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Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

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Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#111

Post by justinclift »

> John asked me not to disclose his exact location, because his hives fell off the radar of the National Bee Unit ...

> Gareth John ... who lives on a quiet lane above a river in Oxfordshire.

> In Oxfordshire, John led the way to his apiary, which was on a small pasture at the back of his property, bounded by high hedgerows.

Giving his full name and the area he lives seems like a super incompetent way to "not disclose" his location.

Just a basic online search for his name and bee keeping related terms finds the guy's location pretty clearly, with very little effort.

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#112

Post by cryptonector »

voisin wrote: post #101
cryptonector wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and we need to be more circumspect about who, and how many bees. Urban beekeepers in low-capacity areas will give up when their hobby colonies fail. Let them.

That’s one approach. Or we could advocate for more pollinator friendly plantings on boulevards and the edges of parks, and advocate for the outright banning of pesticides/herbicides in parks and on lawns. I find it unconscionable that we have elevated green, non-native monoculture lawns to the highest order, allowing people to spray what they want and waste up to 75% of household water on irrigating their lawns for……

I don't disagree with you, but that's not responsive to the statement I was responding to though, which was:

  > we need to be more circumspect about who, and how many bees.

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#113

Post by throwway120385 »

jemmyw wrote: post #68
000ooo000 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's basically the same as claiming that hunters don't care about animals Is there a suggestion here that people who kill animals for fun/leisure care for them? In the same sense that one might use the word 'care' when referring to a loved one or a pet?

I guess there is the idea that hunters wish the animal species well so they can continue hunting. Tell that to the passenger pigeon, whose last existing flock was knowingly hunted, making the species effectively extinct.

The people who hunted the passenger pigeon to extinction were driven less by the usual desire to get meat for their families and more by how much money they could make by bringing hundreds or thousands of birds to market for sale in cities. I would argue capitalism killed the passenger pigeon. The people with shotguns were its designated representatives.

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#114

Post by tptacek »

kibwen wrote: post #108
tptacek wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, urban beekeepers are harming native pollinators by keeping livestock bees --- all honeybees are livestock in the US, where they're invasive.

Honeybees aren't native to the US, but there are lots of native bee species. I see no reason to assume that every beekeeper is only in it for the honey.

They're all keeping honeybees, which are competing with the native pollinators.

(You can of course buy mason bee nests or whatever, but nobody calls you a beekeeper for doing that).

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#115

Post by cryptonector »

kibwen wrote: post #108
tptacek wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, urban beekeepers are harming native pollinators by keeping livestock bees --- all honeybees are livestock in the US, where they're invasive.

Honeybees aren't native to the US, but there are lots of native bee species. I see no reason to assume that every beekeeper is only in it for the honey.

> I see no reason to assume that every beekeeper is only in it for the honey.

Excluding commercial beekeeping operations, the profit motives that small operations and amateur beekeepers keep bees include:

- for the honey (to sell it at a profit)

- for the hives (to sell them at a profit)

- for side-lines like queen rearing (to sell them at a profit)

- for property tax breaks

There are also reasons that have no profit motives. Some beekeepers do it to "save the bees", but the bees don't need saving. Others do it because it's fun (yes, it is fun!). Some might even do it because the hum of the bees is so relaxing, and some even believe that bee venom stings are therapeutic (I've heard this from some friends).

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#116

Post by cryptonector »

tptacek wrote: post #105
cryptonector wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and we need to be more circumspect about who, and how many bees. Urban beekeepers in low-capacity areas will give up when their hobby colonies fail. Let them.

In the US, urban beekeepers are harming native pollinators by keeping livestock bees --- all honeybees are livestock in the US, where they're invasive.

I've seen more native pollinators when I've gone looking than honeybees. I can't tell you what that means. Maybe the native pollinators are eating the things that honeybees don't like that the native pollinators don't like either but it's all that's left. But in the hill country in Texas wet Springs produce endless fields of flowers for months. The flowers around my hives never seemed to be devoid of pollen or nectar (you can imagine that I go looking). I think there's enough forage, at least around here.

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#117

Post by Jedd »

voisin wrote: post #100
cryptonector wrote: post #42

I highly recommend Top-Bar Beekeeping: Organic Practices for Honeybee Health, by Les Crowder. My bees are treatment-free and going strong, and we'll be converting all of our Langstroth hives to top-bar hives this coming Spring. Basically, honeybee hives with mite treatment have high failure rates, and honeybee hives with no chemical treatments do better when the bees have been bred for mite resistance, so do the latt…

I am new to beekeeping this year and just trying to build my colonies up from the nucs I received. I have not done mite checks as I don’t want to kill a cup of bees every few weeks just to do the check, and a shocking number of beekeepers I’ve met have mentioned that they lost entire colonies as soon as they treated for mites. I desperately want to be treatment-free - if I pick up that book would the lessons be appli…

Whilst not as effective as an alcohol wash, a sugar shake will show you some number of varroa, without killing (m)any bees. At the very least it'll show you if you've got lots of mites in your hive, but might report a false negative at low numbers.

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#118

Post by Jedd »

mrweasel wrote: post #21

There's a lot of weird assumptions in the article. "Normal" beekeepers try to breed varroa resistant bees as well, but still trying to keep the non-resistant ones alive too. It might be faster to just let nature deal with the issue, but that means losing an insane amount of hives. It's basically the same as claiming that hunters don't care about animals or the forrest, or that dairy farms don't care about their cows.…

Yeah, lots of questionable assertions made there by author and/or interviewees, eg:

> “I don’t think anybody contests that free-living bees have a better, easier life,”

This feels wrong - supplemental feed, internal space that grows and shrinks with their colony size, well insulated & single-entrance (easier to defend) home, a mesh base they can push their detritus through, pest / predator control, etc.

The bit about wild colonies:

> The bees lived in smaller groups, relatively far apart, which made it harder for varroa to spread. They swarmed every year, which broke the reproductive cycle of the mites. (If a colony swarms, the nest is left without bee larvae, which is where varroa mites take hold.)

The relatively far apart thing isn't a natural consequence of wild colonies, unless there just isn't food to sustain them. (If there is, then bee / nest population would increase.)

Swarming every year isn't guaranteed - I suspect even new 'wild' queens don't get itchy feet until their second birthday.

But even if they do, swarming doesn't mean there aren't larvae in the original nest. A normal swarm process means the original colony is without an egg-laying queen for maybe 10-14 days. However, assuming the departing queen was laying up until departure, you've got ~8 days of larvae in that nest, and that means a further ~13 days those exist as pupae (which I understand are also vulnerable to varroa). At that point your new queen's progeny are already into their larvae stage.

I do get the pastoral idyll being painted by some of the people involved here, but I'm unconvinced.

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#119

Post by kurthr »

cryptonector wrote: post #47
mrweasel wrote: post #21

There's a lot of weird assumptions in the article. "Normal" beekeepers try to breed varroa resistant bees as well, but still trying to keep the non-resistant ones alive too. It might be faster to just let nature deal with the issue, but that means losing an insane amount of hives. It's basically the same as claiming that hunters don't care about animals or the forrest, or that dairy farms don't care about their cows.…

Strong, no-chemical-treatment hives with "good genetics" in low-pesticide environments have low loss rates. Even the loss rates we see advertised (38% or whatever) are not existential problems for beekeeping because you can split hives (i.e., reproduce) at a higher rate anyways. So the switch to no-chemical-treatment plans is not that hard. Honeybee colonies are mainly stressed by a) pesticides (in the pollen and nec…

As an urban beekeeper I find this argument a bit odd and not matching my experience. I'm not trying to optimize for growth rate or monocrop pollination and frankly find that the hives grow quite fast and can swarm multiple times per season (late spring early summer). However, they seem to swarm most WHEN they start being stressed by varroa! I haven't seen a clean hive go a year without developing varroa so it's endemic in my area.

I treat the hives once a year (after honey harvest) to protect other native pollinators. It's easy to know when mites boom just by looking at viral infection effects (deformed wings etc). That starts in mid-early summer (not when most people would be treating with insecticide) and builds into fall. Yes, I can count mites on sticky paper, but once you get to know the hive cycle for an area it's rarely necessary. My queens/drones mate with the local population, but I don't see significant queen/brood changes in them so they're as "natural" as a european honey bee is in the US.

I prefer to alternate Apiguard ("natural" thymol) and Apivar (miticide) to minimize tolerance effects and they both work quite well (100x reduction). However, going a year without mite treatment is often a death sentence for the winter hive, and I haven't had a hive fail since I started annually treating. Winters are mild and there's barely a month without pollen so there's really no reason for a healthy hive to fail. When untreated hives do survive they are very weak going into spring and have huge mite load in summer.

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#120

Post by idlewords »

tptacek wrote: post #114
kibwen wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honeybees aren't native to the US, but there are lots of native bee species. I see no reason to assume that every beekeeper is only in it for the honey.

They're all keeping honeybees, which are competing with the native pollinators. (You can of course buy mason bee nests or whatever, but nobody calls you a beekeeper for doing that).

We acknowledge that the land on which we pollinate is the traditional territory of the plasterer bee, the southeastern blueberry bee, and the ogallalla fruit bat. As we gather the nectar that sustains us all, we honor them and the wasp and placental mammal ancestors who have been stewards of this land for countless generations predating our arrival.
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