Monday 13 January 2020

This one was sitting on a shelf: Beekeeping in Belgium

Hello Readers,


This post was sitting in my concepts as it was a draft for my report I gave in Pardubice.  I should have posted it soon before or after my trip, but I simply forgot it was there.

So for what it is worth here is the draft from then (03/09/2019)


Living in Waregem as a beekeeper has brought me fortune.  Not so much with my bees (yet), but through my activities as a beekeeper doing cutouts and trap-outs the city heard of my endeavours.  As such they thought of me when Pardubice (Czech Republic) city council invited 2 beekeepers over for the Honey Days that take place there in October.
Pardubice and Waregem have a close relationship with horses and are fraternized cities.  I have gladly accepted the invitation and was asked to write a bit about Belgian beekeeping in general, the number of beekeepers, the number of hives they keep and some general information of Belgian beekeeping.


As I have this blog, I might as well write the short presentation here, as I imagine, writing my blog in english, it draws at least some attention from foreigners that might have the same questions.


History

No, I’m not going to talk about how we as humans went from searching for hives in the forest to keeping them in skeps or hives in the backyard.  I’m looking to tell you how beekeeping in Belgium looks like. And, to get them out of the way, I want to start with the numbers, numbers are rather dull to some and very interesting to others, but they do paint a clear picture no matter what you think of them.  The only remarkt I can make is that as soon as you write them down, they’re dated and possibly wrong, they only capture that one moment in time where you measure them.
The earliest numbers I found on the internet date from the early 1900’s with about 200.000 beehives (skeps) in Belgium with a honey crop of 2.500.000 kg (about 12,5 kg honey per hive)
In 1946 that amount dropped to 15.000 beekeepers with a total amount of 106.000 hives (around 7 hives per beekeeper)
In 1973 this number drops to 11.000 beekeepers and 90.000 hives (8 hives per beekeeper)
In 2011 they recorded the low number of 2837 beekeepers in Belgium.
Since then the media has given beekeeping some attention, as the bees have a hard time now.  I believe the increase in numbers has something to do with that as in 2015 we had 4048 beekeepers and in 2016 the amount of beekeepers in Belgium grew till 5148. 
3415 of those 5000 live in the dutch speaking part of Belgium.
And I’m one of them since february 2018, In my first year I went into winter with 5 hives and came out with 3, Now I have 16 hives - 6 are smaller nucleus hives, and I expect to go into winter with 14; I expect to lose 2 more nucleus hives, both seem to have a queen that did not get mated very well, or simply is not laying eggs, in spite of feeding.

Hobbyist vs Professional beekeeper?

In the years 1800 almost everybody had a beekeeper in the town, or several of them and honey was a luxury product, the wax was a very useful product and beekeeping was a profitable profession. 
A beekeeper then could make up to 3 times the amount of a man that worked the land on a farm. Now we invest more than the return we get from keeping bees. Honey is replaced by granulated sugar, that’s why keeping bees has become a hobby rather than a profession in Belgium.


Of all beekeepers now, in Belgium, the vast majority of them practice beekeeping as a hobby with on average 10 hives per beekeeper.  One beekeepers claims since 2012 he’s spent 5000 EURO on his 20 beehives where his income is only 4000 EURO in that same timeframe. I know of hobbies that cost more and are less fun, but then again, if you don’t have fun keeping bees, maybe you need to find something else to do…


So it’s not a surprise that only 2 professional beekeepers are active in Belgium.  One in Flanders (Herman Torfs - with about 800 hives) and one in the French speaking part of Belgium (with about 200 Hives).


That professional beekeeper in Flanders has another job, to compensate the fluctuations of income he has through beekeeping.  Most of his income comes from pollination services, the honey is a bonus for him. On average he has a honey-crop around 50 kg per hive. But the high losses of bee colonies in the last years (around 30 - 40 %) makes him break even with the sale of honey.  Or in other words, what he gets from selling honey he invests into buying bees the next year. He would like to raise his prices to compensate for that, but import honey in supermarkets is already cheaper and labels don’t always clearly show where the honey is originated from.  Furthermore he doesn't sell his honey in supermarkets since they demand about 30% from sales. Instead he sells locally at the price set by the Royal Beekeepers Association Flanders, which is around 12 EURO’s for 1 kg of honey.


Now you know that 3414 beekeepers in Flanders have bees as a hobby.  But what does the law say?
If we apply the law strictly we should all have a VAT-number, a number that lets the government know we have an income through other means than our main job, since we sell honey, or bees, or other products from the hive.  But if we apply to get such a number we almost always get the answer: you don’t need one, you don’t make a profit! Indeed we don’t, so if we do have a VAT-number and we report or costs and our income the government would see that we lose money instead of earn money and so our annual income would drop and that means they can’t make us much taxes as they estimated so they would lose money and they don’t want that.  So if you don’t get a VAT-number, but the law states you need one, you know you’re in Belgium. VAT-number or no, I was advised to keep records of all my costs and sales, just in case the tax-man comes along and wants to see if he can’t squeeze more money out of me.


Beehives in Belgium

Now there are 3 main hives in use in Belgium.  The first two are commonly used by ‘modern’ beekeepers. The 3rd is mainly used by what we call ‘natural’ beekeepers, but I’ll get to that difference later.


The most common of the two is simplex, with frame sizes 340 by 198 in mm in the brood box containing 11 or 10 frames per box.  The brood nest usually comprises of 2 boxes, the setup to overwinter the hives with. In spring a box, the honey super,  is added with smaller frames sized 340 by 120 mm. A Queenexcluder separates the winter-setup from the honey super.
As this difference in size isn’t always the most handy way to keep bees there are beekeepers that work with all deeps, as you would call a brood box.  This makes the frames interchangeable and makes your life as a beekeeper easier. (To make splits or pyramid your stack of frames or apply other methods)


The 2nd most common of the two is Dadan Blatt, with frame sizes 420 by 260 mm in the brood box.  The winter setup is mostly just this one box, some bigger hives might have one honey super added to that.  Honey super frames are sized 420 by 135 mm.


The 3rd hive being used is the Warré hive, and of course people follow the Warré methods.


The first two hives use the same set-up, by which I mean the bottom has a screen and a board to check for Varroa, and the inner cover is solid with or without a piece of plastic or cloth in between to make it easier to pry open the lid.  And then there’s an insulated rooftop placed over that.
The frames are put in cold way all year round.
The most common material used for hive boxes is still wood, but the polystyrene has grown more popular every year.


I myself use some simplex hives (5) , one Warré hive (experiment) and some Zander (4), which is closest to Dadan Blatt in size (400 by 191 for the brood chamber and I only use deeps, no honey supers that are only 90 deep) and the rest are in 6-frame nucleus boxes of either Zander or Simplex. Most of my hives are home-made, the insides are ply-wood as is the outside, in between I use insulation boards used in construction.


Methods in Belgium

As I believe it is the same all over the world, each beekeeper has his own methods.  Still: overall the biggest association in Belgium advocates the method I’ll describe below, and does so till this very day. I believe the beekeeping year is similar to what you have here in the Czech republic, it starts in March when the temperatures are rising with a checkup in the spring, removing excess sugar frames, leaving enough to compensate for rain or cold snaps, but giving the bees space to build. Then before the swarm season starts, normally in May - but in my experience this is shifting somewhat to halfway April - Most people do swarm control and treat the hives with chemicals or organic acids (formic or oxalic).  Then we have swarm season during the honey flow in spring. This stops in july and up till then most beekeepers check their hives regularly for swarm prevention. After the first honey flow in spring also comes the first harvest. Then we have a 2nd honey flow, if you’re in a good region, and this generates a honey crop in summer, but the last two years have been too dry and unless you’re with the lucky few that have bees near some good nectar and pollen producing plants during these warm periods you find your bees struggling. In august we harvest the summer honey and treat the bees a 2nd time in preparation for winter.  Winter feeding then starts and should be finished by the end of August, or at least halfway September. -Again, this is what the literature tells you to do, but with climate change, I find that bees still collect nectar and pollen till late in october, sometimes november if they find resources.- Normally in october the cold winter comes and the bees go into winter cluster till next spring following year. During the winter on a day with about 5° another treatment is done dripping organic acid solution directly on the cluster of bees.


Now this method advocates 3 treatments per year but most beekeepers I know only treat once a year if the varroa count permits this. And that treatment is the last one, in winter, when there is no brood so all mites get a dose.  The treatments in spring and summer vary from beekeeper to beekeeper but usually involve caging the queen to introduce a broodless period in the hive.


Bees in Belgium

The most common type of bee in Belgium used to be the ligustica, and that shows when you mate your queens locally.
Now most beekeepers have Carnolians and in some regions they promote Buckfast.  So breeding local queens always gives you a mix and beekeepers believe this mix results in a more assertive bee - jokingly called the F16 referring to the fighter jet - but nobody wants stinging bees, so a lot of beekeepers go as far as  F1 before sending their unmated queens to mating stations in Germany or The Netherlands or before buying queens abroad.
We also have a reservation in Chimay, the french speaking part of Belgium, where they preserve and want to restore the Mellifera mellifera, or black bee, and this movement has also found a voice in flanders with a movement lead by Dylan Eelen from zwartebij.org.


My first hive was a Buckfast bee.  My 2nd hive was a split from that first hive and I succesfully introduced a black queen in there.  Then I caught some swarms, so who knows what I have there. 
This year I also had a project from the local bee club I’m a member of where I got 10 larvae for a queen breeding project from carnolians, 4 of my nucleus hives that are still alive come from that project, 2 other nucleus hives come from another source but are also Carniolans.  All of my unmated queens were fertilized locally so I have ‘muts’. And I can’t say they’re F16 worthy, but I can say they’re not as docile as the bees on the stands under financial support from the province.

Transition in beekeeping

As a last topic I want to address what I have come to call ‘transition in beekeeping’.  As I am fairly new as a beekeeper I have noticed a difference in what is called the ‘modern’ way of beekeeping and what new beekeepers want.  Most courses are given to new beekeepers putting honey crop first, care for bees second. You care for the bees so they can make you some honey.
Where most people that come into contact with bees and want to become beekeepers themselves now have other motivations, they want to save the bee.  (they heard they need saving and they want to jump in and do just that, save the bees) For them taking care for bees comes first, ‘stealing’ their honey comes 2nd.


This difference in train of thought causes friction within the beekeeping community all over the world.  A community that in Belgium already is dispersed into smaller groups.
  • First you have the language barrier between Dutch speaking and French speaking Belgians. But let’s not get into that, it’s a cultural thing and pretty much flies with any topic.
  • 2nd you have different schools, all with their own ways of beekeeping, Bio-Dynamic, natural, ‘modern’
  • 3rd you have different associations within the 2nd topic.  Some get money from europe, others have to keep their heads above water with what they make on their own
  • 4th you have movements even within the 3rd cluster that favour the race of bees to work with
  • 5th you have the individual beekeepers that want to give their own touch no matter the method they have chosen.
Now races of bees and individual touches are something that will always be here.  But Belgium is looking to unite the first 3 groups under one flag. And this proves more difficult than it sounds.


This new organisation they’re trying to build has only one goal, and that is to be the link between the beekeeper and the government.  They have to rise above all other differences, no matter the methods used, no matter the race of bees, no matter the type of hyves …


But even this is proving to be difficult, mainly because in general we have 2 main groups of beekeepers ‘treaters’ and ‘non-treaters’.  I’m sure that if you ask around or look into your own ways the answer to the question: ‘do you want to treat?’ is ‘No I do not’ Followed by: ‘But I have to.’  And if you ask ‘why do you have to?’ the answer is almost always: because if I don’t I’ll lose my bees.


The next step treaters take is claiming that all those that don’t treat are making their treated hives sick again.  Since they don’t treat, they help the Varroa survive. And surviving varroa travel from non-treated hives back into treated hives…


The non-treaters shine a different light on that same topic, they say that treaters are keeping their bees weak by treating, rendering the bees unable to take care of themselves.


The fact is, there will always bee untreated bees in the wild, at least I hope there will be.  And they have been there for a very long time. I believe they would not have made it till now if they weren’t resilient. I believe they have, in the past, already conquered similar parasites and have taken other hurdles.  They adapted, they can do so again.


If you compare bees to a rubber band, I also believe we, as humans, have stretched that resilience to the point where it is about to snap.  If you go back to the beginning of my presentation, you’ll see bees had a production of 12 kg of honey per hive, and then we made a profit.
We have now forced the bees to produce over 40 kg per hive! And we are losing money.
In the meantime we have reduced the food resources they have available to get that 40 kg of honey, through industrial agriculture; Monocrops, taking away a lot of flowering plants turning vast landscapes into bee-deserts.  The little food there is to find is sprayed with chemicals, even in the gardens of the home owners that don’t keep bees there will be pesticides, fungicides, crop protection chemicals and what not.
We have to adapt like the agricultural sector.  That sector is slowly converting into permaculture projects, food forests, bio-farms, we have to follow that transition.


We have to believe that if we release the pressure from the bee, the rubber band will remain intact.  And yes, the bees will suffer, at first, for a rubber band that has been stretched too far, well, we all know how that looks like, right? We have to take away the infusion of medicine or acid into the hive and let the bees take back control of their own environment.


If we don’t we have to really look at what we are doing.  Did you know a bee can’t digest pollen?
They can’t! They need other bacteria to start breaking down the egg whites before they can fully digest pollen.  Now pouring acid in the hive to kill the varroa might not kill the bees, but how many bacteria, that the bees need, did we kill? Oh yes, varroa is a parasite, and it’s not good for our bees. But we have to stop looking for the magic button that solves our problem now. We have to give nature time. We have to let balance come at it’s own pace. If the parasite kills its host, how is it going to survive?  It can’t. So the way nature fixes this is to form a balance. With treating our hives we create an unbalance, the varroa die, the bees survive. And what does nature do? It let’s the varroa adapt to the chemicals, it looks for a balance there.  Once you can’t kill Varroa with product A any longer, the Varroa and the bee look for their own balance. And before that balance is found, we start using product B, to kill the Varroa, and let our bees survive. So what are we non-treaters saying?  We’re saying that treating makes stronger mites and weaker bees.


The plague wasn’t nice, and we survived it as a species.  Varroa isn’t nice, and it’s our duty to help the bee conquer it, but not in the way we were doing it till now.


So join me in the transition, look up the Fort Knox project in Poland and start your own local project to help each other!

Thank you.

Bob Out.

Start to read and write...

Hello readers,

Almost a month has passed before I came back to my blog.  Yes the holiday season was part of the reason it has been so long, but I could have been here sooner if I really wanted to.
I have been procrastinating... 

Weather Report:

This year hasn't been much of a winter at all...  Most of the beehives in Belgium have shown activity and mine are no exception!  Temperatures haven't been what you'd expect and there is a lot of concern there will be a great deal of losses.
So far I am pretty sure I lost one of my 6-framers and maybe 2 bigger colonies...  I hope that number will not rise any further since it's a long way till march...

As the weather report includes a short status on my hives I'll not do a hive report today.

Read and Write:

A new section I'd like to introduce in here, more to make me read all the papers, articles, magazines and what not I have collected over the two years of becoming a beekeeper than anything else.  But also a bit to see what I have collected and to summarise what is in there and how I feel or think about the subjects.

Today I'll start with an introduction to natural beekeeping by Phill Chandler, a 6 page long PDF that can be found on his website: http://www.biobees.com/

An introduction to natural beekeeping by Phil Chandler author of The Barefoot Beekeeper - an impression

The document tries to describe what natural beekeeping actually is for the author and creates a methodology to develop and renew the relationship we have as (natural) beekeepers with the bees.

It starts of by asking what Natural Beekeeping actually is and starts the answer with the focus of beekeeping.  In natural beekeeping that focus is on the bees and their well being rather than on the harvesting of a honey crop.  Putting this first he continues with asking questions with the housing we use for bees;  The so widely spread Langstroth-type boxes all have their focus on honey production, so is this type of beehive suited from the bees perspective?

The second topic states that bee-centric beekeeping is putting a stop to put chemicals in a beehive, as most consumers of honey aren't even aware that this takes place.  The comparison is made between factory farming and beekeeping (with honey as a main goal).  Added to the chemicals is the process that honey goes through on a commercial level, centrifuging, heating, filtering, ... all reducing the nutritional and healing value we as natural beekeepers love.
The use of chemicals is replaced by providing a more profitable environment for the bees.

A third topic points out that the term 'natural' is in fact a paradox, since there is nothing natural in keeping bees in a box.  This topic also wants to provide a short comparison between the 'conventional' and 'natural' way of beekeeping and gives this summary:
Natural beekeeping takes into account:
  • the natural impulses and behaviour of bees (foraging, swarming, storing food, defending the nest, ...)
  • the way the hive affects the bees
  • the materials of said hive
  • the amount of intrusions in a bee colony
  • the local impact of the amount of bees present (to other pollinators)
  • the balance between harvest and the needs of the bees
  • the nature of any added input (feeding, medication, ...)
This summary is the basis of all following topics with the explanations where natural beekeeping and conventional beekeeping have their differences.  The most beautiful topic in these series for me is how we limit the interventions in a hive and use our senses rather than tearing the hive apart to see what's going on.  The most sad topic is the truth that 'professional bodies' advocate the use of 'treatments' and say you can't do without.  The more lengthy topic is built around sustainability.

3 principles for natural beekeeping are laid down, also to be found in his book 'The Barefoot Beekeeper': 
  1. Interference in the natural lives of bees is kept to a minimum.
  2. Nothing is put into the hive that is known to be, or likely to be harmful either to the bees, us or to the wider environment and nothing is taken out that the bees cannot afford to lose.
  3. The bees know what they are doing: our job is to listen to them and provide the optimum conditions for their well-being, both inside and outside the hive.
It's almost as if I hear myself setup a guideline for my beekeeping:
  1. Don't open a hive unless you have a clear purpose.
  2. Don't use treatments in the hive, rather provide the resources in plants, water, soil, ... in the environment so the bees can collect what they want, or leave it alone as they see fit.
  3. Only take what the bees have in surplus
Slightly different put, but all in all the same.

After summing these things up he warns for the danger in having rules and is in favour of a flexible learning system that is always improving itself.

As a whole we as humans need to change the way we interact with nature, mainly where production of food is concerned, but all in all, every one person that contributes is one that can bee seen by others and serve as an inspiration.

To end I would like to quote a single sentence : "Such is nature: Bees depend on honey for their survival; we do not."

I can only say that Phil Chandler is one of my inspiration sources and I greatly recommend you read, watch and listen as much as possible to the content he has put out there in books, a website, a blog, YouTube, a podcast and what not...

For me, that is all for today.

Bob Out

Sites to visit - Nine Lectures on Bees - lecture one.

Hello readers, Today I'm having a look on another site that was gathering dust in my 'must browse here later' list. Today thi...