14 minute read
The Long, Downhill Road in Beekeeping
John Phipps
V. I. Lenin
Sadly, this comment by Lenin has been fulfilled in many ways. Just like the worst aspects of communism and its strict control over people, it has extended to the way in which animals have been treated, removing them from their natural environments and imposing on them lifestyles which are not conducive to their health and well-being. This is most obvious with farm livestock. Regimes where cows are subjected to zero grazing, poultry are kept intensively in cages in sheds for egg production, and pigs, sometimes with over 2000 sows kept in cages on concrete for breeding and producing up to five litters in two years. The move against intensive farming and the cruelty involved has a long history, yet these units exist in most parts of the world and are considered to be a normal pattern of agricultural production. The call for animals used in the service of man to be treated humanely has as one of its main aims the right of an animal to carry out the normal aspects of its behaviour. Thus, cows to graze, poultry to scratch around and pigs to root about. Unfortunately, allowing such regimes to become more popular is not economic in terms of labour; animals allowed to wander free in the open, especially pigs, take longer to reach market weight; economics is more important than animal welfare. There has been more and more interest recently on how sentient animals are, what they feel, both feel both physically and mentally, and how this should be addressed to reduce their suffering. One aspect of this I mentioned some time ago in these pages, the fact that farm livestock have in their genetic makeup behavioural mechanics so that when taken from places of confinement they can easily adjust to their natural way of life. And as an example of sentience, to see that an animal is suffering stress, one only has to watch a sow in a cage on concrete, at the time of her farrowing. She is up and down all the time, looking through the bars, knowing that she has to do something, but is unable to do so. It is not due to the physical feelings of discomfort before giving birth, she instinctively knows that she is unable to make the important preparations for her litter.
My agriculture students saw the uneasiness of the sows on visits to huge farrowing units. Back at our school farm, when a gilt - a pig that had never before given birth - was ready to farrow, we threw a bale of barley straw into her paddock. Excitedly, she tore away at the bale carrying mouthfuls of straw into the corner of her sty to make a huge, comfortable nursery bed for her piglets. It is horrendous today, when we should all know better, that farm animals on a huge scale are suffering simply because they are being deprived of their natural way of life.
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1–3. Farm livestock must be allowed to behave in the way in which nature intended - cows to graze (a herd of cattle living in a wildflower-enhanced pasture, Dr. Parry Kietzman); poultry to scratch around; and pigs to root about and lie in the wallows they love so much. 4. A sow ready to farrow in the straw nest she has prepared for her litter.
The Natural Homes of Honey Bees
In the wild bees build their nests in confined spaces usually of an appropriate volume within a rock crevice or the hollow of a tree. Normally there is just the one entrance which allows the bees to enter and leave the hive, control the temperature and humidity of the space within exacting parameters, and to more easily defend the colony. Within that space the wax combs can be built into an almost catenary shape, though with elongated sides, with the right proportion of worker to drone cells, at the right spacing which allows for the extra thickness of honey stores when required and for drone brood which stands proud of the surface of the comb, and with ‘pop’ holes and brace comb for communication with other members of the colony - either through movement or transmission of sound.
These important features were retained when bees became ‘domesticated’ by man and housed through the centuries in log hives and skeps.
Skeps - clomed for protection from the weather and to conserve the right temperature and humidity within the hive, and made with wicker and daub.
Skeps - clomed for protection from the weather and to conserve the right temperature and humidity within the hive, and made with wicker and daub.
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6a, 6b. Very ornamental and (b) simple log hives.
The ‘Improvement’ of Beekeeping
It has frequently been stated that the two greatest advances in beekeeping occurred in the middle of the 19th century: the beginning of the use of frame hives by Dzierzon in Poland, Prokopovich in Russia and Langstroth in the United States, which then facilitated the importation of foreign queen bees which could be more easily introduced into these new types of hives.
Whilst it is true that these advances were important milestones in beekeeping, that they greatly facilitated the work of beekeepers, that each of the new, many inventions of beekeeping apparatus streamlined the beekeeper’s work and led to new management techniques, it is my contention that each of these steps significantly stilted the bees’ ability to live in a natural way - and furthermore had long-term negative effects on the well-being of the colonies lasting until today.
Thus the Hive
• A square hive - an unnatural shape for the bees’ nest - corners where cold and damp could accumulate; when a super is added, an arch not filled with honey shows that the colony needed a deep, right shape of nest
• Thin wooden walls, not enough insulation
• Frames - carefully separated from each other at a chosen spacing, taking no account of the extra room needed for drone brood - difficult for the bees to move from one frame to another for food during a long cold spell, hence ‘isolation starving’ - beekeepers taught to remove brace and burr comb essential for the integrity of the nest and maintenance of communication channels
• Wax foundation - favouring the production of workers, frustrating for bees that need to construct the right proportion of drone comb, wax commonly recycled for more foundation - increasingly less healthy for bees due to build up of chemicals from agriculture and bee pest control
• Allowed hives to be opened too frequently as part of management routines, upsetting the bees and requiring several hours afterwards for the colony to readjust to its right temperature and humidity
• Removing queen cells just delays swarming and frustrates the bees
• The list could go on and on!
7a. Rev Dr Johann Dzierzon 1811 - 1906
7b. Dzierzon Hive (1838)
8a. Peter J Prokopovich 1775- 1850
8b. Prokopovich Hive (1006).
Photo: Viktor Fursov, Ukraine.
9a. Rev Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth 1810 - 1895
9b. Langstroth Hive 1851, model made by the Editor.
10. Typical box shape hive almost universal today.*
*Recent research reveals its many failings especially as regards thermoregulation. (Daniel Cook Ph.D: Journal of Economic Entomology, March 2022). Thomas Blow, former owner of Taylors of Welwyn, was concerned that the wintering of bees in early bar hives led to great losses of stocks, compared with those in skeps, due to the circulation of air (draughts) around the frames - and so had numerous complaints from his customers. In skeps the bees fixed their combs to the upper parts of the hive giving a cosy, draught-free, well insulated crown. He tried to solve the problem with his “Blow’s Anglo-Cyprian Hive” in 1883. However, this was so difficult to use in practice that it was doomed from the very start.
11. Wax Foundation - Johannes Mehring (1857) - to control the bees’ construction of comb for the rearing of worker bees.
12. The Queen Excluder - L’ Abbé Collin (1875) - a barrier between the brood box and the supers which prevented the colony from constructing its nest in their natural way.
13. Frame spacing - metal ends William Broughton Carr (1887) and self-spacing frames Julius Hoffman and R O B Manley - to maintain the ‘bee space’, but which took into account neither the extra space needed for drone comb nor the bees’ desire to have thicker comb at the top of their nest (in skeps this made a good crown for overwintering).
14. Frames allowed their easy removal from the hive and cleaned of brace and burr comb.
15. Gave beekeepers complete access to the interior of the hive allowing queen cells to be destroyed (only delaying swarming and frustrating the colony).
16. Facilitated the mass feeding of colonies with inferior food: syrup.
The Foreign Queens
The import of bees was, and to some extent still is, for many beekeepers due to fanciful reasons: the colour of the queen, the possibility of better honey returns, the promise of gentler and easier to handle bees; just following a current trend or fashion, or simply because of their availability and it ‘would be nice to try them’.
Whilst the new generation of a colony headed by a newly-imported queen, or a home bred one with a foreign heritage, may fulfil the expectations of the beekeepers, unfortunately the desired qualities can not only be lost in future generations, but lead to unwanted characteristics - especially aggressiveness.
In the first volumes of the British Bee Journal, from 1873 onwards, we can read how purchasers of foreign queens were frequently disappointed,proud though they might have been with the beautiful colour of a Golden Italian. They found that introducing such queens into their own colonies often ended in tragedy. This resulted in many pages of advice of how to avoid failure, plus a number of experts recommending ‘Italianising’ colonies.
In countries that I have visited where no or little cross-breeding has taken place, I have found the bees to be easy to manage without the necessity of wearing any protective clothing.
The importation of queens today is very controversial. Not only does cross-mating take place in any area in which they have been introduced, but they can interrupt on-going attempts to increase native bees in an area, bees which are able to make the best of the habitat in which they have existed for hundreds of years.
17. Huge commercial queen-rearing stations allow queens to be exported to many parts of the world which are unsuitable for their colony’s well-being. The drones from these colonies hybridise with local bees negatively affecting their progeny including the increase in bad temper.
Moveable Comb Hives and Honey Bee Health
Transitional Beekeeping - A Time of Crisis for Honey Bee Survival
I do not think that it is a coincidence that the great mortality of bees in the first two decades of the 20th Century occurred at a time when so many beekeepers were changing from traditional skep beekeeping to transferring their colonies into frame hives. Whilst named the ‘Isle of Wight Disease’ (which defied all measures tried to cure bees suffering from it), it was for some time considered a mystery until Rennie discovered the acarine mites in the trachea which became the disaster’s scapegoat. Significantly, and again and again, reports in the BBJ came from from beekeepers who still kept their bees in skeps, who were boasting that their bees remained free of the disease; no signs of crawling and dying bees beneath the stands where their skeps were housed. British soldiers during WWI in Belgium and France found healthy colonies in skeps, where those in wooden haves had succumbed, and not surprisingly, re-stocking Britain’s bees were from skeps in these lowland countries, particularly from Holland.
Interestingly, beekeeping scientist Dr Lesley Bailey found that whilst many colonies in Britain did suffer and collapse as a result of acarine disease, the mites were also found within the trachea of surviving colonies. He believed that the severity of the outbreak was partly due to the change in beekeeping methods from skep to frame hives. Obviously, the opening of hives, the sharing of combs from one hive to another which could pass on diseases and pests, added to the stress of the colonies and had a negative effect on their health. Whilst bees in skeps overwintered on natural stores of honey, modern beekeeping with the new feeding devices allowed beekeepers to remove as much honey from a colony as they desired, to be replaced with sugar syrup - further removing their colonies from natural to ‘synthetic’ forms of winter food.
18. Propolis is collected in great quantities by bees. It is needed to seal parts of the hive, reduce the hive entrance and, most importantly, as an essential tool for the colony’s health.
19. For many years at the beginning of the 20th Century many colonies were unsuccessfully transferred from skeps to frame hives. Was this the actual reason for the much-debated death of bees accredited to acarine disease?
20. 19, 20. For many years at the beginning of the 20th Century many colonies were unsuccessfully transferred from skeps to frame hives. Was this the actual reason for the much-debated death of bees accredited to acarine disease?
Keeping the hive clean and tidy and allowing the easy removal of frames involved removing traces of propolis from all parts of the hives and frames. By doing so, beekeepers were depriving the colonies of the essential hygienic role that propolis gives to the bees.
Today and Onwards
Beekeeping globally is in a sad state:
• Severe worldwide loss of colonies from varroa, viruses, colony collapse, pesticides and pollution
• Lack of year-round range of forage sources important for the gut health and immune systems, with too much reliance on monoculture and feeding colonies on various types of processed sugar syrups
• Year-round movement of colonies over long distances for demanding pollination workload for bees
• Infestation of hives with pests - varroa, hive beetles,
• Treatment of colonies with pesticides which can kill brood within the comb and be absorbed into the wax which holds honey
•Problems with queen matings - lack of drones
• Longevity of queens enormously diminished in contrast with previous years
Many of the problems of beekeeping today cannot be fully attributed to huge commercial beekeeping operations; beekeeping is an essential service to agriculture if crops are to be pollinated. Large scale beekeeping could change, but agricultural practices need to change first - ie, more mixed farming, less monoculture; the creation of better environments and habitats for all forms of life, with the aim of providing a good balance of nature that enables sufficient predators to reduce the number of pests that attack our crops.
The Solution
Most importantly, beekeeping populations need to recover their strength and vitality. For far too long have they become shadows of their ancestors, being more susceptible to our challenging environments as well as to the ways in which they are managed. I strongly believe that the ever-growing number of bee-friendly beekeepers that allow their colonies to live untouched in their own apiaries, as well as re-wilding them in suitable places, may in time, through their swarming and natural mating activities, gradually come to stimulate a much-needed vigour.
Notes
The Isle of Wight phenomenon was thoroughly debunked on a scientific basis by Dr.Leslie Bailey of Rothamsted in 1981. According to Beowulf Cooper, founder of BIBBA, "Some of those personally involved in the restocking campaign have admitted to me that there was in fact no shortage of surviving native bees.” And yet as Norman Carreck has recently written, "half a century after the explanation was found to be scientifically unsound, many beekeeping books and articles still perpetuate the myth that the IOW disease was caused by the tracheal mite Acarapis woodi "; a prominent example being H R C Riches, President of the Central Association of Beekeepers and past President of the British Beekeepers Association in 1992. Even today similar claims are commonly made. However, in the last decade DNA studies by Pedersen and others in Denmark and elsewhere have conclusively shown that modern specimens of Dark Bees from the UK and Ireland fit into the genetic specification of Apis mellifera mellifera. (From DavidCushman.net)
