Do we actually keep bees?

I'm not so sure, we may handle them but the bees are well able to look after themselves - if only we'd let them.

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Welcome to the world of bees. I have to admit right at the start that although I have had a long standing interest in bees, I've not done anything about following it up until recently, thus I'm an amateur in the true sense of the word.

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So, what's it all about?

Well for me I just find the bee a fascinating insect and the more I learn, the more fascinating it becomes. I have distant memories of a friend of the family showing me his hives and bees when I was around 7 years old. It gave me a buzz (pardon the pun) then and it has the same effect now, when watching the bees at work. So now that I've made the start the intention is to keep bees, hopefully successfully, whilst no doubt making mistakes and learning. I guess I should declare my true colours now - I'm not in it for the honey and I'm not in it for commercial gain, I have done a lot of reading in recent years and one of the things I have recently discovered is that beekeeping does not have to cost an arm and a leg. 'Conventional' beekeeping if that is the right phrase to use, can be very expensive when the cost of hives, frames, foundation and all the various gadgets are added up. Admittedly not all of this is required to start with, but once committed to this route and the money is invested it is highly unlikely that I would change mid course so to speak.

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Fortunately I discovered another branch on the road to discovery, and that was the way of 'natural beekeeping' - if there is such a thing. Maybe we should call it 'more natural'?

 

Now before you accuse me of being a sandal wearing environmental activist, and give up on me, just bear with me a minute. After doing more reading and 'surfing the net', and considering the well publicised plight of the honey bee I had to conclude that maybe, just maybe there was an alternative to the intensive traditional way of keeping bees for purely commercial reasons i.e. for their honey. At this point I came across Phil Chandler's Barefoot Beekeeper website biobees.com and what a revelation that was. This really opened my eyes, I could now see that there were many alternative hives available and one of the more affordable was the horizontal top bar hive HTBH, that was easy and cheap to build, and in addition, the detailed plans to build one are freely available to download in pdf format here.

 

It gets better, it also turns out that there was an alternative way to keep bees without forcing our human ways upon them, this method allows the bees to do their own thing which hopefully leads to happier, less stressed and therefore healthier bees. Phil's whole approach has been carefully thought through and from my stand point seems based on common sense. Phil has also produced a book entitled The Barefoot Beekeeper which I can thoroughly recommend. I have no vested interest in Phil or his book other than being very impressed with the simple and common sense approach to beekeeping that anyone can learn.

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I've now been keeping  bees for around 6 or 7 years and am still learning - mostly through mistakes but not always. I spend quite a bit of time just watching and listening to my bees especially in the warmer weather and generally speaking they are now left to their own devices. I don't treat for varroa and other than winter feeding when I feel it is necessary, I don't put any chemicals or additives into my hives.

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This invariably means that sometimes I'll lose a colony, but if they are to survive they must learn to cope with all eventualities, and that includes varroa. It all comes down to the old adage 'Survival of the fittest'. At times it is very difficult to stand back and do nothing, but at times we as beekeepers stress the bees by opening up the hives, and destroying their attempts at maintaining a stable environment. At the very least, the bees they have to expend precious energy in undoing our clumsy attempts at managing them. In recent years I have lost 2 colonies in different years and each colony was replaced the following season with  a swarm from one of the surviving hives. I allow the bees to swarm but try to be there to rehome them whenever possible. That is another of natures spectacles, to watch a swarm gathering to leave a hive and is equally rewarding to see them take up residence in a new hive.

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During my time watching and listening to bees, I have become rather interested in the various sounds they make. It isn't all just buzzing you know. Click on the NEXT button below to see how this interest developed.

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