Fun with fungi: growing mushrooms at one of my apiaries
Channel: Phil Chandler: Barefoot Beekeeper
Date: 2019-04-02

One of my 'eco-floor' experiments, with the aim of learning more about the nature of bees' interest in fungal mycelium. 

Fungi diverged in their evolution from other living things around 1.5 billion years ago, during the Proterozoic Eon. Bees did not appear until much later, around 100 million years ago, with honeybees evolving into something like their present form perhaps 30 million years ago, and so many fungal species were well established in their ecological niches before honeybees had need of homes in hollow trees.

Bees’ relationships with fungi may be more extensive than has previously been supposed, and may involve much more than bees taking advantage of the fungal decomposition of the dead wood in the centres of trees. It seems likely that bees use some species of the ubiquitous wild yeasts - which are single-celled fungi - to ferment their “bee bread”: a mixture of pollen and nectar, which is nutrient-rich food for nurse bees, enabling them to produce “royal jelly” and “bee milk” to feed their young larvae. 

Some fungi can be troublesome to bees. For example, Ascosphaera apis causes a condition called “Chalk brood”, by which young larvae can be transformed into chalk-like mummies.

Other fungi can help bees. They include Metarhizium anisopliae and Hirsutella thompsonii, which can kill Varroa mites without harming bees, although the challenge of developing a delivery system that produces consistent results has not yet been met. A common and widespread soil bacterium, Beauvaria bassiana, may also play an important role in protecting bees against these invasive pests.

Research indicates that the bee gut contains beneficial fungi, which assist the digestion of food and may have other protective functions. Unfortunately, these are often adversely affected by agricultural fungicides, which are possibly even more harmful to bees long-term than the more obvious toxicity of insecticides. 

Honeybees have been observed foraging around the soil close to certain fungi, apparently collecting something of value to their colony. This is the subject of ongoing research, and suggests that bees know a lot more about - and have a more complex relationship with - the world of fungi than we may have once supposed.

I am growing shiitake (Lentinula edodes); blue-grey oyster (Pleurotus ostreatus) and wine cap (Stropharia rugosoannulata) from mycelium grown on wild bird seed, which has been soaked and sterilized and after myceliation, is added to barley straw.

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My web site, which has information about natural and balanced beekeeping, is biobees.com