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Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

newyorker.com

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Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#141

Post by cryptonector »

Jedd wrote: post #117
voisin wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've done more sugar shakes than alcohol tests. Besides powdered sugar being a mite test, it's also a mite treatment because a) it triggers hygienic behavior in the bees and that helps them get rid of mites, and b) it makes it harder for mites to hold on to the bees.

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#143

Post by anonym29 »

I am shocked that nobody has yet brought up the 2019 Macedonian film, Honeyland! https://m.imdb.com/title/tt8991268/

An excellent must-watch film if you are interested in natural beekeeping!

Review from the same publication as OP: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/honeyland-re... / (no paywall: https://archive.is/qspek)

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#144

Post by lucubratory »

JacobAldridge wrote: post #99
giantg2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're doing AI, all your subsequent stock will be mutts anyways.

I think I just realised why no farmers trained in Artificial Insemination are opening my “Detailed” and “Visual” Artificial Intelligence tutorials…

Thank you for the belly laugh

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#145

Post by strken »

BagelGuy wrote: post #87
BbzzbB wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's particularly a US problem, ours are not crammed like sardine cans.

While their living conditions are better it seems a stretch to say that these farmers "care" much for the beings they imprison, artificially inseminate, and extract resources from. I imagine they aren't providing much care for the males born from their cows.

Most dairy farmers I've met in Australia care about their herds emotionally. Even though they send old cows and bobby calves to the knackers, they still build relationships with individual animals. It can seem paradoxical to anyone who hasn't watched them.

If it helps, consider a farmer with a tractor. The tractor is a beloved tool that's integrated into daily life, and yet it's going to end up as scrap metal when it breaks beyond repair. The emotional connection to the thing exists, yet the farmer doesn't believe the thing has the rights of a person, and there's no cognitive dissonance.

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#146

Post by dopidopHN »

Retric wrote: post #107
pell wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>or that dairy farms don't care about their cows If you go by the conditions the majority of milk cows in industrialized nations live under that is a very obvious conclusion.

Farmers want less stressed cows because they produce more milk. The underlying economics means they have other concerns, but even “factory” dairy farms will tend to optimize more for cow comfort than you might think. People also overly focus on density without understanding cows are herd animals. They form dense herds even in empty fields.

I’ve spend the last 2 week visiting a friend working in a “estive”, a altitude fields designed for cow grazing in summer.

They roam freely 24/7 in a mix of forest & grass. It take a solid hour to go around it by foot.

It’s maybe 30 of them ? They do stick together, true. But they have a lot of space.

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#147

Post by justinclift »

h2odragon wrote: post #140
justinclift wrote: post #111

> 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 disclos…

John asked , but that doesn't mean a reporter will do .

Good point. "Don't trust reporters" or some such. ;)

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#148

Post by tptacek »

idlewords wrote: post #120
tptacek wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am OK with beekeeping as long as beekeepers recite land acknowledgements to solitary bee species!

I think you know my position on this already though: fuck bees. Imagine getting on a high horse about exactly how people keep a bunch of non-native bugs. That's what this is a thread about!

(everybody else: if you live in a locale where honey bees are native, I'm not talking about your bees.)

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#149

Post by tptacek »

cryptonector wrote: post #116
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.

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…

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-...

Re: Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

#150

Post by rob74 »

Jedd wrote: post #118
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…

Where I feel they do have a point is that traditional beekeepers are meddling too much with systems that are more complex than one might think. At the start of the article, they mention the routine clipping of queens' wings to prevent swarming. And then, at the end, they mention that queens used to "last" several years, whereas nowadays they are rejected by the hive after only 1-2 years. Maybe there was some natural selection going on there which beekeepers are hindering by preventing the bees from swarming?
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