The bees that gather the Isle of Colonsay Wildflower Honey are a strain of the native Black Bee (Apis mellifera mellifera). This strain derives from the bees that recolonised Britain and northern Europe after the ice age some 10,000 years ago. The species of bee makes no difference to the honey we get, but the Black Bee is much hardier than the Yellow or Italian Bee ( Apis mellifera ligustica) common in much of England and southern Europe. This hardiness allows the bees to gather nectar on cool sunless days, and forage in a wind that would keep most colonies indoors. The same harsh climate that has selected the Highland cattle and Blackface sheep has created the Black Bee, that winters well on little honey and cautiously expands it's numbers in the spring, lest a cold, wet summer lie in wait.
Colonsay and Oronsay sustain around 50 colonies of bees. Yields vary with summers but are below the U.K. average of 30lb per colony. There are few beekeepers on the West coast of Scotland, the climate being too wet for commercial beekeeping. Colonsay lies to the west of the rain shadow and it's high sunshine hours make beekeeping viable, if marginal.
The bees on Colonsay are isolated from mainland stocks and are largely disease free. No chemicals are used in the hives to control diseases.
Some facts of interest
A strong colony of bees will have around 40,000 workers at any given time in summer, a few drones and one queen. 200,000 bees are reared in a season.
A colony will gather some 400lbs of honey and 100lb of pollen during the summer, only 20-50lbs is available for harvest; the rest keeps that hive of activity going!
A bee will visit from 100 to 1,000 flowers each flight or outing from it's hive, to bring back only a twentyfith of a gram of nectar, which is half it's own body weight. It will make over a dozen such flights on a good summer's day.
It takes as many as 50,000 bee flights to gather a pound of honey.
A bee will live for only six weeks in the busy summer months but six months if it is part of the wintering population.
Reflect on the work of the bees, when you enjoy a teaspoon of honey!
Colonsay became well known for it's woodland gardens with it's extensive collection of Rhododendrons. Rhododendron nectar is one of the few plant nectars poisonous to both bees and man; as a beekeeper I often get asked about this. If you are interested, read my article which appeared in the Scottish Beekeeper January1998, and goes into the problem in more depth.
