Many observations and discoveries arising from my ongoing work with solitary bees and wild honeybees are documented in articles published through the Wolwekraal Conservation and Research Organisation (WCRO).
“The second circumstance in which it is highly adaptive for worker bees to engorge on honey and then refrain from stinging is when their home is threatened by fire, a danger they sense by smelling smoke. A field study recently conducted by Geoff Tribe, Karin Sternberg…”
3. Species Surveys and Natural History Observations
Personal essays and observations from more than a decade spent following solitary bees and wild honeybees through the landscapes of the Karoo and beyond.
Wild Bees, Wild Ferments — on freedom, flavour, and microbial kinship
Twelve years ago, bees lived in hives and made honey. That was the whole story—until I lay on the ground and watched wild honeybees vanish into a rock crevice. That encounter changed my life. Since then, I’ve tracked bees across parts of South Africa, from fynbos to the arid Karoo. I’ve documented solitary bee nests and wild honeybee colonies in abandoned aardvark burrows. I’ve seen resilience: aestivation through desert heat, migration in drought, the creation of microbial-rich, resin-lined ecosystems underground. I’ve also witnessed the cost of boxing bees—the flattening of their wild diversity into uniformity. Wild colonies, once rich in local adaptations, are reduced to pollination tools, to domesticated and managed assets under a homogenised system of beekeeping. This post is about unlearning. About watching bees on their terms, and seeing what they build when we don’t interfere. From brood cells sealed in petals, to grape juice fermented into shelf-stable fruit syrups, bees teach us preservation, protection, and patience. Let’s leave the honey to the bees, and learn to create sweetness in other ways.
