The Secret Lives Of Honey Bees

Colonies of feral bees, thought to have died out decades ago, are generating a buzz in Germany’s ancient beech forests…

- Dr Claire Asher

Since the Middle Ages, humans have had a close relationship with honeybees as we’ve captured and reared them for their valuable and delicious honey. Over time, however, captive honeybees started to outcompete wild honeybees, which were also losing habitat as their native forests were cut down. Then in the late 1940s, beekeepers in Africa started to see outbreaks of a virulent parasite – the Varroa mite – which quickly spread to hives in Europe and the Americas.

Now virtually every commercial colony in the world is infected with the Varroa mite, requiring treatment to prevent complete colony collapse. Because of the widespread distribution of the Varroa mite, people assumed that wild honeybee colonies must have also come under attack and been wiped out from their forest habitat in Europe.

So when Benjamin Rutschmann and Patrick Kohl – both PhD researchers at the University of Würzburg, Germany – headed out into the forest in search of wild honeybees, they didn’t know if they would actually find anything. They set up artificial feeders to attract honeybees in Hainich forest, northwest Germany, and then tracked the foraging bees back to their nest. Against all expectations, they found some wild colonies were still present in this ancient beech forest. Suddenly, a fun weekend project between friends turned into a concerted scientific effort to map and monitor the bees that so many people thought had long since vanished.