Sweetness And Light Part 1

Sweetness and Light.

The Mysterious History of the Honeybee.

by Hattie Ellis.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people shared their thoughts and stories about bees and honey with me. It would be impossible to mention them all personally-nearly everyone I spoke to on the subject had something close to their heart to say-but such experience and inspiration were regular spoonfuls of honey to my mind and meant a great deal to me. Thank you. I'd like to thank Roger Ellis, Emily Faccini, Gordon Smith, Frances Price, and Gail Vines, who generously took the time to read through drafts, and Willie Robson, of Chain Bridge Honey Farm in Northumberland (www.chainbridgehoney.co.uk), who both read through the chapters and made me want to write about the honey bee in the first place. The International Bee Research a.s.sociation's specialist library in Cardiff was a great help and a magnificent resource (www.ibra.org.uk). Finally, thanks to my agent, Georginal Capel, and my exceptional editors, Richard Atkinson in the U.K., and Kim Kanner Meisner in the U.S.

PROLOGUE.

HEATHER HONEY.

Willie Robson drives up to his beehives on the heather moor at Hangwell Law in the north of England. As he climbs, a road movie plays on the winds.h.i.+eld of his truck, of speeding cars and tarmac, of garages and caravan parks, giving way to a landscape of small, upland farms with scrubby slopes, populated by sheep. Curving horizons reach to the edges of the sky. Countryside is mostly air; and people, now largely urban and suburban, often idealize this sort of landscape as beautiful in its emptiness. To those who live here, and who can remember the to-and-fro of a rural workforce, this silence can feel more like an eerie absence. The land is grand here, with its heathered horizons and open distances, yet it can also lack the intimacy of use.

Beekeepers have brought their hives onto these northern moors for at least a millennium, and some still do. July brings the bonny bell heather and its rounded, ruby-purple flowers, and then the finer, paler, more common ling heather appears, lasting until the end of August. Ling heather honey, with its unique gellike texture and a room-filling fragrance, is one of the most prized in the world. In the pot, it glows fox red, often beaded with little silver bubbles.

Willie turns the truck off the road and drives along a half-track toward a belt of pines. In front of the trees is a broken line of fifty homemade hives. Painted in quiet blues, browns, and grays, they sit like orderly toadstools, squat and odd shaped, with a square roof on top of each. For two months, the bees have been coming and going between the hives and the heather moor, collecting nectar and pollen from the flowers, to feed each colony of up to fifty thousand bees. The bottom box contains the brood comb, where the insects are born and raised. The upper boxes, or "supers," hold the excess honey, saved up as a hefty gold reserve for the winter. The beekeeper is about to raid the bank.

The truck stops. Four hundred feet up, 6 miles or so from the sea, the land here feels close to the sky. On the horizon, the heather moor fades into the far blue of hills. There is a smell of pines and a hum of bees, quiet, for now. Jumping down from the truck cab, Willie takes off his hairy Borders tweed cap and zips up in his bee suit. Beekeepers say, casually, that stings are just an occupational hazard, and they get rid of them with a practiced cross between a scratch and a flick. But they all have tales, ranging from mad bravura to comic-book chases to sly observations of others' misfortune. Honeybees left alone do not sting; stinging might harm the intruder, but it also kills the bee. The twin barbed shafts dig into the skin, pump poison into human flesh, and then cannot withdraw. Instead, the sting rips the center from the abdomen so the insect straggles toward death, its insides torn out, pink and pulsing. But bees will die to protect the hive, just as they will fly ceaselessly to collect nectar and pollen so the hive's colony can live.

The apiarist's armor is a bee suit. Willie has a sort of khaki-green, nylon flying suit that zips across the body and then across the neck to close up the net-fronted hood. The legs are tucked into boots and the arms into gloves elasticized at the wrists. In his suit, he walks around like a s.p.a.ceman. Boots and gloves restrict some movement, but he goes slo-mo for another reason. "You go with a quiet tread, or all h.e.l.l breaks loose," he says. "It's a matter of weighing the situation. If trouble starts, you bail out."

After finding a piece of sacking among the bric-a-brac on the back of the truck, Willie lights the cloth with a match and puts it in a smoker formed like a pair of miniature bellows. The smoke can help lull the bees. They think there is an emergency, eat their fill of honey, as if ready for flight, and either because a full bee is a happy bee or because they are now less able to bend and sting, they are less aggressive. Willie takes the top off the first hive. Pffffff, Pffffff, Pffffff, goes the smoke. After a short pause, he heaves off the top box. Immediately, the weight reveals the exact extent of the haul. Honey is one and a half times heavier than water and a full box tells on your muscles. Beekeeping, in some aspects, is like fis.h.i.+ng: some years you get next to nothing; others, you crop gold. This year everything worked; both skill and luck came together, and it is boom time. The bees were in the right place at the right time; the weather was good over the year. Willie and his family have kept bees here for more than fifty years, and he is now reaping the rewards of knowing his turf and keeping bees that are well adapted to their environment. This trip to Hangwell Law comes after a run of collecting a b.u.mper harvest of heather honeycomb in ten days. It does not happen every year, or even often. But today, he gets 2,500 pounds of honey. Such is the drama of harvest.

The bees, in the meantime, go purposefully berserk. Zinging, small, aggressive atoms, gold in the late-afternoon sun, attack again and again from different angles, trying to find a way into the bee suit. Their persistence is unrelenting. Bees in the wild can burrow into the fur of an attacking bear, to sting the animal where it will hurt him hopping mad. In the same way, they seek the vulnerable c.h.i.n.k in the beekeeper's second skin. A hole in the fingertip of a glove, a stray st.i.tch on a seam will not go unpunished. You feel like a character transposed into a video game, surrounded by flying attackers, the bee suit slightly claustrophobic, limiting your vision but not the sounds, nor the sudden sight of bees flying onto the net visor, inches from your eyes. Willie says the bees can get to people mentally. "They get you on the shake," he says. "They undermine your confidence and go dab, dab, dab." When a bee stings, a banana-like odor spreads in the air, attracting other bees to sting the same spot, like sharks coming to blood pulsing through the water.

Today, there's no real trouble. As each hive is opened, the noise grows, but Willie keeps calm, steady in the eye of the storm. Some beekeepers lose bees by carelessly crus.h.i.+ng them under boxes as they work under the pressure of time and the bee blitz. Willie knows that bees matter more than honey. He brushes insects off each box with gentle sweeps of fern and the triumph he feels at the haul is as much about the bees as anything else: "When the opportunity presents, they are up and at it," he says, with frank admiration, as he lifts a box as heavy as a block of gold.

On the back of the truck, towers of honeycomb boxes build up, with a great cloud of bees above, moving up and down and round and round as if in a demented dance of fury. Willie, still in his bee suit, but with the hood down now, drives off. He stops after a few hundred feet and waits for a few minutes, to let some of the bees following the truckload fly back to the hives. Then he starts the engine up, drives another few hundred feet and stops again. Such thrift is the equivalent of sc.r.a.ping out the cake mix from the bowl: the last drops matter.

Honey is, essentially, a wild food. Willie couldn't get honey without the bees; the bees couldn't make the honey without the sun s.h.i.+ning and the rain falling, the right amount at the right times, to bring the flowers into bloom and full of nectar. It helped, this particular year, that the winds were the mild southwesterlies rather than the usual northwests with their edge of chill. Heather is a faddish flower that needs the right conditions to bloom bright. This year the purple spread to the horizons. Clouds of pollen puffed up at every step, whitening animals' muzzles. The nectar flowed and the bees ma.s.sed on the flowers, drinking deep.

Willie can provide hives for the bees; he can place his hives near good plants; he can look after the bees to a certain extent. But you can hardly term a man a livestock farmer whose herd consists of seventy-five million flying, stinging, crawling, sucking, working, laying, feeding, fighting, instinctual, independent insects. Man makes use of bees, but only by respecting their nature.

WILLIE ROBSON'S FAMILY home and business is the Chain Bridge Honey Farm, 20 miles from the heather moor, on the banks of the River Tweed. At this point, the river acts as the watery border between Scotland and England. It runs broad here, with fat, smooth curves, and its force, sprung upstream from so much rain over wide moors and blank horizons, is gathered together, ready to pour into the North Sea at Berwick-on-Tweed 3 miles downstream. home and business is the Chain Bridge Honey Farm, 20 miles from the heather moor, on the banks of the River Tweed. At this point, the river acts as the watery border between Scotland and England. It runs broad here, with fat, smooth curves, and its force, sprung upstream from so much rain over wide moors and blank horizons, is gathered together, ready to pour into the North Sea at Berwick-on-Tweed 3 miles downstream.

The honey farm takes its name from the Chain Bridge over the Tweed, just a couple of minutes' stroll away. At the time the bridge was built, in 1820, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. There is a heritage plaque on the Scottish side, with a cartoon of the engineer driving an overloaded carriage at the launch; a cheery d.i.c.kensian image reflecting that, in retrospect, the good times were starting to roll. Like many other parts of Northumberland and the Scottish Borders, over the centuries the land has been metaphorically crosshatched with scars from territorial conquests, celebrated in Borders ballads of robbers, or reivers, raiding land and livestock, attacks and counterattacks, all stoked up with fireside boasts. When the bridge was built, the fighting was finally over.

Now the borderless global culture invades every highway and backwater. On the red sandstone of the English side of the Chain Bridge someone has scratched: west side, 2 pac, referring to a notorious gangsta rapper and his territory in Los Angeles. The incongruous reference, in this quiet spot, is nicely ironic-humans playing at frontiers, just as they play CDs of guntalk. Now, alongside castles for the tourists, you just see the roofs of big, private houses poking out amid the tall trees of settled parkland, all risen with the stability of trade and commerce as their owners ama.s.sed fortunes from fis.h.i.+ng, mining, trade, and agriculture.

There is genuine unease, however, about the future of the countryside. In the 1980s, the wealth and ways of heavy industry collapsed; now it is the turn of the land. Willie is one of the few people making an unsubsidized living from agriculture.

All the while, amid skirmishes and prosperity, the bees go where they have always gone: to the richest, longest, sweetest draft of nectar they can find, whether it is Scottish or English; agricultural oilseed rape or heather on the moorlands. When you walk by the river in early summer, a shy galaxy of wildflowers glimmers from the ground below: pinks, yellows, sky blues, mauves. Walkers shelter from the soft, cold rain under the occasional stretch of hawthorn hedge, and then continue, with the gra.s.s and flowers glittering below their feet. As I walked by the river, I watched the bees with a new interest, looking at them go to fill the honey pot, looking at the plants and wondering what sort of honey their nectar would produce.

The hawthorn used to be a fickle but exquisite source of honey, when the fields in this part of the world were parceled off between their p.r.i.c.kly hedges. These high hedges, flowering in May and June, kept cattle in and gave the animals shelter, and they existed because the Irish s.h.i.+pped their stock over to be fattened by the Northumbrian farmers, who then sold them to market. No longer. Grain gets more tempting subsidies than livestock. The hawthorn was ripped out in the sixties when the beasts went, and the bees found other flowers.

In early June, the land also used to spread white with native clover. This helped fix nitrogen in the soil to renew its fertility. Many rural households took advantage of the clover and kept bees: an agricultural worker could double his monthly income by selling honey. Most people kept bees, and primary schools had hives to teach children about beekeeping, just as they taught sewing and gardening-unimaginable now. The clover went as farmers turned to artificial fertilizers after the Second World War, made expensively using petrochemicals. Again, the bees went elsewhere.

Countryside follows market forces; or rather government grants. Great swathes of heather have been ripped out to grow crops less suited to the moorland. Now there are subsidies for putting the heather back again. The most prolific agricultural crop for honey in Britain is oilseed rape. Heavily subsidized by the European Union's common agricultural policy, it is used for animal feed, as a break crop from cereals, for cheap vegetable oil, and recently as a biodiesel. Quite apart from all this, it is a useful source of nectar for the bees in the early spring, although some connoisseurs dislike its now common presence in British honeys, and the way it granulates so quickly.

For a while, in these parts, the fields were dusky with a purply blue, as farmers grew borage for pharmaceutical companies. The bees produced a beautiful, clear honey from the flowers. But the crop proved fickle and was dropped. You can just glimpse faint smudges of blue along field edges like the ghosts of past plants.

Wild and garden flowers are the bees' ever-changing buffet, alongside the substantial banquets of agricultural crops. Willow herb, known as fireweed, flowers in midsummer and makes a sweet pale honey. The wild pink flowers spread like flames and its nickname came from the way it colonized burnt-out bomb sites. It also grows where woodland has been cut down. In the late summer and early autumn, another particular flower, balsam, quivers with bees, and pinks the banks of the Tweed so the peaty water beside them looks like warm chocolate. The flowers spread here from seeds washed down from the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century woolen mills upstream, where imported fleeces were washed white, in the process dispatching flowers from Spain and France.

This is just one patch of the planet. Wherever they are-jungle, Arctic tundra, northern forest-bees find nectar, even just the smallest of sips from tiny desert plants.

THE CHAIN BRIDGE HONEY FARM is very much a family business, run by Willie Robson with the help of his wife, Daphne, their son, Stephen, who is also a beekeeper, and their daughters, Heather and Frances. After four generations of building up the business, the Robsons now have fifteen hundred hives, which are moved around the highlands and lowlands of Northumberland and the Berwick-s.h.i.+re, following the flowers. A local map the Robsons have pinned up on a wall shows their heather sites, and the place names have a terse beauty: Burn Castle, Rawburn, Scarlaw, Stobswood, Old Bewick, Chatton Sandyfords, Harehope, Hangwell Law. Over winter, the hives are placed in sheltered spots near domestic gardens; in the summer, near fields of crops or stretches of wildflowers. is very much a family business, run by Willie Robson with the help of his wife, Daphne, their son, Stephen, who is also a beekeeper, and their daughters, Heather and Frances. After four generations of building up the business, the Robsons now have fifteen hundred hives, which are moved around the highlands and lowlands of Northumberland and the Berwick-s.h.i.+re, following the flowers. A local map the Robsons have pinned up on a wall shows their heather sites, and the place names have a terse beauty: Burn Castle, Rawburn, Scarlaw, Stobswood, Old Bewick, Chatton Sandyfords, Harehope, Hangwell Law. Over winter, the hives are placed in sheltered spots near domestic gardens; in the summer, near fields of crops or stretches of wildflowers.

Chain Bridge honey is regarded with pride and affection by the region. You see the plastic tubs of their heather honeycomb and jars of Tweedside Blend on the counter in local newsagents, as well as in smart gift shops and food specialists. In an age of globalization, it is a genuine regional product, and they sell as locally as possible-not least because it saves on the costs of delivery.

In the preparation room of the honey farm, Willie is cutting up honeycombs from the boxes brought down from the heather moor. He is wearing his tweed cap, its colors reflecting the soft blues, grays, and greens of this wet, wild landscape, and tendrils of gray hair break out from under its brim. The comb's miniature golden columns are stacked one on top of the other. The room is full of the smell of honey, hanging in the air, soft and warm, alongside the sound of sticky cuts as he divides the honeycomb with a bone-handled knife. In hours of cutting and talking, not a single stray drip escapes. When a wasp comes pesking nearby, Willie dispatches it with a swift, neat backhand of his knife. "Sampras, eat your heart out," he says, in pa.s.sing. He cuts off a generous corner of comb, offers it to me, and takes a bit himself. A broad, strong man, he looks, suddenly, like a bear enjoying a sweet snack. Just as suddenly, in the midst of a gloomy diatribe about the state of farming or greedy businessmen pouring money into idiot ideas, his face will light up with a sun-shaft of humor, or he will walk around the honey farm trailing out notes from his choir's repertoire: "Oh the rhythm of life is a powerful beat...."

As with most small independent businesses, home and work are indivisible. Willie thinks, lives, breathes, and builds the business constantly. The honey farm, in turn, has taken on many human qualities. Despite the fact the farm is deep in the countryside, people come and go constantly, dropping by to hear the news or to see what is happening with Willie's latest scheme, telling a story as they make a purchase or arranging for an item to be picked up or sent on. People-visitors, customers, workers-are greeted as a part of the natural hospitality of the place.

Willie reckons 80 percent of the profits go back into the local economy. He employs about ten people, some of them highly skilled individuals looking for a home after the collapse of small-and medium-scale agriculture. When I visited, there was much banging and tinkering going on in some new buildings they had put up: a new vintage transport exhibit was being created to attract visitors. Wandering around vehicle entrails and the beastlike bodies of old cars and trucks, Willie told me about a tractor recently s.h.i.+pped over from Australia by a beekeeper who was dying of cancer. He managed to bring his prized vehicle over personally in order to give it a home at the new museum. Chain Bridge Honey Farm draws people back, and I could imagine this man traveling halfway across the world to make a final, lasting connection with this place before he died.

Willie Robson's way of treating people fairly (both workers and customers-prices are kept reasonable) feels refres.h.i.+ngly ungreedy; it is almost old-fas.h.i.+oned in the modern world-and yet it works. The honey farm produces something good-very good-without cutting corners. Hardly anyone bothers to produce heather honeycomb these days: it is too much work. Yet there is a market for it, as the Robsons prove. Farmers, in the decades of subsidies-what Willie calls funny money-have not needed to market their produce and connect with the customer. In this time of change, they are suddenly vulnerable. Willie is in a better position. He has had to keep a careful eye on what people want, developing a range of cosmetic products, such as the heather-honey lip balm so fragrant you keep licking your soft lips and developing honey foods, such as a rich cake and a tangy grain mustard. Recently, he had been trying to persuade several farmers in the area to grow borage again. He would get good food for his bees, and they could sell the crop into the flouris.h.i.+ng health food market; the plant makes an oil that has more gamma linolenic acid than evening primrose oil, which has taken the international health food market by storm for its reputed benefits for those with afflictions from high cholesterol to rheumatoid arthritis. The subsidy route is a dead end, he believes: "If you pay people for doing nothing, it will ultimately destroy them."

The skills of beekeeping itself originate from Willie's father. Selby Robson lectured on beekeeping in the days when it was seen as an important part of the rural economy. He would tour around the north, listening as much as he talked, picking up the knowledge of other beekeepers and pa.s.sing it on. Now that farmers are being urged to diversify, they lack the likes of Selby Robson, and others who have honed such skills for themselves from time-tested experience, among their ranks.

For Willie's part, he says that, increasingly, his knowledge comes from paying attention to nature. It is largely about respect. The morale of the colony is paramount, and any creature needs to be comfortable. You must get the bees out of drafts and make sure they have enough water. Drought comes from the nature of the subsoil. Some land needs rain every ten days, or the plants become stressed and, in turn, the bees suffer. In nature, nothing is fixed-the weather, plants, geography-all have their variations. When Willie was learning from his father, they had a fixed routine of visiting the hives. Sometimes the bees would just not be in the mood and the situation would turn nasty. Now he goes more with what the bees need and want, rather than dictating terms.

After spending some time with Willie, I began to understand what is at the heart of his philosophy. Many other beekeepers have gone down a more scientific route, which involves breeding up or bringing in new strains to promote positive genetic traits in their stock. After making a good living from beekeeping for thirty-five years, Willie has learned the hardest lesson of all: to do less, not more. He lets the bees adapt to their environment the best they can. He visits them occasionally, he checks them for disease, he makes sure the hives are in a good position, and he collects the honey. Only after years of practice, observation, and knowledge has he reached this conclusion: that the best you can do is to do as little as possible.

FIVE ROOMS of the honey farm are given over to an exhibition that covers every surface with information on the honeybee. As well as displays on the biology and ecology of bees, there are bee-related quotes ("If you want to gather honey, don't kick over the beehive"-Abraham Lincoln); bee facts about history; and snippets on bees and beliefs. The insect is featured in the Bible, with its land of milk and honey, in the Koran, and in Native American and Hindu creation myths-in the texts of almost every major religion and literature in the world. of the honey farm are given over to an exhibition that covers every surface with information on the honeybee. As well as displays on the biology and ecology of bees, there are bee-related quotes ("If you want to gather honey, don't kick over the beehive"-Abraham Lincoln); bee facts about history; and snippets on bees and beliefs. The insect is featured in the Bible, with its land of milk and honey, in the Koran, and in Native American and Hindu creation myths-in the texts of almost every major religion and literature in the world.

At the end of the first room I discovered an observation hive. Aristocrats of the Enlightenment had a craze for these gla.s.s hives as they began to look at the world more closely, with an eye cleared by reason. The hive was about 4 feet wide by 3 feet high, containing a flat slab of comb. The bees went in and out through a tube in the wall. I stood before it, mesmerized. There was a faint sound, like a nonstop train going through an endless tunnel a mile below my feet. This animal engine chuffed away in a ceaseless steam of pure energy. I put my ear to the gla.s.s and both felt and heard the whirr of life: thousands and thousands of lives wound up like watches, ticking away in collective survival. I blurred my eyes. The bees formed an almost solid material, quietly, steadily seething. It was unlike anything I had seen before. Not repulsive, like the pulsing of maggots on meat. Not a crawling, or scurrying, or wriggling. It had a gentle, purposeful, cohesive movement, impressive and unstoppable in its numbers, like a crowd gathering at a large sports stadium, or a workforce funneling into a factory gate.

I thought of Willie Robson and how he and the bees lived with their surroundings; of the intimate and ultimately curious relations.h.i.+p that holds bees, plants, and humans in so many different, delicate webs around the world, and how these webs had existed for millennia. The products of the honeybee have always been useful to man, but beyond, far beyond, their material use, bees have always fascinated us, right from the Stone Age cave dwellers who drew images of wild honey hunts on their walls, the primeval lines flowing with a life that is simple in the way that water is simple, or blood. The life of the hive has provided metaphors, as we compared this insect society to our own, and it has always provided mysteries, whether we tried to understand them or fed them into our superst.i.tions.

Civilizations rose and fell; the bee flew on regardless. How man has seen bees reflects back an image of each age. I looked at the bees in the observation hive, both individually and collectively, trying to understand this essentially strange sight. Thousands of human voices-poets, scientists, saints, hedonists-joined the hum: bees must be the most discussed creature on the planet, after man. A buzz collected, over centuries. I did not know what it would tell me, but I knew, then, that I wanted to write this book.

CHAPTERONE.

IN THE BEGINNING: EVOLUTION.

Honey. It starts in the spring. With the brightening air comes a quickening of the world. All over the planet, plants plug into the energy of daylight. Systems are switched on; leaves feed on light; sap circulates. As spring spreads to summer, flowers in uncountable quant.i.ties open out. Within the plants lie small, secret pockets of nectaries, and within these glands swell droplets of sweet liquid. This sugary substance is a symbol of all that is desirable in nature: nectar.

The female worker honeybee hovers, lands, and bends into the center of a flower, head down for a feed. She sucks up the nectar, then she's off to another one-accelerating so fast your eyes are left behind. She collects the nectar in a transparent, pear-shaped bag called a honey sack that lies at the front of her abdomen as part of the gut. When this sack bulges full, she flies back to her colony.

In the dark of the hive, this forager bee pa.s.ses the nectar on to the house bees. The nectar will be pa.s.sed from bee to bee, becoming progressively more concentrated as it goes. The bees push the nectar into flat drops on the underside of the proboscis, and exposure to air helps evaporate some of the liquid. A drop will be pumped in and out many times, each time becoming a little less liquid. Sucked and pumped, sucked and pumped, sucked and pumped, the nectar concentrates down to 40 percent of its original moisture, and then small droplets are deposited onto the floor of the wax comb where the warm air in the hive evaporates it yet further. As foraging bees bring back the sweet flow, thousands more beat their wings to create a through-draft; the colony is a ma.s.s of wings working together to fan off the moisture with warm air. When the liquid reduces right down, and each cell's watery gleam has thickened to a sticky bead, the bees top the full cell with a wax cap. Sealed and stored, the honey is now ready until needed, rather as you might keep a pot upon a cupboard shelf.

But wait. This image of the well-ordered household with its well-stocked larder is too tame, too neat, too cozy. It is far less strange and extraordinary than the truth: the miraculous has been domesticated. For what is honey, once you take it off the shelf and trace back to where it comes from? Each place, each plant produces a different honey. Honeys have tastes, colors, and consistencies according to their nectar sources. Some honeys come largely from a single flower-monofloral honeys-while multifloral honeys gather the nectar of many plants from places such as meadows and mountainsides. From the tough scented carpet of thyme and marjoram on the slopes of Greek islands flows a nectar that becomes a honey that was once offered to G.o.ds. The tree-of-heaven's honey tastes faintly of muscat grapes. Bees fly between orange blossoms and the splayed white flowers of the coffee plant, fusing their flavors as they go. They fly to milkweed, thistles, and goldenrod; to dandelions and tulip trees, to acacias and rock roses. A slightly salty, snow-white honey comes from the pohutukawa, the Christmas tree of the blazing, antipodean midsummer, that flowers flame red around December. Frothy white blossoms on apple trees produce orchard honey. The violet, snaky stalks of viper's bugloss make a clear gold honey. Italian chestnut trees spread a dark fragrance; mango honey is truly fruity, and the aguinaldo blanco aguinaldo blanco of Central America yields a water-white honey said to be one of the clearest in the world. Fields of lavender, of beans, of oilseed rape; suburban gardens full of flowers nodding with bees; Californian desert and Himalayan cliff; the bone-dry Kalahari and the looping, raveling rain forest; the fairytale dark-depths of woods in Central Europe with their resinous honeydew; carob plantations and Sicilian lemon groves; rambling British blackberries and the many different kinds of eucalyptus in Australia, which flow unpredictably, perhaps every two, eight, or twelve years; the rich, dark resonating brown of rosemary honey; the slightly minty honey from the linden trees on the Lower East Side of New York City: all these plants, all these places, stream with nectar in large gouts or pinp.r.i.c.k stars; all come through bees to make honey. of Central America yields a water-white honey said to be one of the clearest in the world. Fields of lavender, of beans, of oilseed rape; suburban gardens full of flowers nodding with bees; Californian desert and Himalayan cliff; the bone-dry Kalahari and the looping, raveling rain forest; the fairytale dark-depths of woods in Central Europe with their resinous honeydew; carob plantations and Sicilian lemon groves; rambling British blackberries and the many different kinds of eucalyptus in Australia, which flow unpredictably, perhaps every two, eight, or twelve years; the rich, dark resonating brown of rosemary honey; the slightly minty honey from the linden trees on the Lower East Side of New York City: all these plants, all these places, stream with nectar in large gouts or pinp.r.i.c.k stars; all come through bees to make honey.

It is closer to the truth to say that bees perform an act of alchemy. Honey is nothing less than concentrated nectar; and a pot of good honey is the essence of its surroundings, a sweet, fragrant river from a million tributaries, carried across the air and flowing gold into the pot through the transforming power of the bee.

THE HONEYBEE'S STORY must be traced back through an incomparably vast stretch of time, through clues strewn in the great evolutionary flow. The search feels like a detective story. Where to begin? The canvas is unimaginably large. Life-the chemical change that sparked inanimate matter to reproducing molecules-probably began about four billion years ago. (Humans, of the sort we would recognize, have probably existed for about 1.5 to 2 million years, to give some idea of how insignificant we are in terms of time.) The next stirrings of existence began in the water that surrounded both plants and animals, bringing them food and oxygen and supporting their bodies. Life moved from seawater to freshwater, creeping further toward land and then colonizing its swampy margins. A coating of primitive plants moved across the earth. It was insects that evolved to feed on these plants, and their remains have been found in fossilized swamps and remnants of the earliest forests. must be traced back through an incomparably vast stretch of time, through clues strewn in the great evolutionary flow. The search feels like a detective story. Where to begin? The canvas is unimaginably large. Life-the chemical change that sparked inanimate matter to reproducing molecules-probably began about four billion years ago. (Humans, of the sort we would recognize, have probably existed for about 1.5 to 2 million years, to give some idea of how insignificant we are in terms of time.) The next stirrings of existence began in the water that surrounded both plants and animals, bringing them food and oxygen and supporting their bodies. Life moved from seawater to freshwater, creeping further toward land and then colonizing its swampy margins. A coating of primitive plants moved across the earth. It was insects that evolved to feed on these plants, and their remains have been found in fossilized swamps and remnants of the earliest forests.

Early insects were wingless; then, as the plants grew, they developed wings that could more easily reach the new heights. Bees, like ants and wasps, are part of the Hymenoptera, or "membrane wing," order, with two sets of filmy wings hooked together to cause less turbulence and drag in flight. The wings are stretched over a spa.r.s.e network of veins that provide their support structure, like the frame for a kite's flexible fabric.

Evolution is the blind shuffle of DNA, filtered by success of reproduction. Insects have succeeded by being the ultimate niche operators of the animal kingdom, able to work in any environment, from Arctic wastes to mountaintops to suburban gardens to deserts. One reason they can do this is that their exoskeletons can adapt relatively easily, the animal's outside altering without the insect's inside having to change. The exoskeleton adapted into different kinds of wings; it turned into the needling legs of the spinning spider and the musical saws of the jumping gra.s.shopper; it became the warning spots of the ladybug and the aggressive stripes of the wasp and the bee; it became the battling claws of the stag beetle and the stabbing jab of the mosquito. The insect has an external kit that tools it up for many different circ.u.mstances and its evolutionary success is proved by the numbers. There are a million insects for each human on the planet, and they make up around half of all named species.

How did some insects become bees? The first clue is their intimate connection with flowering plants, or angiosperms, which arrived on earth during the geological era known as the Cretaceous, between 140 and 60 million years ago. Primitive plants spread their seed by wind, casting their pollen into the world in profligate quant.i.ties. Then some plants began to make smaller quant.i.ties of pollen than their predecessors and invested more energy, instead, in enticing creatures such as insects to visit. It was a smart move. Insects evolved to feed on the protein-rich pollen, the tiny grains that are the s.e.x-dust of male reproduction. When pollen attaches to an insect's body, it can be transferred to other plants and-bingo!-pollination occurs. When you want to attract lovers, it pays to dress up. Flashy, colorful, sweet-smelling flowers evolved, appealing to animals, and particularly insects. Nectar, the base material of honey, is part of the flower's tactics of attraction, along with petals, pollen, scent, shape, and color. Honey, then, is an elixir of s.e.x.

THAT FLOWERS EVOLVED at the same time as many of the insects must be no coincidence. Bees and blooms are so twisted together by the twin necessities of existence, of reproduction and food, that their development must have been interdependent. The chronology of this is not entirely certain, however. The clues of paleontology can literally be writ in stone, yet they are still random clues to life, and petals and insects preserve far less well than dinosaur bones. at the same time as many of the insects must be no coincidence. Bees and blooms are so twisted together by the twin necessities of existence, of reproduction and food, that their development must have been interdependent. The chronology of this is not entirely certain, however. The clues of paleontology can literally be writ in stone, yet they are still random clues to life, and petals and insects preserve far less well than dinosaur bones.

The oldest known bee fossil was found in New Jersey. This single female insect is entombed in the hard, orange glow of amber. She was, poor sc.r.a.p, trapped by sticky coniferous tree resin. She was also captured for posterity. The resin turned to a light, transparent fossil and the bee was held forever, legs stretched out, almost flailing, as though she is either tumbling through some otherworldly medium, or about to land on a plant that produced the pollen of eighty million years ago. The bee is caught in a fossilized freeze-frame, the durability of the rock starkly framing the delicacy of the fragment of life within. She dates from the late Cretaceous and was already well evolved, evidence pointing toward the fact that bees had been around at least as long as flowers.

Then, in 1994, a discovery was made that could push back the date of the evolution of bees even further. It raised the idea that they could have been on the planet perhaps even longer longer than flowers. than flowers.

The Petrified Forest National Park in eastern Arizona is a time capsule of stone logs gradually being uncovered by erosion and explorations. The 100,000 acres once contained the Black Forest of ancient conifers that thrived in the semitropical world of the Tria.s.sic period, more than 200 million years ago. Then volcanic eruptions sent a huge flood that flattened the trees like skittles and buried them deep underground, devoid of oxygen. Over time, the wood started to mineralize. In some cases, iron oxides in the wood turned the trees into a startling range of colors such as ruby brown and lichen orange; in other cases, they stayed as black as the forest's name.

Time pa.s.sed. The landma.s.s of planet earth that had been a supercontinent split into a northern half, Laurasia, which later became North America and Eurasia, and a southern half, which became South America, Africa, Australia, peninsular India, and Antarctica. Humans arrived. Humans evolved. Humans became curious. Humans became acquisitive.

By the nineteenth century, the fossilized forest had gained a certain celebrity. On the orders of the Civil War commander General Sherman two petrified tree trunks were carted off to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, where they remain today. Amateurs and professionals also came to the forest, picking up souvenirs and booty, from shards to logs. The petrified fragments were turned into clock bases, jewelry, and luxurious trinkets sold at Tiffany. In 1962, President John F Kennedy made the Petrified Forest a national park, affording it some protection.

At the end of the twentieth century, teams studying ancient ecosystems and climates tracked through the park, trying to gather clues about the forest's original existence. Among the most interesting finds, of a group led by Dr. Tim Demko, were approximately one hundred insects' nests. The inch-long flask-shaped cells were cl.u.s.tered together, and the entrance was probably through open knot holes in the wood. The formation of the cells and details of their constructions led the scientists to believe they were built by ancient ancestors of today's bees. Elsewhere on the site, they also later found nests closely resembling those of the modern sweat bees (Halictidae), so called for their attraction to perspiration. Chemical a.n.a.lysis of the Petrified Forest nests showed that the cells contained some of the organic compounds found in beeswax.

The early date of the forest could be significant. If these were, indeed, bees' nests-and the evidence certainly pointed to this, though some say you would need to find bee bodies to be certain-it would mean bees existed 207 to 220 million years ago, at least 120 million years or so before the oldest previously known bee fossil. Beyond this, the nests are older than the earliest known flower fossils. Could it be that bees existed, in some form, for ages before before flowers? flowers?

It depends, partly, on how you define a bee. Evolution is, after all, a continuum, and these could be bee ancestors rather than bees themselves. It also depends upon when flowers first evolved, and fragile plants leave an elusive fossil trail. Charles Darwin called the origin of flowering plants "an abominable mystery," and it remains, for all the theories, ultimately mysterious.

What seems more certain is that bees probably evolved from a descendant of today's carnivorous hunting wasp. The Russian entomologist Professor S. I. Malyshev posited a theory about how this happened, and this leads to part of what makes a bee a bee: its diet. Bees are unusual among insects because the developing young have the same diet as the adult; both survive exclusively on plants. The hunting wasps still feed their grubs on protein-rich aphids that they kill with their jaws. They also eat, as bees do, the honeydew exuded from plant-sucking aphids. Malyshev argued that these early carnivorous wasps, in the process of killing their prey to feed their young, would taste the sweetness in the aphid's body that they also found in honeydew. It would have been a short evolutionary step for the insects to feed entirely on plants, in their larval as well as their adult diet.

We do not know for certain if and how the bee first evolved from a carnivorous hunting wasp. We do not know the earliest date of the bee or the bloom. What we have are theories looped onto fragments. It makes the evolutionary detective story no less intriguing.

To get back to a concrete fact-one you can eat-Malyshev's speculations connect to another pot in my kitchen cupboard. Honey-dew honey is a delectable curiosity. Strong, to the point of almost being savory, it is not made from the nectar of flowers at all. Rather, bees collect honeydew from the aphids in forests, just as the hunting wasp did all that time ago. This honey is therefore a sticky substance made from fluid ingested by two kinds of insect. But, as I spread the darkly delicious ooze on my toast, I prefer to think of honeydew as a possible clue to the evolution of the honeybee.

THE COMPLEXITY of the relations.h.i.+ps between bees and flowers shows that they certainly coevolved to a great extent. Many flowers have highly specific structures to attract bees and other insects. The colors and shapes of flowers that so appeal to the human eye act on the bee, though in a slightly different way. The velvety red of a rose, for example, is wasted on a bee, in terms of color, because their eyes cannot distinguish differences at that end of the light spectrum. Toward the yellow, green, blue end, however, a bee's sight is acute, which may explain why such plants as thyme, rosemary, and lavender, with their blues and purples, are such famous sources of honey. of the relations.h.i.+ps between bees and flowers shows that they certainly coevolved to a great extent. Many flowers have highly specific structures to attract bees and other insects. The colors and shapes of flowers that so appeal to the human eye act on the bee, though in a slightly different way. The velvety red of a rose, for example, is wasted on a bee, in terms of color, because their eyes cannot distinguish differences at that end of the light spectrum. Toward the yellow, green, blue end, however, a bee's sight is acute, which may explain why such plants as thyme, rosemary, and lavender, with their blues and purples, are such famous sources of honey.

At the far end of the light spectrum, bees can see the ultraviolet light that is invisible to the human eye. Seen through a bee's eye, the apparently uniform yellow of the petals of the evening primrose will reveal markings that guide the bee into the center of the flower. Other flowers often have a different color at the center-such as the yellow in the center of a rock rose-which also leads the insects toward the nectaries and the pollen-bearing stigmas.

Smell is another way that flowers attract bees and help them to remember to return. Scent and sight clearly work well, because for approximately twelve days, the honeybee retains the knowledge that a particular flower yields good nectar and pollen. This helps promote what is known as constancy, the return visits that benefit both bee and flower. The flower is more likely to get pollinated if the bee is going from one to another of the same species; and the bee is able to suck up as much of a good source of nectar as possible. The bee has a daily diary of appointments since flowers tend to produce their nectar at set times. Bees develop an ongoing schedule that changes as different flowers open and deliver nectar. Nine in the morning is good for dandelions, while marjoram flows at lunchtime and viper's bugloss gets going at 3 p.m.

Bees' bodies have evolved in a way that makes them able to work flowers. The basic division of an insect's body-into head, thorax, and abdomen-led to the name "insect" or "cut into." Bees have, in addition, what you could call a wasp-waist (in insects as in corseted Edwardian ladies); that is, two segments of their abdomen narrow to an adjoining point. This means their bodies articulate so they can poke their front right into a plant. Flowers with downward swinging bell-like flowers, or flowers with oddly shaped or narrow tubelike structures, are easy pickings for a bee, whilst inaccessible to less flexible creatures.

Some connections between bees and blooms are extraordinary in their specificity. The most celebrated is that between the euglossine, or orchid, bees and the bucket orchid of the Coryanthes Coryanthes genus in South America. Euglossine bees are among the most beautiful bees on the planet. Their metallic abdomens are like shards of enamel in hues of blues and greens, bronzes, and golds, darting through the air in rapid flight. For their part, orchids are famous for an enormous variety of forms, and this is connected to their various, unorthodox methods of reproduction. Few s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps are as strange and difficult as this. genus in South America. Euglossine bees are among the most beautiful bees on the planet. Their metallic abdomens are like shards of enamel in hues of blues and greens, bronzes, and golds, darting through the air in rapid flight. For their part, orchids are famous for an enormous variety of forms, and this is connected to their various, unorthodox methods of reproduction. Few s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps are as strange and difficult as this.

The flower of the bucket orchid operates like an a.s.sault course. Its structure, odd enough to be beautiful, looks more like a digestive tract than the stereotypical idea of a flower. At its base is a deep, bucketlike form, into which drips fluid from two taplike protuberances above. The flower emits a scent that draws the euglossine males. The bees land on the rim of the bucket. The flower's whole design then encourages a bee to fall in. The steep, smooth sides of the bucket are impossible to climb. The bee has only one route out: a spout situated halfway up the flower. In a bid to escape drowning, the bee pushes its way through this narrow exit. In the process, he brushes past a packet of pollen hooked onto the top of this exit corridor, which should, fingers crossed, attach itself to his abdomen. If this bee then flies to another bucket orchid and the same incident occurs (will these bees ever learn?), he has to scramble free again, pus.h.i.+ng through the escape pa.s.sage and in the process losing his pollen packet so that pollination occurs. No wonder bucket orchids are, even for orchids, comparatively rare.

FROM THE EARLY ORIGINS of the hunting wasp, there evolved many ways of being a bee. There are, today, at least 22,000 named species. Because nectar, like nature in general, flows well in warmth, the greatest number are found in the humid tropics. Brazil, for example, has at least four thousand of them. But bees also thrive in hot, dry places such as deserts and can survive in such apparently inhospitable places as the Himalayas-certainly as high as 14,760 feet-and Arctic tundra. The larger the area, the greater diversity: an island such as Great Britain has 260 kinds of bees, France has 800, and the African continent and North America each have 4,000. of the hunting wasp, there evolved many ways of being a bee. There are, today, at least 22,000 named species. Because nectar, like nature in general, flows well in warmth, the greatest number are found in the humid tropics. Brazil, for example, has at least four thousand of them. But bees also thrive in hot, dry places such as deserts and can survive in such apparently inhospitable places as the Himalayas-certainly as high as 14,760 feet-and Arctic tundra. The larger the area, the greater diversity: an island such as Great Britain has 260 kinds of bees, France has 800, and the African continent and North America each have 4,000.

This superfamily of bees ranges in size from the smallest bee in the world, the Perdita minima Perdita minima, dozens of which could fit on a single antenna of the largest bee, to the big, black leaf-cutter bee Chalicodoma pluto Chalicodoma pluto, with a body one and a half to two inches long. Some groups have been given names mirroring human activities. Miner bees, for example, dig deep into the ground-one Brazilian species as far as 16 feet down-making mininests at the ends of tunnels dug off a central shaft. They dig like dogs, their legs throwing up dirt behind them, and observant gardeners, noticing the small mounds of earth on their lawn, mark this as a sign of spring. Mason bees mix dust with saliva to form a cement to construct cells for pollen and honey. Carpenter bees use their strong jaws to bore and cut their way into wood and hollow stems to make their homes, and leaf-cutter bees snip semicircles out of leaves, puzzling gardeners with these large, neat munch marks, and fly with the leaf grasped by all three pairs of legs, taking it to line their nests, which are found within such prefab s.p.a.ces as beetle tunnels, plant stems, and even animal skulls.

Bees have reached different degrees of communal living. b.u.mblebees in temperate climates, for example, form colonies in the summer. Most of the bees die off over winter, leaving the queen alone. She finds a ready-made hole, such as a mouse's abandoned nest, and spends the winter there with a single cell of honey. When the weather warms and the nectar starts to flow, she eats some honey from the pot and leaves her nest to start the year and a new colony. The sight and sound of b.u.mblebees is a clear, early sign of the s.h.i.+fting up of the year's gears toward longer, warmer days ahead.

Of the many ways of being a bee, the honeybee, as its name suggests, is distinguished by its high degree of communal, or social, behavior, which means it has become extraordinarily efficient at producing and storing honey.

The nine species of the Apis the Apis, or honeybee, genus all have highly social colonies and nests of hexagonal, wax cells. By collecting honey so effectively, they can survive a drop in the nectar flow and other forms of adversity. Apis florea Apis florea, the dwarf honeybee, is about inch in length, whilst Apis dorsata Apis dorsata, the giant rock bee, can be over inch. Both are indigenous to southeast Asia, where they build single, large combs in the open. The comb looks like stiff swags of curtain hanging off objects such as tree branches. Apis dorsata Apis dorsata, with its s.h.a.ggy, long-haired coat, can survive cooler heights and is the bee of the Himalayas, where it builds its comb on cliffs-a comb that is big enough for the honey hunters of Nepal to roll up and take back to the village as a great prize.

There evolved two more branches of the Apis Apis genus, which seem to have existed for just a tenth of the time of the open-nesters. Both kinds of bees began to build parallel combs in cavities such as hollow trees. Furthermore, and most significantly, both evolved the ability to form an inert cl.u.s.ter. This meant the colony could survive colder winters because this cohesive, clinging ball of insects regulated its own temperature, loosening when the colony needed to lose heat and pulling together to conserve it. The colony no longer died off in cold weather, which meant they could move beyond tropical zones into a far, far wider geographical area. They also had sufficient numbers to start collecting nectar as soon as it started to flow again. Building a nest in the dark was an ability that was later to lend itself to living in hives. genus, which seem to have existed for just a tenth of the time of the open-nesters. Both kinds of bees began to build parallel combs in cavities such as hollow trees. Furthermore, and most significantly, both evolved the ability to form an inert cl.u.s.ter. This meant the colony could survive colder winters because this cohesive, clinging ball of insects regulated its own temperature, loosening when the colony needed to lose heat and pulling together to conserve it. The colony no longer died off in cold weather, which meant they could move beyond tropical zones into a far, far wider geographical area. They also had sufficient numbers to start collecting nectar as soon as it started to flow again. Building a nest in the dark was an ability that was later to lend itself to living in hives.

Of these two kinds of bee, Apis cerana Apis cerana, the eastern honeybee, is native in Asia. Its colonies tend to be composed of six to seven thousand bees. The other bee spread through Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and western Asia. It can build and sustain colonies of as many as 100,000 or more and has a prolific and consistent rate of honey production. Being suited to hives and producing such quant.i.ties of honey, this bee was all set to play a role in the life of man. It was to become the superbee of planet earth: Apis mellifera Apis mellifera, the most successful bee of all time, had arrived.

APIS MELLIFERA, the most studied creature on the planet after man, is a summit of sophisticated engineering; an evolutionary triumph of form and function in a thousand details. This tiny creature's achievements tower above the flights of architecture and efficacy of man-made machinery. It has occupied the minds of scientists, writers, musicians, and philosophers around the globe.

The fluffiness of bees-even a bee's eyes are hairy-is seen by humans as part of a cartoon "cuteness," but the hairs that cover the honeybee's body serve many purposes. They help create an electromagnetic charge that draws pollen grains through the air, leaping toward the bee's body, where they are caught in the mesh of strands. The bristles growing between the 6,900 hexagonal plates that make up the compound lens of the bee's eye help it to gauge wind direction and flight speed. Hairs also cover the six pairs of legs. Forget bees' knees; bees' legs, on the other hand, make humans' look pedestrian. Each one ends with a claw and suction pads that enable the bee to move horizontally and vertically, to land on a petal and cling to it with just a single leg, or to hold onto other bees to form the cl.u.s.ter of a swarm.

The legs are hairy, and each and every bristle has its business. The forelegs have a small, hair-lined notch through which the bee cleans its antennae, keeping their sensitivity clean and bright. The lower, outer part of each hind leg has a concave scoop, into which the bee packs its pollen, the grains moistened with sticky, honeyed saliva so as to form small clumps. Stiff bristles of hair help anchor the collected packet of pollen, and the honeybee has evolved a sweeper system of moving pollen grains down its body to collect in these pollen baskets, which you can sometimes see when it rubs its legs together in flight. You can certainly see the pollen clumps with the naked eye, if you look carefully at the hind legs of a bee as it pauses on a flower, or even as it flies around the garden.

A worker bee returns to the hive with willow pollen packed into her pollen baskets.

The color of the pollen bundles depends upon the flowers the bees have visited and is one way beekeepers can tell where their insects have been feeding. A beekeeper's pollen chart looks like a paint catalog with some surprising matches of colors and t.i.tles. Snowdrop pollen is the color of a free-range chicken's egg yolk, and red dead-nettle a sultry, vampish red; but asparagus is the orange of a 1970s plastic chair; raspberry, for some reason, is gray; gorse is mouse brown; and oriental poppy is dark blue. Between these are many shades of green, gray, orange, red, yellow, and brown.