THE HONEYBEES OF THE BRITISH ISLES Beowulf A. Cooper B.Sc., A.R.C.S. Edited by Philip Denwood BRITISH ISLES BEE BREEDERS' ASSOCIATION © British Isles Bee Breeders' Association 11 Thomson Drive, Codnor, Derby DE5 9RU First Published 1986 British Library CIP Data Cooper, Beowulf A. The Honeybees of the British Isles. 1. Bees—Great Britain—Breeding I. Title II. Denwood, Philip 638'.1 SF531.5 ISBN 0-905369-06-8 Dedicated by the Committee of BIBBA to Griselda R. Cooper Contents Foreword vi Editor's Preface vii Chapter 1 Introduction 1 2 Ecological Genetics 8 3 Native Bees 16 4 Supersedure 40 5 Mating Behaviour 65 6 Management of Native Bees 82 7 Bee Breeding 98 8 Evaluation 102 9 Selection 122 10 Propagation and Mating 136 Appendix 1 The Inaugural Meeting of VBBA 140 2 A Note on Terence Theaker 142 3 A Note on Queen Balling 145 4 A First Introduction to Bees and Beekeeping 147 Notes to Chapters 1-10 150 Glossary of technical terms 152 Bibliography 156 Index 159 Foreword Beowulf Cooper's professional career was as an entomologist in the Government's Agricultural Advisory Service, helping our farmers to grow crops and raise livestock with the minimum damage from insects and other pests. In this work he was always conscious of the environment in which farmers live and work, and he did his best to preserve this by avoiding the harmful effects which pest control unfortunately often has. He had many other interests, but he decided many years ago to devote all his spare time to the study of the honeybee. His contribution to our knowledge of bees in Britain was considerable, and much of this new information was spread by the British Isles Bee Breeders' Association, which he did so much to create and to foster. However, many of the results of his research have never been published. He left a mass of unedited material, which forms the substance of this book. We are indebted to Philip Denwood for the immense amount of work he has done in preparing Beo's results for the press. The task has in some ways been greater than writing a new book about the work. Those who knew Beo will be impressed by the way his inimitable style has been retained, so that we can often imagine as we read that he is actually speaking to us again. I am sure that the text will inspire many readers and encourage them to continue the work on breeding and cultivating the strains of bee best adapted to the different localities in the British Isles. As stated in the editor's preface, this book is written for beekeepers, and it is assumed that readers will have at least some basic knowledge of bees and beekeeping. However, I believe that the book should have an even wider appeal. It contains much that should be of interest to those concerned with genetics, inheritance and animal behaviour, for bees are so different from the animals usually studied by workers in these disciplines. Many of these scientists are unfortunately unfamiliar with the honeybee. No doubt they could easily rectify this by reading one of many books on this insect. However in order to make their task easier we have included a short appendix (Appendix 4) describing the life history of the honeybee and the general principles of beekeeping, which should serve to enable such readers to get the most out of the text. Professor KENNETH MELLANBY, C.B., Sc.D., F.I.Biol. President, BIBBA vi Editor's Preface An outline of Beowulf Cooper's career as one of Britain's most active and respected entomologists, together with many personal tributes and reminiscences, may be found in BIBBA News No. 21, dated May 1982. At his sudden death in February of that year he left a mass of material which he had often said was to be incorporated, along with various existing and projected BIBBA leaflets, into a book on bee breeding. Soon afterwards Albert Knight, Secretary of BIBBA, suggested to me that I might undertake the job of putting such a book together. The proposal received the approval of Beo's widow Griselda and of the BIBBA Committee, and the present work is the result. Beo's philosophy, as he liked to call it, of beekeeping and bee breeding was the product of thousands of hive inspections and conversations with beekeepers in all parts of the British Isles. These activities, involving a great deal of travelling, together with his very demanding professional life, left him little time to set down systematic statistical documentation; though he made a start on this for his own colonies on the record cards which he largely devised, and in his studies on wing venation. His experiences were distilled into copious notes, jotted down on record cards often in odd moments, and rough drafts of articles. From these I have tried to weave a continuous narrative, incorporating many of his published leaflets and articles which are mostly now difficult of access. Over ninety percent of the text is Beo's own words; inevitably I have had to do some rearrangement and add linking passages when developing short notes into extended themes. I have assumed a basic knowledge of honeybee biology in the reader of this book, such as may be gained from the work by Free, listed in the Bibliography, or from other standard textbooks. Also assumed is some familiarity with the techniques of beekeeping - though the reader should be prepared to suspend his belief in some of the statements commonly made in beekeeping textbooks! Also among the material were the diaries of Terence Theaker from 1958 to 1971, together with some of his notebooks. A study of these has confirmed the remarkable qualities seen by Beo in the Theaker strains of bee. It has also revealed ideas which Beo was to take up, some later to be discarded, others developed. Time and again in his notes Beo refers to Terence Theaker and his bees as the starting point of some observation, or as a kind of comparative touchstone. Though by no means uncritical of Theaker's ideas, Beo was delighted to acknowledge his debt to him. It was no accident that vii the decision to form the Village Bee Breeders' Association (later BIBBA) was taken in Theaker's apiary. Beo also records his indebtedness to many other devotees of the native bee, too numerous to list here. No-one with an interesting strain of bee, no matter what his walk of life or where he lived, could escape the possibility of a Cooper visit. Many of them gave freely of their time and experience. Perhaps this book may stand as a tribute to such beekeepers and their forerunners, who maintained over the years many valuable strains of bee. I am grateful to Griselda Cooper for permitting the use of Beo's written and photographic material; and to Prof. K. Mellanby, Rev. Eric Milner, and Messrs. K. Ibbotson, A. Knight, R. Price and A. Waring for reading the text and making helpful suggestions. Thanks are due to A. Waring, Pl. 15, lower & Pl. 37 upper, and H. G. Smith, Pl. 27 lower, for providing photographs, and to the Editors of Bee Craft and the British Bee Journal for permission to reproduce material first printed in those magazines. Mrs. I. C. Waring gave valuable assistance in proofreading. All remaining shortcomings are my own responsibility. CHAPTER ONE Introduction Early experiences I first handled bees in 1940, at what is now the Slough laboratory of the Agricultural Development and Advisory Service. My own stocks were built up soon afterwards from two colonies I obtained in North Yorkshire and from one wild colony taken out of the church at Great Smeaton in the same county. When, like many novices, I avidly read all the beekeeping textbooks which came my way, I was struck by the marked contrast between the contents of these books and my field experience as a research and advisory entomologist (beginning also in 1940). According to the beekeeping texts, bees were basically all the same, and the enormous variation in their behaviour and honey production resulted from differences in the immediate environment or my management. Many authors and speakers admitted to variability in colour or prolificacy, but they treated these as if they were invariable "racial" units, not inherited on mendelian lines, and used the words "hybrid" and "mongrel" as pejorative terms, to denigrate anything of native origin. Yet in all the organisms my work touched upon, plant or animal, ecology and genetics exerted at least as big a force as the environment. Surely the honeybee could not differ so markedly from the rest of creation, natural or man-made? My first incredulous beekeeping years clearly indicated the falsity of the notions to be found in the textbooks. The ADAS bees were mixed black and yellow-banded, followers, quick to sting, good workers and infrequent swarmers. The North Yorkshire bees were black, hard-working and docile; perhaps 1 was fortunate in that one was a superseder and the other swarmed and gave me 39 capped queencells a few weeks later. The Great Smeaton bees were infrequent swarmers with other virtues. My partner had started with bees of Italian origin: yellow-banded, prolific, followers, attackers when insufficiently smoked and with a big appetite for stores. In 1947 I moved via Cambridge to Boston, Lincolnshire, sold my 13 stocks in Yorkshire and restarted with bees from my new area. To my great surprise the bees were totally different in almost every respect, apart from being black and hardworking.