Is the humble bee losing its buzz?

As I walked into the office of Frank Ryde, I was overwhelmed by the breathtaking photographs of elephants, tigers, exotic birds and a plethora of wild animals in the jungles of Sri Lanka.

An avid photographer and adventurer, Frank starts recounting an incident about an elephant chasing their convoy in the dense Sri Lankan jungle.
“This is how I shot the photograph of a charging elephant,” he says as he leafs through his album of smaller images and stops at photographs of native Aborigines and tells me how they love the Bahraini dates that Frank especially takes for them.
Frank’s life seems like a roller-coaster of fascinating adventures which is why it is easy to lose focus of the conversation as he recounts a personal experience after another each one more captivating than the last.
His passion is clearly travelling, wildlife and nature and like most Sri Lankans, the sport of cricket.
But bee keeping is a vocation close to his heart and a task that sits high on his list of priorities.
“Bees are singularly the most intelligent and sociable animals on this planet. They can only exist in colonies and are nature’s most efficient workers. Bee keeping has been in my family as my maternal grandfather had his bee colonies in his home in Sri Lanka.
“My fixation with bees started at the age of 12 when my cricket ball accidentally hit a beehive on a rooftop in Colombo’s residential neighbourhood.”
The picture of rich golden honey oozing out from the intricate honey combs and the busy bee hive stuck in young Frank’s mind and he set out to find out the A to Z’s of honeybees.
Since then as a young teenager, Frank has been involved in school projects and research involving honey bees and has trained young boys and girls in the technicalities of bee-keeping.
Although his profession has taken him away from his home country – Frank is the director of Alpha Fire Services in Bahrain with offices in the UK, Qatar and Sri Lanka – he still maintains his bee colonies in his lush sprawling estate in the heartlands of Sri Lanka.
Lately, Frank has employed his beekeeping skills in helping the tsunami survivors to set up their own businesses of harvesting bees and selling off their lucrative derivatives honey, beeswax, royal jelly, propolis in the market.
“Instead of buying wooden boxes for bee-keeping I teach them how to use earthen ware pots or coconut bark and rub the beeswax into the pots or bark to trick the bees into thinking it was a bee colony originally. The bees consequently inhabit it resulting in a humming hive.”
Frank has never worn protective clothing while handling hordes of honeybees. He claims that he has become immune to the bee sting and doesn’t worry about ‘pinpricks’ any more.
“The key to handling bees is to stay calm; if you fear them they will sting you. Contrary to the popular misconception honeybees are not in a hurry to sting because between 30 minutes to two hours after stinging they die.
“This is because with their sting they push out their lower gut out which results in their imminent death.”
Frank nurtures the bees not only to save nature’s perfect worker but also as a source of business. He harvests honey, royal jelly, propolis (nature’s antibiotic) and beeswax more so in his home country than here because he can tend to his bee colonies in his sprawling estate where they can be one with nature.
“Remember there is money in honey,” he chuckles about his pride and joy.
Apart from the fact that honeybees are an integral part of nature they are essential for bio-diversity.
There are 130,000 plants which bees pollinate from melons to pumpkins, grapefruit, raspberries and all kinds of fruit trees – as well as animal fodder like clover.
According to scientific research, honeybees contribute to human food chain in more ways than any other animal species. Without crop pollination the world’s food supply would dwindle at an alarming rate.
The extinction of honeybees could very well seal the fate of the human race. The phenomenon of bee extinction is being witnessed in various pockets of the world and scientists believe factors like excessive use of pesticides and cell phone radiation could be a cause of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a condition that is destroying beehives worldwide.
“Honeybees are the only insects in the world that help in millions of dollars of pollination of the crops worldwide. In my experience, I have seen a marked increase in fruit and vegetable supplies if there are honey bees in the vicinity of a plantation.
“Never has any species had such a direct bearing on food production like the honey bees. Excessive use of pesticide definitely kills these insects, a claim that I have witnessed with my own beehives.
“Moreover, honeybees have a built-in tracking system which they use to track their beehive. Just before sunset till 30 minutes after the light has disappeared honeybees start a buzzing noise which actually helps the worker bees, who have gone to collect nectar, to identify their beehive even if they can’t see in the dark.”
Frank reckons that cellphone radiation and earth’s magnetism could be the factors that interfere with bee’s navigation system.
“Another theory of lot of seismic activity in the Earth’s plates, a phenomenon that is all too apparent these days, could disorient the bees from returning to their hives and result in their dying off,” he adds.
The Bee Master of Bahrain advises on nurturing the bees rather than exterminating them at the first opportunity.
“You can learn so much from the bees. The way they work and their intelligent existence, the way they multi-task and the division of labour amongst the bee colony. Every bee has its own specific job according to its capability. I try and run my company like a beehive,” comments Frank who rules the roost like a queen bee in her hive and more often than not gives examples of the hardworking and multitasking bees to his salesmen.
Frank has adopted the bee-haviour and wakes up at the crack of dawn and works through the day till sunset.
His philosophy in life is ‘be like the bee’. He has a book in the pipeline called, ‘Bee a businessman’ which will chart how to run a business like a hive of bees.
“Systematic and organised working patterns of bees where they work from the first light of day till sunset not like a salesman who if he has reached his sales target within the first half of the day takes the rest of the day off.
“Beehive is a supportive colony like a company should be, it is energy efficient and works like a complete unit.”
Frank has given lectures to organisations in beekeeping and on how to run companies like bee hives, Batelco, Muscat Bank, Rotary Club being some of them.
He hopes to form a bee-keepers association in Bahrain and pleads to the residents of Bahrain not to exterminate the bees but call him so he can take the bees away and nurture them.
He also hopes that the government of Bahrain will support beekeeping as nature’s way of increasing the food supply on earth.

Special report
By Asma Salman
asma.salman@gulfweekly.com