The Bees Had It Right

One of my favorite things about bees is the way they work together to make their communities strong. With dissent and discord in apparently endless supply in the human world these days, I’ve been hanging out with my hives just to soak in the peaceful cooperation that drives them.Last week, I had an opportunity to see a wonderful example of bees working together for a common good. But first a little background.

I’m trying an experiment in our strongest hive. Usually, the frames you add to a beehive have what’s called foundation on them. That’s essentially a template, either in wax or wax-coated plastic, with perfect hexagonal cells stamped out on it. The bees build onto that template, making the cells deep enough to hold honey or brood. The cells in those templates are 5.4 millimeters across, and that’s been the standard cell size since the late 1800s, when a beekeeper named Ursmar Badoux succumbed to the “bigger is better” notion that we humans are so enthusiastic about.

Before we got involved, honeybees naturally built cells that were around 4.9 mm across. But Belgian scientist and beekeeper Badoux, writing in 1893, posited that bigger bees would be able to carry more nectar and pollen, and so would be able to produce more honey than their more diminutive cousins. His solution—give bees a foundation that would encourage larger cell size, and subsequently bigger larvae, leading to bigger bees—was quickly accepted as gospel and the 5.4 mm cell size became the standard.

It worked, in that most managed honeybees are bigger than their wild relations. Whether or not those bigger bees really are more productive is a point of argument among beekeepers, but 5.4 mm cell foundation frames are stamped out by the millions and are what you’ll find in most hives.

Which brings us to today’s small-cell controversy. We know honeybees are in trouble, in part from infestations of tracheal and varroa mites. Both of these disgusting little parasites love to snuggle up to baby bees in their larval stage, weakening them even before they hatch. They burrow down into the brood cells, and it’s very hard for the nurse bees to root them out. Over time, a heavy mite load can weaken a hive to the point of collapse.

But when bees grow up in smaller cells, there’s less room for mites to bunk in with them. And smaller bees have smaller trachea—too small, in fact, for tracheal mites to set up housekeeping. Smaller bees also mature faster, giving varroa mites less time to colonize a brood cell. With varroa mites able to double their numbers daily, raising bees that emerge from their cells two days sooner is a big deal.

Turns out that maybe the bees knew what they were doing with their naturally smaller cells. Some manufacturers now make small-cell frames to encourage smaller bees, but you can also let the bees build their own comb without a template, as they do in the wild.

Some guidance is necessary, or you’ll have a hive with comb built every which way, making it impossible to pull out frames for inspection or to take honey. On the advice of a much more experienced beekeeper, I placed empty frames in between standard frames in the brood boxes, encouraging the bees to build out the empty frames more or less in line with their pre-fab frames next door. The empty frames have three strands of wire running crosswise, giving the bees the barest structure to build on, but otherwise it’s all up to them.

A couple of weeks after installing the empty frames, I went in to take a look. The empty frames were filling out beautifully with pristine white wax, secreted in tiny flakes from the abdomens of young bees. A string of bees hung like a necklace across the first frame I pulled out. This chain of bees, called a festoon, is teamwork at its best. Honeybees have tiny little pads and hooks on each of their six legs. When they are festooning, they link those hooks together in the bug equivalent of holding hands.

In practical terms, nobody seems to be quite sure what purpose festooning serves. Many believe it’s a way for the bees to measure distance and get the cell spacing just right. Others think that honeybees need to raise their body temperature in order to produce wax, and clinging to each other accomplishes that.

As for me, I have decided to believe that the bees hold hands—er, legs—while they’re building new comb because it’s some of the hardest work they do. And when you’re doing really hard work, it’s good to have a friend holding your hand and working by your side. Who could argue with that?