9 ms·

Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

101 points by fortran77 3y ago

RajT88 3y ago
> You could never domesticate a robin. I dunno. We domesticated the Rock Dove just fine.
throwawayoaky 3y ago
Too many honeybees! Was hoping this would be about bumbles and carpenters
giantg2 3y ago
Very interesting read, even for someone who has some exposure to these ideas as a beekeeper. A lot of it really comes down to personal theories and opinions. I keep my bees as "treatment-free". I don't treat for mites. I haven't had anything like AFB, but that would require drastic measures. I leave on plenty of honey for the bees and try not to feed at all. I use foundationless frames. I want to have "survivor" stock, but that might take a few more years. The average colony loss in the US is around 50% last time I looked. It seems most people have good years and bad years regardless of the management. I've had years when all, or nearly all, hives have survived. I've also had years where all, or nearly all, had died.
- lostlogin 3y ago
  For anyone that isn't aware (and the following depends on your jurisdiction), the treatment for American Foul Brood (AFB) is pouring petrol into a sealed up hive and then burning the hive and hiveware. It's typically spread by poor beekeeping - infected hiveware being shared or infected, dead hives getting robbed by healthy bees. It's all bad and really sad. I haven't had it, but it's within a few kilometres of me (which is well within bee flight range).
justinclift 3y ago
> 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.
- peteradio 3y ago
  Probably gave the name of his beekeeping rival/nemesis.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    Doesn't seem like it. The photos in the article look like the same person found using that name doing bee related activities.
- h2odragon 3y ago
  John asked, but that doesn't mean a reporter will do.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    Good point. "Don't trust reporters" or some such. ;)
lostlogin 3y ago
From the article: > But they’re not dependent on you. They don’t need you. Here in New Zealand we have too many bees, and they are most definitely dependant on humans. If you don't treat them, they'll die in a season from varroa. They might survive a little longer, but not much. There are wild colonies sin a nearby park, and all fail.
h2odragon 3y ago
see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiko_goat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiko_goat and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustang
anonym29 3y ago
I am shocked that nobody has yet brought up the 2019 Macedonian film, Honeyland! https://m.imdb.com/title/tt8991268/ 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-reviewed-a-gripping-frustrating-documentary-about-a-beekeepers-fragile-isolation https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/honeyland-re... / (no paywall: https://archive.is/qspek https://archive.is/qspek)
11235813213455 3y ago
I love insects, all of them, they all participate in pollination, there's no reason to have a so big focus on honey bees. Let alone that honey is not really optimal for us, we need fibers. So I'd rather have many various plants, fruits trees (figs - some depend on wasps, persimmons, ..), other trees, and insects varieties than this formatted landscape
psychphysic 3y ago
No of course not. Paywalled article so just guessing.
- thebears5454 3y ago
  The real headline could be more accurately put as "Is modern amateur/hobbiest beekeeping making bee's genetically weaker?" "None of us knew at the time how strong the selection would be in the wild,” Seeley told me recently. “It turned out that the bees had the variation needed to develop the traits to resist the mites.” While beekeepers were experimenting with chemical treatments and hive designs, the bees in the forest were changing genetically. Their life styles helped them, too. “Colonies living in the wild have many things going for them,” Seeley said. 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.)" Heres a small snippet that briefly explains some of the things some Beekeepers think amateur beekeepers do incorrectly.
  - psychphysic 3y ago
    That makes more sense, but the answer is still of course not. It's not like beekeepers keep their hives significantly overlap with where wild bees live.
  - cryptonector 3y ago
    > Heres a small snippet that briefly explains some of the things some Beekeepers think amateur beekeepers do incorrectly. Not just amateurs. Professionals too.
Lacerda69 3y ago
As always with these kinds of headlines the answer is no. Humans live in a symbiotic relationship with bees, we can not exist without each other.
- hagbarth 3y ago
  That seems untrue. If nothing else due to the fact that bees existed for 10s of millions of years before humans did.
- lopis 3y ago
  What do you mean? We can live without bees from bee-keeping just fine. That's like saying cows and us can't live without each other.
  - bnt 3y ago
    Uhm are you gonna run around fields chasing wild cows for milk and burgers?
  - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
    sure - but the current number of cattle in the world would be unsustainable without human care and need for them. on edit: fixed grammar
  - bborud 3y ago
    Not quite. Much of the industry for growing fruit depends on beekeepers renting out their bees as pollinators. As for cattle, well, yeah, they wholly depend on us. If you are in doubt just look at the relative sizes of populations of cattle vs mammalian wildlife.
    - lopis 3y ago
      Yes, cattle depends on us, but we definitely don't depend on them; that was the point I was trying to make.
      - 3y ago
ehnto 3y ago
I would be focusing on other types of farming long before I worried much about beekeeping. It's a wild stretch to consider it harmful for bees, and if the planet is to survive we should probably do all we can to keep them around. You could argue that you are benefiting from them still I suppose, but we all benefit from bees pollinating even if they are wild bees. We are still part of the ecosystem, we can't remove ourselves entirely (even though we seem determined not to make it through The Great Filter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter)
londons_explore 3y ago
In a way, beekeeping is stealing nectar from wild bees. I pretty much never see wild bees in my garden anymore - they're all honey bees, and usually some human is keeping/farming them - effectively stealing nectar from my garden and that of thousands of my neighbours that we had left out for wild animals.
- 4gotunameagain 3y ago
  Stealing is a weird choice of words. Do you steal the oxygen that you breathe, or the water that you drink ? For it to reach your tap, it has been stolen by some fish's lake
  - blueflow 3y ago
    Wait until they realize bees do all that work without a profit incentive!
    - mmmmmmtoes 3y ago
      They do?
  - distances 3y ago
    The parent has a point, though I never thought about it that way. In a way a similar case would be if you had a squad of squirrels that gather seeds and nuts from your neighbour's gardens, and you would then take and sell the bounty that they bring back.
    - mike_richards 3y ago
      If the bees are in a man made hive they need you to remove honey so that they have room to lay. If you don't they will leave and not all of that honey is going with them.
      - cryptonector 3y ago
dotdi 3y ago
https://archive.ph/MJDbV https://archive.ph/MJDbV
mrweasel 3y ago
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. All beekeepers want the same thing, health bees, being able to go out and just watch them, it's not like we have some weird need to open a hive every week and inspect 30 frames for bad signs... That's the boring part. Most of the bees being kept by beekeepers aren't natural as such. One of the most common types is Buckfast and that's a cross between a number of different species. So is the suggestion that we kill 75% of the bees in apiaries to "keep it natural"? Normally you also only buy one or two colonies, the rest of you apiary will be made from those original colonies and you only buy new ones in case of disease or if you want to build a larger apiary faster. So I don't get the negativity towards "buying bees online". While I do think swarm catching is great, I'd recommend getting the swarm checked for disease before placing it in any apiary.
- giantg2 3y ago
  Unless you're doing AI, all your subsequent stock will be mutts anyways.
  - JacobAldridge 3y ago
    I think I just realised why no farmers trained in Artificial Insemination are opening my “Detailed” and “Visual” Artificial Intelligence tutorials…
    - lucubratory 3y ago
      Thank you for the belly laugh
- Jedd 3y ago
  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.
joshxyz 3y ago
[flagged]
ggm 3y ago
A different article I read this week says urban bees exceed the feeding capacity in the city in some places and we need to be more circumspect about who, and how many bees. More diverse pollination insects would probably be net beneficial in bee pollinated foods.
- adolph 3y ago
  A recent popular science book I'd recommend is "Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps" by Seirian Sumner. It speaks to wasps' utility as pollinators, pest eaters and how bees and ants are descendants of wasps. After reading it I turned over a dirt dauber next and showed my kids the wasp larva with the separate chamber of immobilized but living spiders and other bugs the mother wasp had apportioned for the larva. https://www.amazon.com/Endless-Forms-Secret-World-Wasps/dp/0063029928/ https://www.amazon.com/Endless-Forms-Secret-World-Wasps/dp/0...
- lostlogin 3y ago
  On the flip side, I got 250kgs of honey from two urban hives with many other hives in neighbours gardens within 500m.
- cryptonector 3y ago
  > 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.
  - voisin 3y ago
    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… the ego stroke of green lawns in August?
    - 3y ago
avalys 3y ago
You can tell who didn’t bother to read the article here, by the people who clearly assumed the article was asking “Is Beekeeping Morally Wrong?”, as opposed to the actual topic of the article which might have been better titled “Is Beekeeping Using the Wrong Approach?”
- swores 3y ago
  Or maybe people are just more interested in arguing for/against the first one and a comments thread like this seems like a good place for it? It's not like they're such unrelated topics that discussing beekeeping ethics in this thread is ridiculous if that's what people want to discuss, it's not like discussing potato chips in a thread about CPU chips. I'll also add that I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong, as you seem to, with coming straight to a HN comments thread without first reading the article. I know I'm not alone in intentionally doing that quite often, partly because for many subjects (including this one) I'm not really interested enough to want to read an article-length deep dive of any single person's opinion, whereas seeing a wide range of views in comment-length bee-sized pieces has the potential to be interesting to me. I've always got the option to go read the full article if after reading the comments it seems like I'd find it interesting to do so.
cryptonector 3y ago
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 latter. As for top-bar hives vs. Langstroth, it's nigh impossible to keep from killing bees with Langstroth hives every time you get into them, and that's what makes them sting. Besides wanting a better relationship with the bees, it feels real bad to kill any, so why do it? Langstroth hives are only advantageous for large-scale commercial beekeeping (because the "supers" stack, and because the frames fit neatly in honey extractors), but in every other way Langstroth hives are just awful.
- voisin 3y ago
  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 applicable if I stuck with Langstroth hive bodies?
  - cryptonector 3y ago
    Starting from nucs is hard work. I also wouldn't bother testing for mites because killing a few hundred bees from a very weak colony is not really a good idea. Also, be very careful not to expose bees -especially young nurse bees, which don't fly yet- to the hot summer Sun -- I once killed hundreds more bees that way than I'd needed to for a mite test. > I desperately want to be treatment-free - if I pick up that book would the lessons be applicable if I stuck with Langstroth hive bodies? Yes!, yes quite!
  - Jedd 3y ago
    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.

101 points by fortran77 3y ago

RajT88 3y ago

> You could never domesticate a robin. I dunno. We domesticated the Rock Dove just fine.

throwawayoaky 3y ago

Too many honeybees! Was hoping this would be about bumbles and carpenters

giantg2 3y ago

Very interesting read, even for someone who has some exposure to these ideas as a beekeeper. A lot of it really comes down to personal theories and opinions. I keep my bees as "treatment-free". I don't treat for mites. I haven't had anything like AFB, but that would require drastic measures. I leave on plenty of honey for the bees and try not to feed at all. I use foundationless frames. I want to have "survivor" stock, but that might take a few more years. The average colony loss in the US is around 50% last time I looked. It seems most people have good years and bad years regardless of the management. I've had years when all, or nearly all, hives have survived. I've also had years where all, or nearly all, had died.

lostlogin 3y ago
For anyone that isn't aware (and the following depends on your jurisdiction), the treatment for American Foul Brood (AFB) is pouring petrol into a sealed up hive and then burning the hive and hiveware. It's typically spread by poor beekeeping - infected hiveware being shared or infected, dead hives getting robbed by healthy bees. It's all bad and really sad. I haven't had it, but it's within a few kilometres of me (which is well within bee flight range).

justinclift 3y ago

> 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.

peteradio 3y ago
Probably gave the name of his beekeeping rival/nemesis.
- justinclift 3y ago
  Doesn't seem like it. The photos in the article look like the same person found using that name doing bee related activities.
h2odragon 3y ago
John asked, but that doesn't mean a reporter will do.
- justinclift 3y ago
  Good point. "Don't trust reporters" or some such. ;)

lostlogin 3y ago

From the article: > But they’re not dependent on you. They don’t need you. Here in New Zealand we have too many bees, and they are most definitely dependant on humans. If you don't treat them, they'll die in a season from varroa. They might survive a little longer, but not much. There are wild colonies sin a nearby park, and all fail.

h2odragon 3y ago

see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiko_goat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiko_goat and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustang

anonym29 3y ago

I am shocked that nobody has yet brought up the 2019 Macedonian film, Honeyland! https://m.imdb.com/title/tt8991268/ 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-reviewed-a-gripping-frustrating-documentary-about-a-beekeepers-fragile-isolation https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/honeyland-re... / (no paywall: https://archive.is/qspek https://archive.is/qspek)

11235813213455 3y ago

I love insects, all of them, they all participate in pollination, there's no reason to have a so big focus on honey bees. Let alone that honey is not really optimal for us, we need fibers. So I'd rather have many various plants, fruits trees (figs - some depend on wasps, persimmons, ..), other trees, and insects varieties than this formatted landscape

psychphysic 3y ago

No of course not. Paywalled article so just guessing.

thebears5454 3y ago
The real headline could be more accurately put as "Is modern amateur/hobbiest beekeeping making bee's genetically weaker?" "None of us knew at the time how strong the selection would be in the wild,” Seeley told me recently. “It turned out that the bees had the variation needed to develop the traits to resist the mites.” While beekeepers were experimenting with chemical treatments and hive designs, the bees in the forest were changing genetically. Their life styles helped them, too. “Colonies living in the wild have many things going for them,” Seeley said. 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.)" Heres a small snippet that briefly explains some of the things some Beekeepers think amateur beekeepers do incorrectly.
- psychphysic 3y ago
  That makes more sense, but the answer is still of course not. It's not like beekeepers keep their hives significantly overlap with where wild bees live.
- cryptonector 3y ago
  > Heres a small snippet that briefly explains some of the things some Beekeepers think amateur beekeepers do incorrectly. Not just amateurs. Professionals too.

Lacerda69 3y ago

As always with these kinds of headlines the answer is no. Humans live in a symbiotic relationship with bees, we can not exist without each other.

hagbarth 3y ago
That seems untrue. If nothing else due to the fact that bees existed for 10s of millions of years before humans did.
lopis 3y ago
What do you mean? We can live without bees from bee-keeping just fine. That's like saying cows and us can't live without each other.
- bnt 3y ago
  Uhm are you gonna run around fields chasing wild cows for milk and burgers?
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  sure - but the current number of cattle in the world would be unsustainable without human care and need for them. on edit: fixed grammar
- bborud 3y ago
  Not quite. Much of the industry for growing fruit depends on beekeepers renting out their bees as pollinators. As for cattle, well, yeah, they wholly depend on us. If you are in doubt just look at the relative sizes of populations of cattle vs mammalian wildlife.
  - lopis 3y ago
    Yes, cattle depends on us, but we definitely don't depend on them; that was the point I was trying to make.
    - 3y ago

ehnto 3y ago

I would be focusing on other types of farming long before I worried much about beekeeping. It's a wild stretch to consider it harmful for bees, and if the planet is to survive we should probably do all we can to keep them around. You could argue that you are benefiting from them still I suppose, but we all benefit from bees pollinating even if they are wild bees. We are still part of the ecosystem, we can't remove ourselves entirely (even though we seem determined not to make it through The Great Filter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter)

londons_explore 3y ago

In a way, beekeeping is stealing nectar from wild bees. I pretty much never see wild bees in my garden anymore - they're all honey bees, and usually some human is keeping/farming them - effectively stealing nectar from my garden and that of thousands of my neighbours that we had left out for wild animals.

4gotunameagain 3y ago
Stealing is a weird choice of words. Do you steal the oxygen that you breathe, or the water that you drink ? For it to reach your tap, it has been stolen by some fish's lake
- blueflow 3y ago
  Wait until they realize bees do all that work without a profit incentive!
  - mmmmmmtoes 3y ago
    They do?
- distances 3y ago
  The parent has a point, though I never thought about it that way. In a way a similar case would be if you had a squad of squirrels that gather seeds and nuts from your neighbour's gardens, and you would then take and sell the bounty that they bring back.
  - mike_richards 3y ago
    If the bees are in a man made hive they need you to remove honey so that they have room to lay. If you don't they will leave and not all of that honey is going with them.
    - cryptonector 3y ago

dotdi 3y ago

https://archive.ph/MJDbV https://archive.ph/MJDbV

mrweasel 3y ago

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. All beekeepers want the same thing, health bees, being able to go out and just watch them, it's not like we have some weird need to open a hive every week and inspect 30 frames for bad signs... That's the boring part. Most of the bees being kept by beekeepers aren't natural as such. One of the most common types is Buckfast and that's a cross between a number of different species. So is the suggestion that we kill 75% of the bees in apiaries to "keep it natural"? Normally you also only buy one or two colonies, the rest of you apiary will be made from those original colonies and you only buy new ones in case of disease or if you want to build a larger apiary faster. So I don't get the negativity towards "buying bees online". While I do think swarm catching is great, I'd recommend getting the swarm checked for disease before placing it in any apiary.

giantg2 3y ago
Unless you're doing AI, all your subsequent stock will be mutts anyways.
- JacobAldridge 3y ago
  I think I just realised why no farmers trained in Artificial Insemination are opening my “Detailed” and “Visual” Artificial Intelligence tutorials…
  - lucubratory 3y ago
    Thank you for the belly laugh
Jedd 3y ago
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.

joshxyz 3y ago

[flagged]

ggm 3y ago

A different article I read this week says urban bees exceed the feeding capacity in the city in some places and we need to be more circumspect about who, and how many bees. More diverse pollination insects would probably be net beneficial in bee pollinated foods.

adolph 3y ago
A recent popular science book I'd recommend is "Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps" by Seirian Sumner. It speaks to wasps' utility as pollinators, pest eaters and how bees and ants are descendants of wasps. After reading it I turned over a dirt dauber next and showed my kids the wasp larva with the separate chamber of immobilized but living spiders and other bugs the mother wasp had apportioned for the larva. https://www.amazon.com/Endless-Forms-Secret-World-Wasps/dp/0063029928/ https://www.amazon.com/Endless-Forms-Secret-World-Wasps/dp/0...
lostlogin 3y ago
On the flip side, I got 250kgs of honey from two urban hives with many other hives in neighbours gardens within 500m.
cryptonector 3y ago
> 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.
- voisin 3y ago
  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… the ego stroke of green lawns in August?
  - 3y ago

avalys 3y ago

You can tell who didn’t bother to read the article here, by the people who clearly assumed the article was asking “Is Beekeeping Morally Wrong?”, as opposed to the actual topic of the article which might have been better titled “Is Beekeeping Using the Wrong Approach?”

swores 3y ago
Or maybe people are just more interested in arguing for/against the first one and a comments thread like this seems like a good place for it? It's not like they're such unrelated topics that discussing beekeeping ethics in this thread is ridiculous if that's what people want to discuss, it's not like discussing potato chips in a thread about CPU chips. I'll also add that I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong, as you seem to, with coming straight to a HN comments thread without first reading the article. I know I'm not alone in intentionally doing that quite often, partly because for many subjects (including this one) I'm not really interested enough to want to read an article-length deep dive of any single person's opinion, whereas seeing a wide range of views in comment-length bee-sized pieces has the potential to be interesting to me. I've always got the option to go read the full article if after reading the comments it seems like I'd find it interesting to do so.

cryptonector 3y ago

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 latter. As for top-bar hives vs. Langstroth, it's nigh impossible to keep from killing bees with Langstroth hives every time you get into them, and that's what makes them sting. Besides wanting a better relationship with the bees, it feels real bad to kill any, so why do it? Langstroth hives are only advantageous for large-scale commercial beekeeping (because the "supers" stack, and because the frames fit neatly in honey extractors), but in every other way Langstroth hives are just awful.

voisin 3y ago
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 applicable if I stuck with Langstroth hive bodies?
- cryptonector 3y ago
  Starting from nucs is hard work. I also wouldn't bother testing for mites because killing a few hundred bees from a very weak colony is not really a good idea. Also, be very careful not to expose bees -especially young nurse bees, which don't fly yet- to the hot summer Sun -- I once killed hundreds more bees that way than I'd needed to for a mite test. > I desperately want to be treatment-free - if I pick up that book would the lessons be applicable if I stuck with Langstroth hive bodies? Yes!, yes quite!
- Jedd 3y ago
  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.