Natural Beekeeping

What is Natural Beekeeping? Before attending any beekeeping courses, I assumed that all beekeeping was natural, after all, what could be more natural than a colony of honey bees doing what they are supposed to, going about their business, collecting nectar and pollen from the flowers and making honey? How wrong I was, beekeeping methods vary from the completely natural, leave 'em alone to do there own thing methods, only taking from them any excess honey leftover after the winter season, to the commercial beekeepers "factory farming" methods with artificial breeding, culling of drones, use of artifical comb, chemical pest treatments, swarm prevention, stealing all their honey and feeding them sugar instead. there are various shades of grey in between, each with its pros and cons. Modern cpommercial beekeeping methods are one of the reasons (that and the widespread use of pesticides) that our honey bee populations are in decline, that whole colonies are dying off, that they are more prone to disease and parasites.

Rudolf Steiner warned of this over 80 years ago when he gave his lectures on bees, and he noted how the techniques and the mind sets of beekeepers effect the evolutionary process, and thus the survival of the species. He said:
"Onre is able to say - in the whole inter-relationship of the bee colony- of this organism- nature reveals something very wonderful to us. The bees are subject to forces of Nature which are truly wonderful and of great significance...It is becoming increasingly obvious today that wherever man clumsily interferes with these forces that he makes matters not better, but worse...Nature is everywhere hindered, though notwithstanding these hindrances, Nature works as best She may.
...One finds that calves bred from cows that have been brought to an excessive production of milk, are considerably weaker... in artificial feeding and breeding of bees things ar not so bad, mainly because the bee is an animal that always knows how to help itself, since it is much closer to nature than a cow, which really can't help itself that much when raised and treated in this way. And this ability to help itself out of difficult situations is a truly wonderful thing about a beehive...you will get on with bees only if yu go beyond the normal, basic understanding of things and actually begin to follow matters with an inner eye. The picture of things you get in this way is indeed wonderful. Using this type of insight you will have to say that a beehive is a total entity. You must try to understand it in its totality. And with such an entity the potential damage is not at all noticeable right away...There is no way, based on the current situation with artificail methods used in feeding and breeding bees, to predict what the significanceof these procedures will mean for the future fifty or sixty years, or even a century from now".

Well, now more than 80 years on, we can see that Steiner was right, with the current decline of the honey bee. I had booked on a conventional beekeeping course before I discovered (through the Demeter Trust, an Anthroposophic al Organisation, based o the works of Rudolf Steiner) that there was a Natural Beekeeping course running in the London area on a weekend that I just happened to be in London. So I booked on the course, and was very glad that I did, and that I atttended this course prior to going on the conventional beekeeping course. Otherwise, I think I may have been put off beekeeping. On the conventional course there was too much aggravation of the bees, too many bees getting squashed each time the hives were being opened and closed, the (as far as I can see needless) destruction and culling of drone cells just to check for mites, and being told that feeding the bees sugar syrup is just as good for them as their own honey (!!!??).
Having been on the Natural beekeeping course first, I knew there was an alternative, that it isn't necessary to aggravate the bees and stress them out by opening up the hives every week, that it isn't necessary to kill the drones, and that one can still get large quantities of honey from the bees in a good season without having to resort to feeding them junk food. Also, I knew that there were lots of diffferent types of beehives, not just the standard National Hive and WBC hive used by most conventional beekeepers. There were, however, good points to the Conventional beekeeping course, and I got hands on experience of the bees, which was lacking in the Natural beekeeping course (which was more about leaving them alone). Even if keeping bees in a totally natural way, one is porobably going to need to handle them, the combs, the hive, etc at some point, particularly if one inetnds to collect honey, and the conventional course allowed me to practice that and get used to handling bees without fear. I also got to see the Queens - something that one may never see if keeping bees the totally natural way. So I got someting positive from both courses, but if I hadn't been totally convinced by Natural Beekeeping after the first (Natural course) course, then I certainly was convinced after attending the conventional course. I do, however, feel that In need to know more, and have booked on a further Natural Beekeeping course with the "Barefoot Beekeeper" http://www.biobees.com/ to learn more about Top Bar hives.

Here are my notes from the Natural Beekeeping course run by the Natural Beekeeping Trust http://www.biodynamic.org.uk/events/natural-beekeeping-trust-events.html which concentrated more on the Warre Hive, an uporight top bar hive consisting of a number of topbar hives stacked on top of each other. See http://thebeespace.net/tag/emile-warre/

British bees are best to keep, as they are more suited to our climate, are more adaptable and can survive when other bees are failing. Italian bees are often imported because they are more gentle and more productive to begin with, but they can get more nasty and stingy after a couple of generations. Hybrids between British and Italian beescan be less adaptable and more bad tempered than British bees.
Bees naturally make wax combs, but this involves a lot of energy and therfore involves them consuming a lot of homey, so conventional beekeepers like to give bees artifical honeycombs called foundation, which is made of recycled bees wax and can be used again and again. However, use of the same wax foundation again and again can spread disease as teh foundation can become contaminated with chemicals or diseases. If foundation is moved from hive to hive,diseases are spread. Bee metabolism requires bees to make wax, if they don't it interferes with their health and functioning. Although the use of foundation doesn't stop them producing wax altogether, as bees draw out the foundation into full size cells, t does lessen the amount of wax they need to produce and afedts their communication. bees naturally work in pairs to produce comb - having a sheet of foundation in between prevents them from doing this.
When an adult bee hatches out from the pupa, the first thing it does is clean its cell with proplis. Propolis is antibacterial and antivirualand very important for bees. Cinventional beekeepers hate it because it is sticky and glues up the hives, making them difficult to ope and inspect. As the new bee's glands develop, theri first job is as a house bee, feeding the brood, receiving food from incoming foragers and when the wax glands are developed they begin building honeycomb. As their venom glands develop, they may become guard bees, and lastly, they become foragers.
The Queen is the only bee to lay eggs, after her maiden flight, during which she will have been mated by several (amybe several hundred) drones from different colonies. The eggs she lays will therefore be genetically diverse, providing there is sufficient genetic diversity in the area (something which artificial breedingseverely limits). Depending on genes, some bees will be better at some activities and others will be better at other activities. If the queen is not properly fertilised, her eggs will only produce drones, and if this continues, the workers may decide to replace the queen, if there are still sufficent female brood in the brood cells. They will do this by raising new Virgin Queens, by feeding some of the female brood with a specially enriched food that allows their ovaries to develop and therefore turn into queens rather than workers. They will produce a numebr of virgin quyeens or princesses, and teh best one will survive and get to become queen of the hive. In conventional beekeeping, beekeepers will often remove all queens apart from one or two,to prevent swarming. How can they be sure that they have left the best and strongest ones? Answer - they can't! The bees know best and left to their own devices they will make the wisest choice of queen.
Beekeeping is an ancient art, with rock paintings in Spain dating back 17,000 years depicting honey collectors. In the beginning baskets or skeps were used, which were kept in bee bowls (cabinets). Honey and bees wax were and still are used extensively in churches and religious ceremonies of all kinds, and most modern hives were designed by priests. Beekeepinh has been a traditional activity in monasteries, with the phrase "Sweetness and Light" referring to the honey and beeswax candle produced.

What are the causes of Colony Collapse Disorder in modern bee colonies?
1. Environmental factors such as climate and loss of biodiversity
2. Chemical factors, such as pesticides and plant protectino products
3. Biological Agents - varroa mites, bacteria, viruses, animals
4. Beekeeping and husbandry practices - feeding, migratory beekeeping, treatments, artificial breeding, importing foreign bees

To be continued...