Up on the roof
Many different insects and other wildlife act as pollinators, but we have a special relationship with honey bees. According to Eva Crane (researcher and author on bees and beekeeping), humans began keeping bees as early as 20,000 BCE. Now that bee populations are at risk due to human activities, I was heartened to hear about bees sharing our city life.
The “A” Side
Jon Smith-Lane Operations Manager Apex Hotel
Our hotel opened in 2017. It has Green Tourism accreditation but we know we are only at the beginning of our sustainability journey. We are also aware that more of the general public have sustainability in mind when they choose somewhere to stay or to hold an event.
The architect, Ian Springford, gave the hotel a green roof (i.e. a roof covered with plants in a growing medium). It does not need special management as it is mainly Sedum (low growing, hardy, drought tolerant). A green roof is beneficial in many ways - providing an insulating layer, helping biodiversity and reducing run-off during heavy rainfall.
I did get some advice on whether to add more plant species. Dan Merritt from Bathscape (bathscape.co.uk) put me in touch with Ian Thornhill at the University who arranged for a student, Sophie Scott, to do a dissertation comparing our roof with a managed green roof. She found that ours came out well with regard to biodiversity.
We also knew it would be brilliant to have bees up there. We might even be able to offer some of our guests truly local honey, with zero food miles. But it always seemed a bit of a pipe dream.
Then Barry Cruise from Bath in Bloom (bathinbloom.org) visited us to photograph the green roof. He put us in touch with the Bath Beekeepers Association (bathbeekeepers.com) where we found our beekeeper Dan Job.
We did not need any special permission from the Council for the hives but of course we had to clear everything with our risk and compliance division at the head office (Apex Hotels are a family run business based in Scotland). Nowadays whenever we book contractors who need access to the roof we make sure they don’t send people who are allergic to bee stings. We never have any lone workers on the roof.
We strap the hives to a couple of heavy pallets so that they are not blown off the roof in high winds. Bees tend to fly in a straight line to their food sources so we angled the hives to direct the bees’ natural flight path away from our guest rooms with balconies.
THE “B” SIDE
Dan Job Beekeeper
There is nothing at ground level around the hotel to attract the bees, so hotel guests and passers-by will not be aware of them. The bees fly away from the rooftop to find their supplies – nectar to convert into honey, their food store; pollen to provide protein and other nutrients to the queen and larvae; water for drinking and for cooling the hive and tree resin which they use for its anti-bacterial properties and to seal gaps in the hive.
City bees have quite a diverse array of flora to forage on, which helps them at the tricky time of the year when there might be a dearth of food for country bees. In the UK we get what's called the June Gap, where tree flowers and spring blossom have all finished, but the summer flowers have yet to come into full force. But in the city they can forage in parks, window boxes, floral displays and gardens. So, our bees are cushioned from the Gap. The beekeeper is critical to ensuring the colonies have enough honey at times when foraging is more challenging, supplementing their stores if necessary.
Bees typically fly about 3 km for nourishment, but will travel up to 8 km for food with a higher sugar content. Scout bees are the ones that go out hunting for nectar. Once they’ve found a crop they go back to the hive and communicate its location to the worker bees. They do this by something called the ‘Waggle dance’. The scout dances round in a circle but at a certain point in the circle it moves in a straight line. The arc of the circle indicates the angle from the sun, and the length of the straight line denotes the distance. The duration of the dance is a measure of how much energy it takes to get there. For example, the dance will be longer if they have to fly against high winds. Worker bees then follow these directions to the nectar source. (If you want to know more, there are some excellent videos on YouTube. Search for ‘Waggle dance’.)
Bees in their hive, polystyrene roof removed for a peek
The 20,000 bees on the Apex roof have been raised, by me, from previous colonies that have performed well. I selectively raise new colonies from ones that over-winter well; show little or no signs of being affected by disease; and have bees with a good temperament. Their temperament has a lot to do with the queen. If the queen is happy, the colony is generally happy. But if I notice a slightly more aggressive temperament in the bees, I would swap out the colony.
Bees tend not to suffer from being cold if they're set up well for winter. They all cluster together to keep warm, and generate heat by dislocating their wings from the muscles which usually power them and ‘beating’ these muscles. In winter, they maintain a temperature of about 20 degrees.
Polystyrene hives strapped to pallets
I like to overwinter bees in a polystyrene hive or nucleus box. They stay dry and they benefit from the extra insulation. The hives on the Apex roof are polystyrene. This type has an entrance/exit on each side, but the bees knew that they only needed one so they waxed up the unused one to stop the draught.
In the summer, the bees still try to keep their hive at 20 degrees. The forager bees are out of the hive, which helps with cooling. Bees remaining in the hive may beat their wings to circulate the air and when the foragers bring back water, it cools the air by evaporation.
Will they swarm? If I carry out my role as the Beekeeper they won’t.
January 2023
The Apex Hotel is at James St W, Bath BA1 2DA