee milk or royal jelly, cleaning cells for the queen to lay her eggs, keeping the nest temperature and humidity constant…. If every beekeeper could turn their love of bees or wonderment at bees (and this is really what one should have if you are keeping bees) to watching bees do what they do naturally, then bees worldwide would be far better off and have the capacity to survive, if they are strong and healthy. The word ‘beekeeper’ needs redefining as those who are ensuring that there are swathes of flowering plants in our gardens, and tracts of wild flowers on agricultural land, and interconnected biomes of natural vegetation, not only providing forage and a natural pollination of orchards and agricultural crops for our consumption, but also habitat for all species of wild bees (and other pollinators). These are the true bee-keepers and in so doing, the bees will keep us and all future generations to come. Our focus should not be on maximising agricultural land for greater areas of food production and less peripheral wild pollinator forage spaces, but rather on vast spaces of wildness and a better and more abundant crop on existing agricultural land due to an abundance of varied and specialist pollinators.
