\n<\/p>\n
E<\/span>very summer, 1,000 virgin queens descend on the Belgian town of Chimay. During the \u201cwedding flight\u201d, a male attaches to the female. His endophallus (penis equivalent) is torn off and he falls to the ground and dies. Mission accomplished.<\/p>\n Beekeepers come and pick up their fertilised queens in small colourful hives, driving them back home, sometimes more than 300km away. They will use the genetic material gathered in south Belgium to build new colonies in the Netherlands, France and Germany.<\/p>\n The point of this annual pilgrimage \u2013 which started in 2000 \u2013 is to spread the genes of the endangered European dark bee (Apis mellifera mellifera<\/em>), the native subspecies of the honeybee (Apis mellifera<\/em>), which evolved to live alongside the flowers and climate of this region. It is one of at least 24 honeybee subspecies, and conservationists argue it is the only one that should be here.<\/p>\n Beekeepers can reserve a place over the summer in the Maison de l\u2019Abeille Noire (dark bee house), rather like booking a camping spot. During their two-week visit, young queens will mate with up to 20 males, collecting millions of sperm. This reserve can last for several years in a pouch in her abdomen.<\/p>\n <\/span>Hubert Guerriat, a biologist and beekeeper, founded the South Hainaut beekeeping school in 1983.<\/span> Photograph: Christophe Smets\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The difference between farming dark bees and hybrid, or cross-bred, honeybees is like looking after a Scottish highland cow versus an intensive dairy cow, says Hubert Guerriat, a Belgian beekeeper and biologist who has been working with dark bees for 40 years and has been pivotal in driving the species\u2019 return. \u201cThey are not the same animal.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markNature is like a high-precision watch. You can\u2019t swap in one bee for another. Pollinators are not interchangeableHubert Guerriat<\/p>\n For thousands of years, dark bees were widespread in the colder, humid parts of northern, central and western Europe. But their fortunes changed in the mid-20th century, as beekeepers imported hybridised bees, which could produce greater quantities of honey. This caused \u201cirreparable\u201d damage to the native honeybee population. The dark bee mates with these other bees, and in doing so risks disappearing as a distinct subspecies.<\/p>\n Today, their populations are extremely fragmented, clinging on in parts of Scandinavia, France and Spain. They were thought to have gone extinct in the UK but were rediscovered just over a decade ago.<\/p>\n <\/span>Beekeeper Isabelle No\u00e9 started her colony in the back of an Aldi van and now has more than 100 hives.<\/span> Photograph: Christophe Smets\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Guerriat is the reason Chimay has become a sanctuary for dark bees. His organisation, Mellifica, brings together dark bee keepers from all over Europe, and he personally breeds hundreds of queens annually.<\/p>\n In 1983, Guerriat created a beekeeping school to train local keepers to look after the dark bee and to stop the spread of the hybrid honeybee. Now beekeepers across 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) covering Chimay and Momignies are only allowed to keep dark bees. He estimates there are 50 to 100 participating beekeepers, with plans to extend the protected zone.<\/p>\n One of them is Isabelle No\u00e9, who is a cheesemaker and has more than 100 hives of dark bees. She started her colony in 2017 in the back of an old Aldi supermarket van retrofitted into a shelter for hives, with a little office for propagating queens. \u201cIt\u2019s addictive,\u201d she says. The hives are different colours, many with patterns on the outside, which helps bees to come back to the right home.<\/p>\n <\/span>Handcrafted products made from dark bee honey.<\/span> Photograph: Christophe Smets\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Generally, these beekeepers produce less honey (as dark bees form smaller hives and take less pollen from plants) but there are fewer bee losses and fewer inputs, in terms of feeding the bees sugar over winter. There is also a special market for \u201cmiel de noire<\/em>\u201d. Last year, No\u00e9 produced a tonne of honey, with each 250g pot selling for \u20ac4.50 (\u00a33.90). Lip balm, candles, sweets and throat syrup made from honey are among the other products dark bee keepers sell.<\/p>\n T<\/span>he western honeybee (Apis mellifera<\/em>) is the world\u2019s most important single species of pollinator in natural ecosystems but, increasingly, evidence suggests it is having a damaging impact on wild pollinators and other bee species. Beekeepers across Europe wanting to produce honey in a more ecological way are looking to switch to a native subspecies, with Guerriat describing it as \u201cthe only way to get closer to more sustainable beekeeping\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the beekeepers who use foreign bees contribute to the disappearance of the native bee,\u201d says Guerriat. \u201cNature is like a high-precision watch. You can\u2019t swap in one bee for another, and that is what we are doing when we buy in foreign bees. Pollinators are not interchangeable, just like you can\u2019t put random parts inside a Swiss watch.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Last year was an exceptional year for beekeepers and No\u00e9 harvested a tonne of honey.<\/span> Photograph: Christophe Smets\/The Guardian<\/p>\n At the same time, conservationists are restoring wild populations of dark bees in the forests, which will help strengthen the gene pool of farmed dark bees. Originally, they would have nested in cavities inside large trees, but many of these have since been chopped down, so ecologists are putting in log hives to replicate their idealised habitat. Protecting the dark bee is \u201calso a way to contribute to the resilience of our forest ecosystem\u201d, says Estelle Doumont, who studies conservation biology at the University of Li\u00e8ge.<\/p>\n The hybrid queen bee lays a great many eggs, even in winter, which means she requires a lot of food, whereas the dark bee queen is more robust and lays fewer eggs, resulting in smaller worker bee populations in the hives. \u201cThis means the European dark bee\u2019s needs are much lower, allowing it to more easily withstand periods of bad weather [which prevent foraging],\u201d says Guerriat.<\/p>\n In today\u2019s climate, this has become a big asset. Dark bees are more resistant to cold, humidity and sudden climate changes \u2013 some even made it through the last ice age in France. In 2024, a rainy summer meant a poor crop for hybrid honeybees, but it seems the dark bee was less affected, according to Guerriat\u2019s beekeepers.<\/p>\n <\/span>Guerriat trains people to work with dark bees, which appear to be less affected by sudden climate changes. <\/span> Photograph: Christophe Smets\/The Guardian<\/p>\n In recent years there have been record mass honeybee die-offs, with beekeepers in the US losing on average 60% of their colonies, most likely due to parasites and disease. Research suggests honeybees of local origin are more resilient against disease than imported ones.<\/p>\n Equally, they could be more resistant to Asian hornets, which threaten honeybee production across Europe. Dark bees are better able to remain in the hive at the end of the season during September and October when Asian hornets are most active, which may help them avoid being eaten. \u201cIt\u2019s just a deduction based on the black [dark] bee\u2019s lifestyle, and it remains to be proven,\u201d says Guerriat.<\/p>\n As beekeepers grapple with climate breakdown, invasive species, parasites and disease, the dark bee is a reminder that local biodiversity can prove to be the most resilient.<\/p>\n \u201cIn apiculture, you have to explain to people how to work with dark bees. With time they find that it is a beautiful bee,\u201d says Guerriat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every summer, 1,000 virgin queens descend on the Belgian town of Chimay. During the \u201cwedding flight\u201d, a male attaches to the female. His endophallus (penis equivalent) is torn off and he falls to the ground and dies. Mission accomplished. Beekeepers come and pick up their fertilised queens in small colourful hives, driving them back home,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[3191,16377,1646,2430,23246,1003,182,1260,3067,4144,6658],"class_list":{"0":"post-45003","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-annual","9":"tag-bee","10":"tag-bees","11":"tag-dark","12":"tag-ensuring","13":"tag-europes","14":"tag-flight","15":"tag-queens","16":"tag-revival","17":"tag-virgin","18":"tag-wedding"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}