Bees for Development Journal 124 September 2017
Natural beekeeping and ideal hives Professor Tom Seeley interviewed by Dr Leo Sharashkin LS Is there such a thing as natural beekeeping? Some people feel that “keeping” bees is inherently unnatural. TS It depends on how natural it has to be to qualify as natural beekeeping. I do not think there is a set definition. But I can keep bees and simulate bees living in the woods very closely. The one thing I do not simulate is having them 30 feet (10 m) up in a tree. If that disqualifies me from natural beekeeping, that is fine, but except for that, I think you can actually have colonies of bees living very naturally. And probably the more natural, the better. You may have smaller honey crops, but you will probably have healthier bees, so your overall benefits minus costs may come out ahead, and your apiary is a good demonstration of that. LS Thank you and you are right: many beekeepers are amazed to see my colonies going for five years or longer without any treatment.
Wild bees survive TS This reminds me of my experience going back to the Arnot Forest – the research forest at Cornell – in 2002 and finding the wild honey bees were still there. How could that be? We know that if we do not treat a colony for Varroa, it is going to be dead in a few years - usually two years at most, rarely three years. But there they were. I could have just ignored that and said: “Oh, that is weird! That does not make any sense, I am going to forget that.” But no, I saw these treatment-free colonies that persisted and it was such a striking thing I could not ignore it; I realised that could be very important.
Professor Dr Tom Seeley is Professor of Biology at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, USA. A leading researcher of honey bee ecology and behaviour and award-winning author of The Wisdom of the Hive and Honeybee Democracy, and recently Following the Wild Bees. His current research explores how wild honey bees survive Varroa without treatments, and what beekeeping practices could help mimic wild bees’ success. He says: “To develop sustainable beekeeping management practices, we need to first look at how honey bees live in the wild.” Professor Seeley is a Patron of Bees for Development
Photo © Leo Sharashkin
And once we started studying how colonies could survive in the presence of Varroa, the story is interesting1, especially now that we have understood the changes in the bees’ genetics, the possible competitive exclusion between viral strains, the importance of colony swarming, etc.
Left to their own devices, wild honey bees can survive in climates with -40°F (-40°C) winters. Local residents say that this colony living in a rock crevice outside Bozeman, MT (USA), has been there “forever.” The nest is betrayed by the fragrance of propolis and honey, which I could smell from 20 feet (6 m) 3
Dr Leo Sharashkin’s treatmentfree apiary in southern Missouri, USA, is composed entirely of local survivor stock. He catches swarms, uses a variety of easy-tobuild horizontal hives, and leads natural beekeeping workshops. He is editor of Keeping Bees with a Smile, a comprehensive book on natural beekeeping, and a regular contributor to American Bee Journal. Dr Sharashkin says “I love Layens hives with extradeep frames. But, as Layens himself said: ‘You can be a good beekeeper with any hive system, but you cannot be a good beekeeper if you don’t know what you are doing’”.
