Dear friends

The 46th APIMONDIA Congress took place in Montréal, Canada in September. There are hundreds of talks to attend across the week of an Apimondia Congress, however each morning the whole Congress was addressed by one special keynote lecturer – highlight of the week was Professor Tom Seeley talking about Darwinian beekeeping. This means beekeeping whereby honey bees are allowed to naturally keep fit and healthy by adapting to their situation. Since bees have been evolving for many millions of years, far longer than us humans, they have excellent coping strategies to survive: bees do best when we allow these strategies to be deployed. Darwinian beekeeping enables us to understand why bees kept undisturbed, in simple hives (as, for example, is the situation in Africa) – are far healthier than those subjected to intensive management.

Another outstanding talk was provided by Kirk Webster, a commercial beekeeper from Vermont in northeast USA, who has not used any treatment of any kind on his bees for over 20 years. Kirk does not move his bees from one place to another, and produces honey, nucleus colonies and queen bees on commercial scale. Kirk attributes his success to three factors: (1) being able to over-winter nucleus colonies, even through long, cold winters, which ensures plenty of bees and queens for spring; (2) the arrival of tracheal mites, five years before Varroa’s arrival, which meant that Kirk’s treatmentfree bees had already evolved to deal with mites to some extent when Varroa arrived, and (3) the carefully considered introduction of Promorski (Russian) bees to contribute much needed genetic integrity to the small base of the north American honey bee population. Kirk emphasised, and we agree with him, that it is poisoning of the environment that is the real existential threat to beekeeping – not Varroa mites.

Tom Seeley addresses the packed Apimondia Congress auditorium

Nicola Bradbear President, Apimondia Scientific Commission Beekeeping for Rural Development