Bees for development Journal 117 December 2015
Practical Beekeeping –
Healthy bees by natural beekeeping
When beekeepers have to decide between life and death Wolfgang Ritter
is being caused to bees, it is helpful to compare with the natural living conditions of a honey bee colony. Whenever our interventions contradict the natural situation, then we have a special responsibility to ensure that our actions be as harmless as possible. This is illustrated by the following examples:
Squeezing bees When moving combs or inserting frames, bees may be squeezed. This cannot be totally avoided, although harm to bees can be minimised by working in a very calm and thoughtful way, by using smoke and brushing the bees very carefully. Great care must be taken when using a bee-blower. In this case, many bees are squeezed as you blow out densely populated honey chambers. However if the boxes are first emptied with the use of bee escapes, the few remaining bees can be blown out easily without causing much harm.
Dr. Wolfgang Ritter Head of Reference Laboratory for Bee Health of OIE World Organisation for Animal Health CVUA (Chemischen und Veterinäruntersuchungsämter) Freiburg, Am Moosweiher 2, D 79108, Germany
Keywords: Natural, ethical, brood, transportation.
Killing bees during night beekeeping African honey bee races are more
Transportation of hives with open entrance holes It is fundamentally unnatural to move honey bee colonies to new areas of nectar sources. However there is sometimes no other choice for beekeepers who aim to provide good forage for the colonies and to obtain better honey yield. Disregarding the unfavourable CO2 balance on one
It may be considered natural to remove all brood to reduce the number of Varroa mites Photos © J. Schwenkel
All beekeepers, regardless of whether they consider themselves to be working ‘conventionally’, ‘naturally’ or ‘biologically’, always have to consider if they are prepared or are required to accept that animals are damaged or even killed. Some points of orientation concerning ethically justifiable limits in beekeeping are discussed here by Dr Wolfgang Ritter.
prepared to defend their nest than other races of honey bees. Therefore, it can be difficult to open bee hives and to harvest honey near to human housing during day time. Some African beekeepers do all their activities with bees during night time. However then all the bees that lose contact with the bee colony and their nest are doomed, and the death of thousands of bees is accepted. This mode of operation is more ‘honey hunting’ than animal husbandry. African management methods must enable colony handling during day light to prevent losses of bees, and to enable other problems to be recognised.
Nobody is entitled to cause unnecessary suffering, pain or damage to animals. This basic rule of the EU’s Animal Welfare Act is valid for not only ‘higher’ animals, but also for bees and other insects. As honey bees can survive only within their community, the whole bee colony is the animal itself, while single bees are each one part of it. So, the death of an individual honey bee can be regarded as weakening or damaging to the animal, whereas with the death of a colony the whole animal dies. To judge how much suffering 3
