[PDF]Beekeeping: What Is Wrong With Modern Beekeeping

What Is Wrong With Modern Beekeeping?
A BRIEF HISTORY OF BEEKEEPING



IN BRITAIN AND THE USA

P J Chandler

Honeybees, in something like their present form, have been around for about 150 million
years,± give or take a few millennia. In that time they have evolved into one of the most
successful and highly organised social creatures on earth.



We humans have been around for only about three million years and probably only in the
last few thousand have we developed a relationship with bees, largely consisting of us
finding new and more creative ways of robbing and exploiting them




Primitive hives made from logs, baskets and pots of various kinds were - and in some
places still are - used to provide homes for bees, while offering more- or- less convenient
means by which their honey could be removed as required. In the UK and much of
Europe, straw skeps of many and varied designs were the standard hive for centuries and
were in common use right up until the middle of the twentieth century. I know of a group of
beekeepers in Germany who still use skeps on the heather and there are still some
dedicated skeppists dotted about Britain.



For an unknown period - perhaps 1000 years or more - beekeeping in Britain was carried
out mainly by monks and peasant farmers, usually in straw or rush skeps. Swarming was
the principle method of maintaining a stock of colonies, prime swarms being captured and
housed as they emerged or as soon as they could be caught. A certain number of colonies
were killed off at the end of each season in order to extract their honey and wax comb, as
no means was then available for non- destructive harvesting. There were plenty of wild
colonies around, which provided a reservoir of new blood, strengthened by the process of
natural selection. The best managed colonies were overwintered and swarms emerging
from them in the following season ensured a plentiful supply of bees for everyone.



MOVABLE FRAMES: THE HOLY GRAIL



The advent of modern beehives and their associated technology during the latter half of the
nineteenth century made the processes of bee management and honey extraction easier and
more efficient and laid the foundations for industrial- scale, commercial beekeeping as we
see it today. The hobby beekeeper was also able to take advantage of this new technology,
resulting in many enthusiastic amateurs keeping a couple of hives at the bottom of their
gardens. A new breed of beekeeper emerged among the clergy and middle classes, driven
by the scientific and industrial impulse of the Victorian era, who sought ways to control this
fascinating wild creature and bend her behaviour to the needs and desires of man.



Langstroth 's original hive

The key invention that made all this possible was the self-spacing, 'movable frame',
introduced by the Rev. L. L. Langstroth around 1850 in the USA. Wooden frames,
arranged side by side across the width of a rectangular box, spaced apart according to
Langstroth s recent discovery of 'bee space's meant that bees could conveniently be
manipulated and 'managed' as never before, according to the various theories and whims of
beekeepers. Because Langstroth had chosen a box that just happened to by lying around in
his workshop on which to base his 'standard' (which remains to this day as the standard
American Langstroth hive), the shape of his frame was that of a rectangle approximately
twice as wide as it was deep - utterly unlike the tall, catenary curves of the comb that bees
like to build when left to their own devices. Nevertheless, bees are versatile and flexible
and they adapted themselves as best they could to the new shape.

In Britain, where it seems that nearly every Victorian beekeeper considered himself an
inventor, there was less standardization of dimensions and any number of variations arose
on the theme of movable frames in a box. Notable among these was the WBC hive,
invented by one William Broughton Carr about 1890 and still around today in a limited

H i f d i i bl hild ' b k i i h h h 1 bli



way. Having featured in innumerable children's books it is the shape the general public most
readily associate with beehives and is still often (and inexplicably) recommended to
beginners, despite its prodigious use of timber and considerable 'nuisance factor' due to the
extra lifting, maintenance and storage required.



The WBCHive





The WBC and its innumerable variations have largely given way among hobbyists to the
British National Hive, which, though dull and functional in appearance compared to the
WBC, is more restrained in its use of timber and therefore cheaper, lighter and more
practical in many ways. There is a deep frame variant of the National, which has many
adherents, while the capacious Commercial hive is favoured by larger- scale beekeepers.
The only other notable 'modern' British hive is that built to the specifications of the late
Brother Adam at Buckfast Abbey in Devon. Bro. Adam's 'Modified Dadant' hive is a
monster, some 20 inches square by 12" deep and containing up to 12 frames, each having
roughly twice the brood area of a National (14" x 8 V") frame. Moving these hernia-
inducing boxes and their accompanying supers requires considerable strength (Bro. Adam
had a labour force of monks at his disposal!) and no hobbyist need give them a second
look, save from curiosity. The American Langstroth hive is little used in Britain (except, for
some reason, in Hampshire), although ubiquitous in the USA, Canada and many other
t i



countries.



Both in Britain and in America, along with the rest of the developed world, movable frames
fitted with wax foundation to a standard pattern became the unquestioned orthodoxy of
beekeeping. New beekeepers acquired equipment and knowledge from old beekeepers in
the same way that apprentices learned their trades from master craftsmen and thus
perpetuated the status quo.

The next important invention that handed yet more control to the beekeeper was that of
pre- fabricated wax 'foundation'. It was considered that bees spent too much of their time
and energy (and, therefore, honey) on building wax comb and, if they could be 'helped
along' by the provision of thin sheets of wax, impressed with a suitable hexagonal pattern,
pre- fitted to the wooden frames, then that could only be a Good Thing.

Because the embossed pattern was designed to emulate the beginnings of worker cells,
bees were thus 'encouraged' to fill their homes with worker comb and were discouraged
from making 'useless' drone cells. Foundation was made according to measurements made
by A I Root around 1884 and, largely due to Root's ubiquity in the US beekeeping
supplies market, seems to have been milled more or less to these dimensions to this day.

Bees will take any opportunity to build drone cells in odd comers and often they will build a
whole comb of them against one of the internal walls, despite the beekeeper's efforts to
thwart them

The general practice among beekeepers is to prevent their bees from raising 'too many
drones by culling drone brood: a maximum of 5% seems to be the accepted figure. The
thinking is that drones, being unproductive and having no obvious work to do aside from
mating, must therefore be supernumerary and dispensable. They also consume honey, of
course - a lot according to some and hardly any according to others - but that is often
given as a reason to cull them Left to their own devices, bees will ensure that, in the queen
mating season, they have up to 20% of their number as fertile males (drones). This
discrepancy may, I suggest, be a major factor in the recent reports of many queens failing
to mate or being poor layers and has almost certainly accelerated the spread of the feral
'Africanized' bees^ in the USA, which are not subject to the whims of beekeepers and can
flood an area with their own drones with little competition from hived bees.

I think it is more than likely that drones do in fact have other functions within the hive. In
particular, I think they have a role to play in maintaining the correct hive temperature for the
brood. Remember that, in temperate climes, the inside of the hive - especially in the main
brood area - is always warmer than the outside world: around 94°F (34°C), a temperature
they maintain throughout the year with little variation^. This means that opening a hive at
any time of year will cause the bees a deal of extra work in returning their
environment to its correct temperature - a fact that receives barely a mention in any
beekeeping book I have read, other than Abbe Warre's Beekeeping For All 5 -. In hotter
countries, opening the hive gives bees the opposite problem how to cool it back down to
their working temperature. This is a powerful argument for 'natural' or 'leave well alone'
beekeeping in a hive designed to be managed in this way and an equally powerful argument
against opening any hive unnecessarily - even in summer - and especially a hive that opens

at the top exposing bees all at once as is the case with all framed hives



at the top exposing bees all at once, as is the case with all framed hives.




Conventional, framed hives create a lot of extra woodwork and a storage problem.



In the 1 940s, Johann Thur, a German beekeeper who favoured vertical top bar hives in the
style of Abbe Warre, described in Bienenzucht his concept of Nestduftwdrmebindung. 6 -
This introduces a notion of a combination of heat and scent that provides a beehive with its
unique, nurturing and disease-resistant 'nest atmosphere', which should not be disturbed. In
his view, it is incumbent upon us as beekeepers to respect the bees' need to maintain this
'nest atmosphere' and to design hives and management protocols that disrupt it as little as
possible.



It is possible that this combination of heat and scent may be important for the suppression
of the Varroa mite. A recent study showed that undisturbed, feral colonies seemed better
able to co-exist with Varroa mites than those managed in a conventional way. z

PESTS AND DISEASES



During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, honeybee colonies began to suffer on
an unprecedented scale from a range of diseases and parasites that had previously been
rare, localized or relatively mild in their effects. By 1920, the native British black bee (Apis
mellifera mellifera) had been virtually wiped out by so-called 'Isle of Wight disease'^, to
which it had no natural resistance. Replacement black bees were brought in from France,
Germany and Holland, along with yellow- striped bees from Italy to re- stock the empty
hives, but crosses between the black and yellow races were (and still are) overly defensive
and difficult to manage. While they were much less susceptible to 'Isle of Wight' disease,
the mild-mannered Italians, along with the other immigrants, were vulnerable to both
American and European Foul Brood (AFB and EFB), the two most serious bee diseases.
And they were (and still are) incurable robbers of other bee colonies. 9 -



During the 20th century, various attempts were made to breed the 'perfect' bee, most
notably by Brother Adam, a Benedictine monk of German origin, at Buckfast Abbey in
Devon. He travelled widely to gather genetic material to incorporate into his famous
'Buckfast' strain. His goal was to produce a disease-resistant, good-tempered, manageable
and productive bee with excellent over- wintering abilities and many beekeepers,
particularly in Germany, Scandinavia and the USA will testify that, in its 'pure' form, the
Buckfast Bee has all these qualities. However, if it is allowed to out-cross with random
mongrels, the resulting progeny - while still inclined to be productive - are often very bad-
tempered indeed^.



For the 'pure strain' breeder, maintaining those desirable traits from generation to
generation by a careful program of breeding is vital and - together with heterosis^ - was
the secret of Brother Adam's success and worldwide fame



the secret of Brother Adam s success and worldwide fame.

Despite the brave efforts of Bro. Adam and other breeders, bees continued to die in
significant numbers from foul brood, acarine (Acarapis woodii, a tracheal mite) and
Nosema apis (an amoeba- like protozoon) and new pests began to appear, most notably a
parasitic mite, originally labelled Varroa jacobsonii, later changed to the more ominous-
sounding Varroa destructor.

Not yet in Britain (as of 2008), but nevertheless posing a longer-term threat, is the highly
destructive Small Hive Beetle Aethina tumida, and another genus of parasitic mites similar
in habit to Varroa, called Tropilaelaps. These mites are carriers of several viruses
potentially lethal to bees and the mites themselves weaken their hosts by feeding on
haemo lymph, the bees' 'blood. Kashmir virus, probably carried by mites, has recently been
detected (2005) in two colonies in the north of England. Apparently, we can also expect an
invasion of giant Japanese hornets from France.

Honeybees, on which we depend for the pollination of so many of our food crops, are now
in trouble as never before and much of the blame for this potentially disastrous state of
affairs must be placed at the door of negligent, commercial beekeepers.

The inter- continental migration of pests and diseases has widely been blamed on climate
change, but in fact the spread of the Varroa mite from its native Asia and its original host
species, the Asian bee Apis cerana, can be directly linked to the commercial bee trade.

Ectoparasitic mites of the genus Varroa are known from Asian honey bees, of which nine
extant Apis species are recognised (Koeniger and Koeniger 2000). All life stages of Varroa
mites feed exclusively on bee haemolymph after perforating the host's integument with their
chelicerae (Smirnow 1979;Donze andGuerinl994). The so-called western honey bee, Apis
mellifera, with 24 subspecies distributed over Europe, Africa and the Near East (Ruttner
1988), has been repeatedly infested with Varroa destructor during the last century. This
occurred through contacts with the closely related Apis cerana as a consequence of the
worldwide transport of bee colonies and apicultural projects in developing countries
(Matheson 1993). Today Varroatosis is the main problem for beekeeping with A. mellifera
colonies (DeJong 1997). &

Varroa probably co-existed with Apis cerana for many thousands of years and in that time
the two species reached an accommodation whereby the bees learned to keep the
parasites down to a tolerable level without actually eradicating them When, thanks to the
activities of bee-keepers in their home area, Varroa destructor came across our
honeybee, Apis mellifera, it found a new and vulnerable host, which had had no
opportunity to evolve a defence mechanism Honeybees began to die in their millions as the
mites exploited their new hosts' susceptibility and spread across the globe with astonishing
rapidity.



An effective treatment was found in the form of the synthetic, miticidal pyrethroid
fluvalinate and to some extent the Varroa mite was brought under control. However,
within a few years the mites evolved a resistance to fluvalinate, aided by some beekeepers
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