“Without breeding, “soil science” too easily ignores the community of creatures that live in and from, that make and are made by the soil. In the same way, “animal science” without breeding forgets, almost as a requirement, the sympathy by which we recognize ourselves as beings similar to animals “. [i] Wendell Berry
The great lesson of the 20th century was this: the way we treat the natural world has repercussions far beyond the immediately obvious. Our destruction of rainforests and other habitats in the name of ‘progress’ has triggered irrevocable and cumulative cycles of species loss, soil erosion and climate change that we are only beginning to understand and that will haunt us for generations.
From here, we can look back over the past 150 years and see how commercial beekeeping developed out of the Victorian desire to dominate the natural world and subjugate its inhabitants to the will of man. This was the dominant paradigm throughout the first two-thirds of the 20th century, until we began to realize what was happening to the planet as a result of our arrogant assumption that we could treat it like a bottomless garbage pit.
Some of us looked at decimated forests, depleted soil, and polluted water and realized that we had to collectively change our ways.
The subsequent – and now rapid – growth of the organic food movement indicates the beginning of a shift in human perception, while the global dominance of a handful of agrochemical corporations, intent on covering the earth with their genetically mutated and dependent organisms of chemical crops, it represents the old order, stubbornly clinging to outdated and reductionist science as its gospel and taking its moral guidance and business model from drug dealers.
So it is with bees. Ever since LL Langstroth introduced us to the wonders of their mobile frame hive, we have assumed that we know better than they what living conditions they require, what size cells they prefer to build, how many colonies they can live in close proximity, and every other detail of their lives. Until the mating of their queens, we have tried to bring them under our control. And now we are reaping the rewards of our arrogance: bees that depend for their survival on chemical inputs and human interventions, and that leave their hives in increasing numbers.
Can this situation be reversed? No one can say for sure, but those of us who are experimenting with sustainable beekeeping systems believe that the answer lies in a low-tech, low-impact approach, which allows bees to build combs according to their own design, removing restrictions. artificial imposed. over them by using frames and foundations.
The foundation – thin sheets of wax imprinted with the beginning of the hexagonal cells – was introduced as a way to “help” the bees; save them some work and therefore redirect their energy towards doing more work for us, that is, making more honey. Because it is ground to what has been decreed to be the “correct” cell size for worker bees, that is what the bees are more or less forced to build. Because the generally adopted cell size of the worker base is 0.3-0.5 mm larger than that which wild bees build unaided, this has led to a general increase in the size of the bees themselves, due to the fact that that grow to the capacity of the cells in which they pupate.
Larger bees were thought to be a good thing, as they would surely have longer proboscis, allowing them to feed on previously unreachable nectars, and a higher payload capacity for nectar and pollen. Unfortunately, the upgrade also appears to have resulted in reduced flight efficiency, a shorter lifespan, and quite possibly an increased susceptibility to disease and parasites.
Proponents of the ‘small cell’ basis claim that a significant decrease in Varroa [ii] the population results from their use, because, it is suggested, that there is less space in the cells for them to reproduce, combined with a reduction of approximately one day in the date of emergence of worker bees compared to bees of “cells large”. But this is still one step away from full “naturalization.” The fact is, given the choice, bees do not build uniform worker cells, but vary in size according to factors we can only guess at. The artificial base or comb, whatever size it is, is part of the old paradigm of the control freak, we know the best that has caused your current problems. Having seen the beautifully shaped and naturally constructed honeycomb that bees build on the spikes and hives on my top bar, I would not go back to the frames and base if Thornes gave them away.
Bees need to build a honeycomb. It is part of their natural life cycle and part of their biochemical makeup to extrude wax and work it, and they need the freedom to build it in their own way. If that means they breed 15% or 20% of their colony as drones, then so be it: that’s what they should do and we may never know why, nor is it necessary. Our concern about the sacrifice of drones cannot help but affect the quality of the queens, as many of the most important traits are carried over the drone line, according to the late brother Adam and others. I wouldn’t be surprised if the many shoddy queen stories I’ve heard and read recently were caused by a local shortage of good drones.
It seems to me that beekeeping, especially commercial beekeeping, is no longer sustainable in its current form. We need to rethink our management methods from top to bottom, or face an unprecedented decline in the health and strength of the bee population and the end of honey, at least in public perception, as a pure and healthy food.
Intensive beekeeping, especially on a commercial scale, generates huge amounts of time and energy consuming work in exchange for a variable and unpredictable honey harvest. Large amounts of energy and water are consumed in manufacturing, cleaning and sterilizing equipment, in wax processing, and in cleaning up the inevitable, intractable, sticky dirt. Transporting our equipment through the field burns carbon fuels by a full tank. Substantial buildings are required to store mountains of woodworking and home shelling machines, extractors, boilers, tanks, and all the myriad bits and pieces that inevitably accumulate around a beekeeping operation. Beehives, frames, risers, feeders, and covers are made using energy-intensive saws and brushes, while human time and energy is spent nailing driftwood, laying foundations, and repairing broken pieces.
Meanwhile, “scientific” chemical treatments have resulted in fitter parasites and more resistant bacteria. We artificially maintain strains of bees that are ill-equipped to deal with infection or infestation, even though their ancestors have done it, unaided, for at least 100 million years. Some beekeepers routinely use potentially dangerous and illegal chemicals, including antibiotics and organic phosphates, at the risk of being processed and losing their reputation, as well as the health of themselves and their customers, while having little or no impact on long term in bee problems. Many of these chemicals are lipophilic and persist in the wax, which is recycled to the base and imparts a low dose of a who knows what cocktail to the next generation of bees.
All of this might be understandable if the consistent result were bountiful harvests of honey and happy, healthy bees. However, honey crops will forever be more dependent on the weather than any other factor, and as I write, our bees are suffering from unprecedented levels of varroa mite infestation and endemic virus infection for which mites are the most common vector. probable. Thanks to those who persist in shipping bees around the world rather than breeding from local populations, the tiny hive beetle and mite Tropilelaps are likely to arrive in Britain soon. The so-called Africanized bees are not far behind.
In our modern Western world, where relatively few people have an intimate and everyday relationship with nature, public appreciation and understanding of the fundamental importance of the bee in the larger scheme of things has been largely lost. Bees are considered by many more to be a pest than a vital natural resource. A surprising number of people cannot tell a bee from a wasp, as many swarm hunters will attest. Our government would rather cover the field with untested genetically modified crops than invest in truly sustainable organic agriculture or fund bee disease research. Even our (British) beekeeping association receives money from agrochemical companies in exchange for their sponsorship of poisonous aerosols and passive acceptance of GM crops.
In practical terms, sustainability may mean accepting less honey production per colony in exchange for healthier bees. It may mean, at least in the short term, accepting greater winter losses in exchange for greater vigor in the surviving colonies. It almost certainly means increased vigilance in inspecting colonies and evaluating desirable traits, which will mean that more beekeepers will need to educate themselves beyond a basic level in beekeeping and that can be nothing. bad.
The remedy, as well as the blame, for the current sorry state of beekeeping lies with the beekeepers themselves: no one else knows enough or cares enough to take the necessary action. We need to share more information with each other and make more efforts to educate the public, especially the next generation.
We may need to rethink a lot of what we now take for granted, even if it means discarding the protocols that we have considered holy scripture for the past 150 years. We may have to think the unthinkable: that commercial-scale beekeeping is inherently unsustainable. After all, keeping 50 or 100 or more hives in an area that nature could provide with just one or two colonies is a lot like cramming 10,000 chickens into a battery farm and has similar implications for aberrant behavior and the spread of disease. .
Now I see beekeeping more as a conservation and restoration project than as a profitable complementary activity. As much as I like honey, I am more interested in raising bees that can take care of themselves. I don’t know how successful I will be, but in its first year over 500 people have joined our online forum and by freely sharing information we are developing a balanced beekeeping system that is becoming truly sustainable.
A key test of intelligence is the ability to adapt one’s behavior according to feedback from the environment. Feedback from the bees right now is surely telling us to change our paths or lose them forever and thus risk sealing our own fate. We must take a closer look at our complicity in the overuse of agricultural chemicals and find better ways to achieve our goal of a fair honey harvest than the spread of poisons. We must accept that synthesized treatments for mites and brood diseases are doomed to failure, as they inevitably create dependency. The real answer is in the bees themselves. Our job is to provide them with the best possible conditions in which they can solve their own problems, as they always have.
[i] From ‘Renewing Husbandry’, Orion Magazine September / October 2005
[ii] Varroa destructor – a parasitic mite, now widespread throughout the beekeeping world.