Hello readers,
It has been a while, and I must say I am sorry, I wish I had been more active on my blog. And now that I return I hope to do so more frequently and with not only what is going on in my apiary.
To start with I have this blogpost for you where I want to vent my anger on the scientific world out there… I hope you will read the entire blog and I hope you can understand why I work how I work, do what I do and where I want to end up in the beekeeping world.
Transition in the beekeeping world.
I firmly believe we are in a period of transition, not only in the beekeeping world, as many people experience the same as me, I am sure of that. The shells fall off people's eyes everywhere, but I want to focus on beekeeping since this is a blog about me keeping bees. To address this topic I first need to explain what I mean by ‘transition in the beekeeping world’.
What is this transition I’m talking about?
As a new beekeeper I have noticed a certain pattern. I have taken three classes now in conventional beekeeping, all of them were attended by a good number of new beekeepers. The smaller number of them came from the inner circles and got what they came for, others, like me knew they weren’t going to be taught the way they’d like to keep bees and the vast majority were in the dark about beekeeping but picked up on the news or elsewhere that the bees were in trouble and they wanted to help out. Most of them are torn into two directions. The one direction is the traditional way of beekeeping they were presented in class, the other way is to live in close relation with nature. And in this tug of war is the seed of the transition I am talking about.
As it is with humans there are a great number of diverse characters out there, some are stubborn and hold onto their ways no matter what, others are innovators that are frowned upon by the first group, but most of us humans follow a set of rules laid out to us by one or a few beekeepers we respect and hold in high esteem. I’m not sure what category of people would drop me in, as I am a stubborn person, but I hope I am innovative enough to get at least some people to listen to me as I want to build bridges that help in the transition I feel is needed.
This transition is needed now and a result of how mankind treated nature (in general and the bees in particular) with a lot of disrespect. The results of using poisons are beginning to unfold and we’ve not seen the worst of it yet. (the food produced now is of less value than what it used to have, the losses of entire apiaries, the decline of insects and other wildlife everywhere, …)
Governments are protecting more and more areas and are reducing the amount of concrete and ‘wildlife’ is being looked after, instead of hunted down;
Agriculture is slowly forming a transition into more biological ways of producing crops, permaculture and biodynamic ways are seeping into society and keep getting more and more interest. With a bigger yield of crops per square meter than conventional methods, yes, not the same crops, but still…
This sort of transition is also needed in the beekeeping world.
A bit of history.
If we look back, to learn from the mistakes we made we can see a lot of similarities with our behaviour towards everything that comes from nature and is wanted into our lives. We want more of it, the producers or providers of the product want to build a monopoly like structure around their product to ensure the greatest profit for themselves, and the cost is easily overlooked. Child labour, deforesting, poisoining the planet. Whatever we wanted to create, good intentions not withstanding, we did it wrong. Dogs were bred until they had problems in their skeleton structure, cows for meat can no longer deliver their calves on the world in a natural way, cows for milk line up like a line of slaves to deliver their goods to their masters… And it is the same for the bees.
We went from skep-beekeeping to keeping bees in wooden boxes with frames, for easy handling. And as it is, easy manipulating enabled forcing the bees to produce more, and more is what we wanted. But we have reached the limit of what the bee can handle.
We have taken away it’s food sources by implementing monocrops, deforestation, ... and we have poisoned what little is left for them. We even made the mistake of applying poison in the hive itself to combat diseases and parasites.
Sure, this helps keep the bees alive, and yes, the chances of survival for your bees is slim if you don’t use the products. But when have you ever heard nature is kind? Nature has one rule: survival of the fittest, and with our empathic abilities, we have sometimes cripled nature into doing what’s best. We are indeed at a point that we can compare our bees with a coma patient that is still alive because of the machine that is keeping him in his current state.
More and more people see the need to unplug the machine, take the losses that come with it, and build up with the survivors.
How to go about this transition
So here you are, a beekeeper who loves his bees. You don’t want to unplug the machine, since you invested money in them, or love them too much and don’t want to take the chance to kill them. How do you go forward from this point?
That is the question and transition is the answer. What that answer is? I can’t say for sure, only the future will share that with us. And in my opinion there are several things we can do.
No matter what option you take, no matter if you have bees, I hope you help out the bees in this way: Plant flowering crops/plants and don’t spray, give back nature to the bees!
The first option: wait it out...
The first option is what I think most beekeepers will do. They hope science will bring forward a bee that can do without the poisons in the hive and can survive the poisons and other pressures, out there in the world. This might work and even if it doesn’t, I hope one of the other options will provide the beekeepers with bees in the future to work with.
I have one remark to make here, a rant of sorts, since looking back to what happened I can only see that it is exactly the science that got us where we are now. Scientist have been, and are still, abused like a cheap whore, the ones with the most money can do with it what they want, they pay for studies that have a set outcome that suits the businessman who funds the research. Scientists that want to do good have no voice, so can’t be heard, they have no money so they can’t provide scientific answers to counter the tests that allow products to be used in the (food)market.
Never ever have I heard that ‘common sense’ was enough. People want scientific proof! I can only say that we used to think the earth was flat, we burned witches and heretics alike, only to see that they were right all along, only it took science a little longer to see it the way they did.
Why can’t we go with what feels correct? To me, waiting it out doesn’t feel good. I’m not going for this option.
The second option: help the science, be part of the sollution
Some beekeepers, like me, don’t want to wait it out. They take an active approach and help science where they can. They breed bees that are supposed to have some traits that we want. They use insemination is some cases, how else can you ensure that the queen bee has the right genetics? For we don’t know everything about the congregation areas of drones yet… Although, if you have sufficient area of land you could create a congregation of drones so that queens have no other access but to those drones… Still it is trial and error, but it’s helping nature select a bit faster than it would on itself.
Those beekeepers breed queens, and you can buy these promising queens from them, usually with the advice to keep treating, since you don’t want to lose the investment you just bought, right?
On the other hand, the scientists need to start somewhere, and where do the scientists get their ‘good’ bees from? What makes a good bee? Answers that can all be researched, but with common sense you can also come up with an answer.
The third option: Sweep in front of your own doorstep
I am willing to help scientists, but I am not actively seeking them out. Instead I believe all beekeeping is local. And science may eventually come up with a super bee that is built to fight off the pressures it was designed for, I can guarantee you that nature will adapt and find new pressures to challenge that specific bee. And thus it comes back to the one law of nature; is that bee fit enough to survive?
I want to advocate to stop dragging bees all across the world and to start working on a local project with beekeepers around you.
When we stop shipping stuff all around the globe the ‘invasive’ species will have a much harder time setting foot in our ‘healthy’ environment. And if it does get here, nature will have had time to adapt on it’s own terms, not on that laid down by man. But no matter if you do this, nature will always strive to find a balance. So stop fighting with nature, if a plague comes along, yes it will destroy the thing it’s feeding off, but not entirely. Some specimens will survive and the plague will be followed by an influx of predators that feast upon whatever caused the plague.
If we do ‘treat’ for the plague those predators will eat the poisoned individuals and may die because of it. In the short term we will ‘have it under control’, but look at the rats, they adapted, a lot of poisons don’t work on them, if they still want to eat it! And are the rats gone? No, they are not, we keep them ‘under control’ but I don’t see any predator showing up to help us in our quest… So we are part of the reason the problem is still here. Oh yes, it will always be here, but it will not always be ‘a problem’.
Moths used to be a problem, tracheal mites used to be a problem, in times before we ‘sprayed’ the solution into the hive, and the bees learnt to live with them, provided they are ‘fit’ enough. Bees have been here far longer than us humans and I believe in all that time the humans are the bee's biggest challenge to overcome yet.
So instead of treating, I want to help build a healthier environment for our bees. In fact I want to be more like a bee, that in collecting nectar and pollen actually contributes to nature. I want to help build an environment with a greater biodiversity in it. One that doesn’t rely on treatments whatsoever. One that doesn’t ask that you keep your unmated queens locked up until you can ship them to a proper ‘mating station’ to ensure you have a good ‘genetic line’.
I want to be able to let my queens be mated where they live, and I want them to remain docile. Furthermore, I want to work with them, and not force them to make honey. I only want to take what they won’t need for themselves. That is why I, in my second year of beekeeping, I have not yet taken honey out of my hives. What they produced I had to redistribute between my mating nucs, I only fed very little amounts of sugar to those nucs - perhaps the reason I lost so many; from 11 larvae, to 9 queens to 4 nucs, 2 that are very weak - and I hope to get to a point where feeding is not needed at all. Hopefully winter losses will go back to the natural decline in population too.
If we all were to breed local bees, it wouldn’t matter what kind of bee we would have, we’d have the best locally adapted available! And yes, the italian bee gets more honey, the X-bee gets better Y-results, and the Z is best suited for A, but guess what, the weather there is nicer than here in Belgium, or the X has developed locally to become better at Y and in B, it suits Z to act like A. So if you want to work with Italian bees, X’s, or Z’s move there, don’t drag them here…
And buckfast? Well, in a way, they might be the answer to a global threat since they have genetics from all over already, or they might just be weaker because of it.
What I’m trying to say is that race doesn’t matter, it took us long enough as humans to figure that out, and some humans still haven’t figured it out...
The bees I buy never go with the question: what line? What race? Where did you go to mate? I don’t care. I buy them from a local breeder, so they have ‘some’ local adaptation. And local to me is the whole of Belgium, we are a small country after all, I would even include the north of France and the South of the Netherlands, but haven’t bought any bees, nor am I planning to, from there.
I don’t care what bees are in my boxes, as long as they survive and remain easy to work with.
Truth be told, I prefer working with swarms over buying bees. To me a swarm is the healthiest a hive can get, provided it swarms to multiply itself.
So in option three, you go with a local bee first and foremost. Then hopefully you’ll do what I do, or at least stop using chemicals and organic acids. Maybe there is something to say about using bio-technical treatments, but not for me. And if I do work on my bees in a ‘bio-technical’ way it is not with the intent to control what’s in the hive, it’s to control the amount of bees I have.
How I want to do it
For me transition means I don’t treat my bees. Instead I help them along in growing (by splitting them).
This year 3 of my 5 hives survived winter. I divided them up, and still one of them swarmed on me.
I collected swarms I joined a queen breeding program in my local club and collected 11 larvae to grow local queens, I bought 3 queens from others, all local to grow my number of hives.
That small number of 3 was up to 20 at a point, and now I’m back at 16, thinking I’ll go into winter with 14, since 2 queens are not faring very well.
How much will survive? I don’t know. Have they got mites? Sure they have, they also have ants, and other bugs crawling on and in the hive, what they don’t have is chemicals that I put in there. And besides, if your bees would survive the winter, would you care what’s in their hive?
I have 3 locations where I keep bees and am looking for a 4th and 5th, whilst I’m not looking to increase my amount of hives. I want to keep 3 full hives per location and I want to have back-ups for my hives in 2 6-frame nucs per location. That way I’m spreading out my genetics and have a more natural ‘congregation drone area’ forming. And I welcome other beekeepers in my area, I don’t mind the input their bees bring, since with my method, the fittest will survive. I do hope they keep friendly bees, although I am fully aware that they’re bees and not flies. I don’t mind a defensive posture, as long as they don’t follow me around for meters and meters, or come at me before I approach the hive, I’m good.
That’s how I want to do it for myself. Let the survival of the fittest take place and build back up from what survives these harsh methods nature gives to them. All I do is ‘gardening’ in my garden, and that’s only one apiary, the others are out of my control. I can only hope others help create a more healthy environment with biodiversity that will help all of nature, not just the bees.
How do I want to help others make the transition?
In browsing the web I have found a website : www.bees-fortknox.pl/eng
In short it’s a collective of Polish beekeepers that keep their hives treatment free, each member is allowed to have a certain number of hives in the ‘fortknox’ project as long as they follow some ground rules (like being treatment free) and in return if one of the hives in the project dies, it is replaced by a split from another member. In that way they ensure the continuing supply of treatment free stock.
I am hoping to start a similar project of my own in Belgium, but as it stands now I’m not much further than giving voice to my ideas and brainstorming on how such an operation would run and what is needed to keep it operational.
Would you as a beekeeper show interest in such a project? Start with one or two hives in the project that you keep and manage in your own hive-type, in your own way, but by following some ground rules, one of which is to not treat the bees? And if they don’t make it you get a replacement hive to make sure you don’t get deprived of the pleasures of keeping a hive.
I know I would…
So that’s all for now. I hope to see you soon,
Bob Out.
