Ellen Danneels (°1985) bears the eloquent title of Beekeeper Curator at Honeybee Valley. She is fascinated by the honeybee, personally and as a scientist. She started as a beekeeper herself five years ago. Unfortunately, the conditions are not too good for these wonderfully social insects. “We don't have too few honey bees, but they are too weak.”
Text: Bert Voet Photography: Thomas De Boever
“JUST DON'T STAND IN FRONT OF THE CLOSET – THEY ARE QUIET, THEY WON'T DO ANYTHING.”
After Ellen Danneels has guided us through the newly constructed bee garden on Campus Sterre with many open, pollen-rich flowers such as ironheart and verbena, she opens a bee hive without gloves. Bees can be aggressive, but Danneels uses cold wood smoke to calm her colonies. “That works on their instinct: they think there is a forest fire, fill their stomachs with honey and flee,” she explains. “Then they are concerned with that, and not with the beekeeper.”
It does not change the fact that she is stung about twenty times a day when she works with bees. “That's part of beekeeping,” she says. 'Normally I protect my head. But stabs in my hands: that's not too bad.'
However, Danneels is not the classic beekeeper who got into it because his father or grandfather was a beekeeper. From Kortrijk she studied biology at the KULeuven, after which she taught at the De Maricolen Technical Institute in Bruges. 'That was also the plan: teaching is my longevity. But a vacancy as an assistant, which also included a PhD and a teaching assignment, brought me to Ghent University in 2008. With bee professional Frans Jacobs and his assistant Dirk De Graaf. I did not do my PhD on bees but on the proteins in the poison of the parasitic wasp. But the group was intensively involved with bees: the trigger for what has become a passion.'
Her explanation of the social aspects of a honey bee colony is downright intriguing. “That is a community with a whole hierarchy,” she says. “There is one queen – a woman at the head, which is quite unusual. She lays all the eggs. In addition, in the summer a colony has about 500 drones – male – and 50,000 workers. The drones hatch from unfertilized eggs, the female bees from fertilized eggs. Depending on what food she receives, the female bee becomes a queen or a worker: as a larva, a queen is constantly fed royal jelly, a very rich paste. Each worker has her own task. After the birth, she starts as a cleaning lady: she has to stay indoors and keep the cupboard clean. A few days later she starts sweating to build so that the people can expand. Then follows the defense mission: she stands at the opening to keep other peoples out. And after about eighteen days she can come out of the closet for the first time. First for a reconnaissance flight, then to do some shopping: collect pollen and nectar. It really is a community that needs to work together. Otherwise a honey bee will not survive. You can't see them as individuals. The people are individuals.”
“But the honey bee is only one of the 350 bee species in Flanders,” she emphasizes. 'There are also ivy bees, silk bees, sand bees, etc. These wild bees can live solitary lives, even though they occur in groups. The bumblebee is an exception: it is considered a wild bee, but it also forms colonies.'
AI
Honeybee Valley was founded in 2016 by professor Dirk De Graaf, who had already succeeded Frans Jacobs. “There was a gap between the scientific research in the lab and the beekeepers, who were barely aware of it,” says Danneels. 'It became a platform for all those involved in beekeeping, also at policy level - that is, politics. Main assignment: finding solutions for winter mortality of the honey bee. After my PhD I was able to stay. I started working within the Flemish Beekeeping Program, which is financed by the Flemish and European governments. From there, honey analyzes were started and support was provided for beekeepers, for example in the fight against the varroa mite, a parasite that can only reproduce on the brood of honey bees. As a result, I had a lot of contact with beekeepers. Of course, not knowing anything about it yourself was not possible. So I installed four cabinets at home myself. Afterwards I heard that I did have ancestors who were beekeepers. Just as every farmer used to have beehives. Then it was simple and easy. They were in your garden and once a year you collected honey from them. That changed in the 1980s because of the varroa mite. Certainly people who did not have much knowledge of it lost their peoples. They just died.”
Last year Danneels moved from the lab to the apiaries. “Here I am now a beekeeper curator,” she laughs. 'I don't have a museum to oversee, but apiaries, together with two other beekeepers. We have 80 colonies, 25 of which are here on campus. Because there is not enough food here, we also have it in Merelbeke and Merendree, among others.'
There is a monitoring tool in front of the cupboard that Danneels shows us. A camera films bees flying in and out. “To see how much pollen is brought in,” she explains. 'Artificial intelligence helps us find out whether there is enough food coming in. It is part of the European Betterbee project: digital devices that we connect to a bee hive, so that we at least have to stay in the hive because we can see from a distance whether something is wrong with the colony. We are fully exploring the possibilities. In the beginning it was limited to a scale and a temperature sensor for the breeding nest. Now we are going much further. For example, we measure vibrations of the bee colony with an accelerometer. Deviations then indicate that something is wrong. Or we put a knocker on the hive: a small device that regularly knocks, after which the bees respond and we can deduce something about their condition from their buzzing. The hives also contain cameras that detect mites on the bees. For example, we monitor the health status of people through innovative high-tech in a sector that uses a wild natural organism. We also use pitch meters to distinguish the invasive Asian hornet by its frequency. There are apps for smartphones that warn the beekeeper if there are hornets hanging from a hive.'
BIG BUSINESS
With her cupboards at home, she is busy all weekends during the summer. “It is much more than collecting and processing honey around July 21,” she explains. 'The entire period before that I have been busy giving the peoples space. Such a colony grows from about 10,000 bees in the winter to 50,000 in the summer. In the meantime, you must carefully observe whether they have enough space and food. And in May or June: prevent them from swarming. Under normal circumstances, the queen feels at some point that the space is too small, after which she leaves with half a colony. The rest are then left behind, and a new queen is born. Swarming is a natural process, but most traditional beekeepers do not want a colony to swarm, because then they have to look for and catch the new colony in a tree somewhere, which is a lot of work. And so you have to gradually increase the size of the hive, so that it stays warm but the bee population can also grow. What also happens, and I should know because I live in a neighborhood: half a bee colony leaving is quite impressive. They will not sting: they are busy looking for a new place. Normally you can walk unprotected in such a swarm. But people are afraid of it. If I have a swarm at home, I'm more concerned with the neighbors than with the swarm.' (Laughs) “To become a beekeeper you have to panic sometimes,” she says. 'And then: making decisions. For example, if there is suddenly no queen. Then you have a motherless bee colony and no more eggs are laid. Then you either have to intervene, or the people themselves look for a solution. You can say: I let nature take its course. But our bees can no longer do that. We have domesticated them too much. We would like to return to that: leave the hive alone as much as possible and only intervene if necessary. But that is difficult: from the outside you cannot see what is happening inside, and most colonies need a beekeeper to survive. Bee colonies living in the wild have become very rare.' “That's because we grew them that way,” she continues. 'It has become an economic animal. Beekeepers can earn extra money with their honey, but also with pollination: many beekeepers travel with their bee colonies to fruit cultivation. In Flanders most are hobbyists, but in the Eastern Bloc and the United States it is big business. For example, hundreds of beehives are brought on trucks from California to Florida to pollinate almond crops. And for that the bees must be manageable. Manageable. They used to sit in a hollow tree. You couldn't look for the queen and stayed away. In a hive you must be able to see them at any time and we try to separate the brood nest from the honey that you want to remove at a certain time. Moreover, we now also keep bees in urbanized areas. In Flanders there are about 5,000 beekeepers with an average of seven colonies. There are very many. But with one nation you can work in shorts, while with another you are immediately stabbed. And so we have bred them from quite feisty colonies to very docile lambs, through selection for gentleness – in addition to a high honey yield. As a result, they have lost other properties, such as strength and resilience to disease – for example against that varroa mite. It crawls into the brood cell where an egg is laid that becomes a larva; the mite sucks blood and transmits viruses. The developing bee does not die, but it does develop shriveled wings, for example.' “So we are left with a kind of domesticated but also weakened animal,” she concludes. 'From a scientific point of view, we should actually leave it back to nature. But economics prevent that, and they can no longer survive there anyway.'
GROOMING
Earlier this year there were dramatic reports after the major bee deaths last winter. “There are not too few honey bees, but they are too weak and have difficulty getting through the winter,” says Danneels. 'A winter mortality of one in ten colonies is normal. We monitor winter mortality in Belgium. In some years we are at 35 percent. One in three! There is not one cause, it is a complex interplay, but in my opinion the varroa mite is the most important factor. A lot of our research is about that. It arrived in 1984 and, as usual, the first reflex was to combat it with medicines and pesticides. And just as often it turned out not to work well after ten years. Now they are taking a different approach and are looking for more natural methods to achieve resistance. Bees can develop strategies to deal with that mite. Grooming, for example: just like monkeys delouse each other, bees also groom each other to get rid of those mites. You can select colonies that strongly exhibit that behavior. It's just one example. There are also bees that are able to smell certain pheromones to see if there is a mite in a brood cell, after which they remove the pupa and eat it. Various research groups are investigating which odors these are and what exactly happens. So now we're tackling it in a very genetic way. We look for which mutations in the genome cause those behaviors. If you can screen all bee colonies in Flanders and you know which mutations you need, you can select for further breeding. Marker assistant selection, it's called. We are also looking at whether we can make specific crossings. We get great international publications in this. We also have a project in which we investigate how we can genetically modify bees with the CRISPR-Cas technique. This is already very common with plants.'
“A second cause of bee mortality is the Asian hornet, which has spread rapidly and is very present this year,” she says, and takes us back to a hive. 'Where is there an Asian here? There!' She points immediately. The hornet, a carnivore, hangs in front of the hive, with its head turned away from it. When a bee returns tired, it simply plucks them out of the air and eats them. “They are not aggressive towards us – they only become aggressive when you approach their nest,” says Danneels.
“We now expect an increase in winter mortality due to the Asian hornet,” she says. 'And I am an optimistic person by nature, but when it comes to the hornet I am not. He arrived in France with pottery from Japan. When he entered West Flanders about five years ago, we started the Vespawatch reporting point, funded by the Flemish government. A year later he was already in Limburg. Now he can no longer be controlled. He is based here and will remain. It is a serious threat to honey bees. They no longer dare to fly out to get food. It can also enter the hive and eat an entire bee colony.
I am downright pessimistic about what that will do to our people.'
Climate change also contributes to bee mortality. “Not so much in itself,” says Danneels. 'A healthy bee colony can cope with the hot summers: it can ventilate the nest. But if it is somewhat weakened, it becomes more difficult. And above all: an indirect consequence of climate change is that plants bloom differently, which changes the timing of feeding. For example, willows often bloom early. The bees then collect pollen, after which the queen takes action by laying many eggs. And then a cold drop often follows in February-March. This requires a great effort from the people to keep the brood warm. They can also cope with very harsh winters. They are even good for a bee colony. It is mainly the large fluctuations that cause them problems. Or the very wet spring we have had. It rained constantly, so they couldn't fly out to get food. Then the beekeeper would have to intervene with sugar dough, otherwise his people could starve.'
“A beekeeper has to know what he is doing,” she says. 'With Honeybee Valley we try to guide them, including with newsletters that respond to the moment.'
TONGUES
Just like the bees, the beekeepers also form a separate colony. “Highly interested, inquisitive nature people who explore a lot,” is how she characterizes them. 'They were literally bitten. So they usually have a lot of knowledge. From bees, but also from plants. They have built up a certain amount of experience and are happy to share it. But every beekeeper also has his own thoughts. There are many different opinions. Then there is some discussion. (Laughs)
Beekeeping is still passed on from father to son – or daughter. “Although it is on the rise and you now see a whole new generation,” says Danneels. 'The beekeeping associations are inundated with young guests, committed to nature, who decide to take a course. Well-known figures such as the Bruges chocolatier Dominique Persoone have also made it hot. We try to give them theoretical and practical knowledge, but we have moved away from the idea: if you want to do something for nature, place a beehive. It's not that we don't have enough bees. We have a lot of them, but they don't have enough food. This is due to the nature of our agriculture. Giant corn or beet fields are of almost no use to them. We call those green deserts. We used to have roadsides full of daisies and dandelions, but just as they were in bloom they were mowed. This is now gradually changing, also under the impulse of the Flemish government: verges may not be mowed before June 15, except at dangerous intersections. The 'Mow May Not' campaign aimed at the general population is also very useful. A month is not enough, but there should be awareness that not everything has to be done. You now see wild growth at round points, but then a sign should be added: we stimulate biodiversity. Otherwise many people won't like it. And that is not to have more bees, but to have more food for the bees that are there.'
“It mainly concerns wild bees,” she explains. 'The number of species has fallen drastically because they have so little nutrition. Our honey bee has enough food, or it is provided for. But a solitary bee that finds nothing within a radius of a hundred meters is doomed to die. Wild bees are more important for pollination than we long thought, as has been shown by a lot of scientific research. This also applies to the diversity of bees, because they all have a different way of pollinating. A short or long tongue, for example, that is adapted to specific flowers and plants. Bumblebee colonies are now often placed near strawberry cultivation, partly because their specific tongue ensures efficient pollination of the strawberry flowers.'
SPRAY POISON
But the invasion of the Asian hornet is also causing havoc there. "In addition to honey bees, it also eats other insects, causing enormous damage to our insect population and to the wild bees, which are already having a hard time," says Danneels. 'And in addition to meat, hornets also need sugars. They get them from grapes, pears, apples, and so on. That will cause problems for our fruit cultivation. This is already the case in France. In Portugal they are desperate.'
“They are aggressive animals, a very invasive species,” she concludes. 'We must keep the European hornet alive at all costs: it is the only competitor in terms of nutrition and nesting places. I don't think we can get rid of the Asian hornet anymore. The goal should be: to achieve some kind of balance. This is possible if we continue to destroy as many nests as possible. But that requires money and effort. The extermination of a hornet's nest is very different: it not only stings, it also injects poison into your eyes, which requires special training and a suit. Moreover, the nests are thirty or forty meters high in the trees. When the leaves fall they become visible, but then it is too late because all the queens have already fledged. And 500 new queens can be born in one nest. So feel free to talk about breeding like hornets instead of breeding like rabbits.'
DR. BEE
Anyone who has ever spooned honey fresh from a comb at breakfast in a good hotel knows what a luxury product it is. But honey also has medicinal uses. “There is a lot of interest in apitherapy,” says Ellen Danneels. 'There is a lot of scientific evidence for the antibacterial effect of honey. In medicine it is often a last resort to cleanse wounds. There is also cancer research into substances from bee venom such as the protein melitin, which acts very specifically on certain receptors. And to propolis, a substance that bees extract from resin to close cracks. Bees have a lot of potential in medicine. There is now immunotherapy to immunize people for bee sting allergy. Allergic reactions can vary greatly: from itching to serious swelling to breathing problems or even a heart attack. Treating with immunotherapy involves injecting poison in low doses to gradually get the person used to it. UZ Gent and UZ Gasthuisberg are working on this. This also makes sense for beekeepers. Some start as a hobby but later become allergic. While the risk of being stung is of course much greater. It is usually recommended to stop, but many beekeepers are quite stubborn people.' (Laughs)
