Youngwilders - Exploring the world of honey bees with Guy Thompson

On a very beautiful August bank holiday, Charity Buddy hosted a bee workshop for 13 young people in partnership with Youngwilders. It was a rare opportunity for young people to deep dive into the world of wild honey bees and didn’t disappoint.

Once seen as forest dwellers, our understanding of how wild honey bees are connected to trees has mostly been forgotten. Today, we mainly see honey bees through the lens of honey production and there are a number of misconceptions about their existence that have led to harmful practices. This workshop lifted the lid on some of these common misconceptions and encouraged people to think from the perspective of the honeybee, rather than the human.

Guy Thompson, a longtime bee guardian, started the workshop by showcasing the ‘perfect’ bee hive, drawing a diagram of a hive within an old tree hollow and explaining its key benefits, from the bark providing a good level of insulation to the sap flow within the tree actually helping to regulate the hive’s temperature. It was once we understood what perfect looked like did we realise that the standard bee hives used today mean honey bees have to work much harder to survive. Poor insulation in standard hives, for example, means bees have to work much harder to stay warm and therefore produce and consume much more honey than they would in the wild.

Afterwards, we stepped into the sun to explore a number of occupied hives of free-living bees. Guy and Colleen Long, the owner of Maple Farm, talked through their experiences using the different hives. A definite highlight was the chance to look inside a hive that had recently been robbed or ‘hawked’ by a group of wasps or hornets, and was being further cleared by the onset of wax moths and their lavae. It was incredible to see the honeycomb in detail and marvel at nature’s ability to create such amazing structures! We also observed the internal workings of a hive through a glass observation window where we could see the thousands of bees at work.

To spend a sunny Saturday morning thinking at bee-scale was an incredible privilege and lots of us now see ourselves as ‘bee guardians’, like Guy! A number of attendees expressed an interest in putting up their own hives for free-living honey bees so we all went to the pub afterwards to brainstorm some possible locations. Watch this space!

Blog post written by Molly Easton from Youngwilders, photos provided by Maple Farm’s Artists in Residence, Koice Media