{"id":1664,"date":"2016-04-17T15:53:09","date_gmt":"2016-04-17T03:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/?p=1664"},"modified":"2019-08-18T10:46:35","modified_gmt":"2019-08-17T22:46:35","slug":"leaving-the-bees-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/leaving-the-bees-2\/","title":{"rendered":"All About Bees"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, you know how we have bees<\/a>? And you remember\u00a0how the plan was to bring our bees on a big adventure to Northland where they could pollinate our citrus trees and make orange blossom honey<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\"Our<\/a>

Our Auckland bees – I think they were packing in this photo<\/p><\/div>\n

Well, things have changed.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0few months ago, our fellow farmlet adventurers Stephen and Deborah came up from Auckland for a\u00a0visit. As is his habit Stephen ventured forth\u00a0into Seven Acre Wood armed with a spade and a sack, looking for Jerusalem Cherry<\/a> to massacre. As he was wandering (no doubt massacring as he went), he heard buzzing from one of the trees. Stephen is an electrician so I imagine his first instinct\u00a0was to track down the electrical short, but when he looked up he\u00a0saw this:<\/p>\n

\"Hollow<\/a>

A hollow totara. Wait, could it be a transformer in heavy disguise?<\/p><\/div>\n

He looked even closer…<\/p>\n

\"bees\"<\/a>

… and\u00a0saw these. Thirty\u00a0feet up and humming at around 200Hz.<\/p><\/div>\n

Those, gentle readers, are feral bees! Almost unheard of in New Zealand these days\u00a0because of\u00a0varroa destructor<\/a>\u00a0(yes, that is a\u00a0real scientific\u00a0name), a nasty limpet-like mite that attaches to bees and drains\u00a0their body fluids. Varroa is in\u00a0all\u00a0our domesticated hives now, and the only way\u00a0to keep bees alive is to\u00a0use chemicals to control the mite population. It’s a bit like treating your dog for dinner plate sized fleas. Infected wild colonies\u00a0die (unless they’ve had the forethought to pick up a few treatment strips from Bayer<\/a> to hang in\u00a0the hive\u00a0twice a year).\u00a0I don’t know whether the farmlet ferals\u00a0already have varroa, but bringing our bees\u00a0here would infect them for sure. It seems only fair to give our new friends\u00a0a fighting chance.<\/p>\n

The upshot of all this is that our bees are staying in Auckland. They are going to live with AndyMan <\/a>who\u00a0mowed the\u00a0lawns while our old\u00a0house was on the market, and fell in love with those bees. He also helped me out with the deck rail during\u00a0trying\u00a0times with the council building inspector<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0became a bit of a mate.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The feral bees look like\u00a0Italians so probably\u00a0started as\u00a0a swarm\u00a0from a domestic hive.<\/p><\/div>\n

So\u00a0although I’m sad to leave our girls behind I know they are in good hands, and if the bees in Seven Acre Wood make it through to next spring it will have been a\u00a0worthwhile sacrifice. At that point the ferals\u00a0might well\u00a0be\u00a0research worthy<\/a>, and I’ll certainly be\u00a0trying to create a hive from their offspring if they ever swarm.<\/p>\n

I’ll keep you posted though because, as Winnie the Pooh once astutely said, ‘you never can tell with bees’!<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, you know how we have bees? And you remember\u00a0how the plan was to bring our bees on a big adventure to Northland where they could pollinate our citrus trees and make orange blossom honey? Well, things have changed. A\u00a0few… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26,2,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bees","category-moving","category-orange-grove"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1664"}],"version-history":[{"count":87,"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6288,"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1664\/revisions\/6288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charmedlife.co.nz\/cowboybootsandbrokenfingers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}