My idea of a holiday is to make the most of a new place that I’ve never visited before, usually by exploring the history, food and culture, much to the chagrin of my traveling companions. However, I have tempered my youthful excesses - the one and only plan for our holiday was to connect with close family, somewhere between Scotland and Aotearoa. Seasonal beekeeping activities and classes limit when I can be away. It would have been the rainy season in Thailand, so we chose Bali. The villa in Ubud was a tropical paradise for us all; although occasionally referred to as a “mosquito infested hellhole” -after the mozzies had tasted delicate Scottish flesh. It made a change for them from midges though.
I stayed on New Zealand time; four hours ahead, so I had early nights and early mornings. These were great for exploring around the fringes of nearby rice fields and jungle. Insects were most active at this time of day, and I was able to photograph and collect samples of several species of bee and even a very large yellow-vented hornet. The local security guards and farmers got used to the eccentric tourist with his camera and bright green kiddy’s butterfly net. The yellow Carpenter bee looked like a black bumblebee with a bright yellow buttercup petal on its back, even the wings were black. One of my favourites was the Sunda blue-banded digger bee, a small bee that had blue-green metallic stripes. This bee is known for its unusual pollination technique – it holds a flower and vibrates the wing muscles, dislodging pollen which then clings to its body via static electricity. Locals seemed to be as unaware of their exciting micro-fauna as the average kiwi townie of their own insect life.
I did manage to swap a couple of relaxing poolside rest days for excursions around the island. One day, our driver took me two hours north to visit a beekeeper who kept Asian honey bees (Apis cerana). These bees have evolved with varroa mites and the yellow-legged hornet in their habitat. The former is responsible for most beehive colony losses in New Zealand; the latter has been threatening our bees this last year in Glenfield. Neither of which bothered these plucky little bees as they had evolved their own defences. The honey from the hive was fresh and sweet, with a slightly tropical fruit aroma and subtle tartness. I found the bees so gentle that we didn’t need a smoker, gloves or veil. I set my GoPro to record the activity at one of their hives, including the interplay between the bees and yellow-legged hornets. I then jumped on the back of a motorbike, and we went to another apiary site.
A few days later we went to the West of the island to the foothills of the Mt Batur volcano. We inspected more Asian honey bee hives and it was interesting to see the hives of the madu kele-kele or native stingless bees. These bees were very small - larger than a fruit fly, but smaller than a juvenile house fly. Their nests looked akin to ant colonies. Their beehives were like small wooden shoe boxes. We later travelled into the jungle to see the beekeeper’s swarm traps, where he’d placed empty hives to be populated by a swarm of these tiny bees. These boxes were divided into two interconnected compartments, one for brood and one for food. The former looked like a pile of Rice Krispies; not made of wax, but a resinous propolis with supporting strands. The Queen was relatively large compared to the workers - almost the size of a small honeybee. The other compartment was the larder ,with piles of honey pots; larger roundish resinous cells filled with honey. Extraction for the Balinese stingless beekeeper is slower and more tedious than Kiwi beekeepers are used to. Honey from each cell must be vacuumed out, or the cells must be destroyed by pressing the honey out. These resinous cells impart an earthy flavour to the honey.
In my travels, I managed to collect and preserve 8 different species of common Balinese insects: three types of hornet, four of bees, and one species of ant. The ant was larger than the stingless bee but was striped like a bee. Under the Biosecurity Act, it’s permissible to bring invertebrates into New Zealand if preserved in ethanol or resin. I must admit there was some excitement at the biosecurity hall at 6:00 AM on a Wednesday morning. Our first contact was with a biosecurity officer; she had been on our NZ yellow-legged Hornet response. She waved us through to the inspection area. The insects weren’t the issue, but my jandals, T-shirt and shorts that I’d used when beekeeping were. We did end up with seven biosecurity staff looking at, and taking photos of, my insect collection while listening to my stories of hornet hunting in jandals with my wee Warehouse butterfly net!
By the end of the holiday we were all looking out for the occasional hornet flying around our swimming pool. Jack’s girlfriend admitted that she’d never expected to learn so much about bees while on holiday.
