Migrants

There is only one species of honey-producing bee in UK: the western honeybee, Apis mellifera. Elsewhere, things get more complicated: In Nepal, for example, A. mellifera has been introduced from the west; the similar eastern honeybee, Apis cerana occurs wild and is also kept in hives by beekeepers. But there are also two species of wild 'giant honeybee', Apis dorsata and Apis laboriosa, from which 'honey hunters' take honey. These bees are 17-30mm long, with formidable stings; there are some terrifying videos out there of people swinging from the vertiginous Himalayan cliffs where these giants create open colonies, sawing off lobes of comb with long sticks into suspended baskets, all the while enduring attack from the understandably enraged insects. The honey is valuable, highly prized even, but the activity is as much a rite of passage, or an act of cultural significance and identity, as it is an economic activity

Giant honeybees are migratory - abandoning their open combs and following the wave of blossom as it progresses up and down the mountains, like wildebeest on a savanah. British bees do not migrate, in that sense, but they do occasionally take a dislike to their hive (or tree, or roof...) and just leave - "abscond", in the human-centered language of beekeeping - to find a better life elsewhere. Similarly, in summer, the queen and perhaps half of the worker bees will leave their home to search for somewhere new, leaving behind the rest of her children to continue the old colony and raise a new queen. Bees on the move - searching for a new home en masse in this way are called a swarm

Now, every beekeeper knows the trade secret that however alarming a swarm might appear to be - a mass of buzzing and fast-moving insects swirling through the air in what seems a chaotic and uncontrolled way - bees in a swarm are actually at their most placid, manageable, unaggressive best. They are laser-focused on sticking with their queen and finding her a safe place to live. In their homeless and vulnerable state, they have no reason to sting anyone, and they are not going to waste their life on anything so futile at this critical moment. Strange then - and perhaps Hollywood is culpable - that the word has acquired so many negative, threatening, aggressive and terrorising associations. A swarm is mis-cast as a thing of nightmares, fearful and demonic.

David Cameron referred to people fleeing violence, starvation and oppression in North Africa for the shores of Southern Europe as a "swarm". If he was a beekeeper, you might have thought he meant that they are vulnerable people looking for shelter, food, safety and a better future in a new home, bringing with them the promise of hard work and sweet reward. But he isn't and he didn't

Mid-winter cold is a good time to move hives around. The bees are all inside and the move is less likely to confuse them. So we rearranged these two today, spacing them from each other on to two separate green stands. By the time they emerge in warmer weather, they will have forgotten exactly what the outside world looked like and will reorient themselves to their new location. The branches stacked in front of their front door will reinforce the message that the neighbourhood has changed since they last looked around and they should take some time to get acquainted with it. They have not gone far, but they have migrated without knowing it