BBE-Tech: Honey Bee Conservation

It has come up in several discussions that when talking about beekeeping that doesn’t call for “treatments” such as trapping and eliminating small hive beetle, or some active method of removing or cutting  down mite populations by dusting or medicating, etc…, that some “treatment free” enthusiasts can go a bit “overboard”.

I would have to agree with that.

There are some posts and websites that like to jump from the beginning to the end and tell you that not treating bees will give you healthier, survivor bees that have adapted and developed traits allowing them to co-exist or eliminate these pests, etc without interference from beekeepers.  It’s just that easy.

Except, it’s not that easy.

The hard, costly part of this scenario is the middle part of the story.  What is happening to the bees while all this adapting is going on.

Bee will die, make no mistakes about it.  Be prepared to see some colonies, many colonies, struggle and die out.

If you are buying bees, this can get very expensive and that is why you will find that most beekeepers who pay for bees will also treat bees to protect that investment.  Buying bees is not cheap.  You don’t fork over $65 to $150.00 per package or nuc to watch them die.  Although, that will happen too sometimes, no matter how much you treat.

For those of us who don’t pay for bees, we get them by catching swarms and removing colonies that live inside house or garage walls, etc….  The financial argument is much decreased, if not existent at all.  For us, our investment is in time.  Both those who buy bees and those who catch them have an equal emotional investment (for the most part).

Folks who catch bees spend a lot of time and effort in safely catching and hiving bees, we have to look at it as a “tough love” situation, much as we do our family and community members.

If the bees are going to “make it” they have to do it themselves. Some things we just can’t do for others.

Like make the adaptations required to overcome obstacles and survive. We can’t do it for them.  all we end up doing is propping them up.  Keeping bees from adapting because they are relying on our treatments and not experiencing the necessary roughness that prompts adaptation.

It is taking a risk.  You risk the bees dying instead of adapting.  But, they would have likely died anyway had they been left where we found them.  The mites and shb and other pests would still have faced them and they still would have been forced to adapt or die.

If they didn’t die, they would have exhibited those behaviors and traits to survive and those are exactly the traits we are seeking to add to the genetics of local bees.

So now we can help the bees in general by allowing the survivors to adapt and breeding from those, allowing them to propagate the species by sending their drones out to the drone congregation areas and letting the queens from who knows how many colonies have access to survivor traits.

Everyone benefits from bees adapting. We just have to have the patience, the willingness to risk and the toughness of character to let those bees live or die on their own.  Much as we have to let our children live their own lives and fail or succeed on their own.  We can’t do it for them.

Once they do succeed, we can help them to repeat that success though.  We can be there to do splits and queen raising and other things to help those successful, survival traits continue on beyond the one colony.

No treatment beekeeping can work and leave you with survivor bees that need no or few artificial chemicals and interventions that cost money and possibly work to the long term detriment of the bees.

It takes time though and patience and heartache, letting them do what they have to do.

I am one of those people who believe that “big” business is not good for people.  Oh sure, there are those who say it is un-sustainable and the huge corporations will eventually collapse around us after they have sucked dry everything they can.  That’s not my point though.

I just don’t think that bigger is always better.

Keeping smaller, manageable objectives is healthier for people and society overall, in my opinion.

By keeping my bee yards smaller and building up more of them,  I can pay more attention to the hives in each yard.   I am able to pay more attention to what is going on around me.

If  I get so many bee yards that it becomes difficult to keep track with one or two people,  I can help the community by hiring someone to help, thus contributing jobs to the area.

I don’t run big stores to sell my products,  I prefer to run small shops and open air market places.  I do this for a reason.  I have been involved in corporate store management many times in my life and I find that customers and people in general, act better, they treat each other more decently, in a small, personal setting.

They get to know me, the seller, better.   I get more opportunities to really talk to people and listen to them.  To learn what they want and what they are looking for.

To be perfectly honest, I am not looking to get rich.   I just want to be comfortable, be happy and take care of my family and my bees.  That gives me freedom from focusing on increasing profits and pay more attention to making things the best they can be and increasing customers instead.

If I can do that, the profits will come.

The devil is in the details and big things come in small packages.

My personal favorite saying though is, a good life is not in the getting, but in the doing.

By keeping things smaller and manageable,  I can do a lot.

We all can.

People take a lot of flak from human apologists.

I think humans or (two-leggeds) are great when we leave our egos in the sock drawer.

We have so much capacity to facilitate, support and be a part of the world around us.  We are avid learners and studiers. We are able to have compassion toward the other inhabitants of earth who are more subject to natures laws of “survival of the fittest” than we are.

At the same time, we can be dumb as bricks when we allow our pride and egos to become inflated.  We have a tendency to over-value our place in the world, as though we are immortal “little gods” or something.

There are those of us who begin to think that what knowledge and information they have gained about the world around us somehow makes us experts and thus somehow qualified to micro-manage the world around us.

As I said,  I am not anti-human.  We are great.  Terrific. Capable of so much good works and abilities.  There are those among us who feel guilty about having opposable thumbs though,  and that we as a species are unworthy of sharing the planet because of a propensity to curb our enthusiasm, as it were.

I use the word “facilitate” a lot.  mostly because that is where our greatest strength lay, I think.  To facilitate means we see the world around it as it is and respect that.  We can turn around and find ways to take trouble situations for other creatures and help them make it on their own.  If we choose to see them, that is.

I do not apologize for our existence and the place we currently hold in the world of living creatures.  In many ways, we are still ultimately guided by Natures law of “Survival of the fittest”  in that we hold keenly to the idea that “Those who can, do.  Those who can’t, do not”.

In general, this means that among us two-leggeds, those of us who are continually working and adapting ourselves, flexible and open minded, will continue to succeed and thrive.

As with all other creatures in nature, there are those who are ‘do-ers’  and there are parasites among us as well.

In the insect world, there are do-ers like honey bees and there are parasites like varroa mites.

Among humans, our do-ers are those who build and grow and create things.  Then we have our parasites like politicians, lawyers and corporate investors.

Despite having our parasites.  those who take from others instead of doing for themselves, us humans are largely do-ers.

As we do those things lie building, growing food, making tools and resources, we have slowly but surely learned to be more mindful f of how we use the natural resources of the world around us and to not be as wasteful as when we began the process.

We continue to learn to reduce, re-use and recycle.  We replenish the forest planting new trees for those we cut down.

We are overall more mindful of the ‘wild’ places that the other living creatures on this world need, just as we need our spaces.

I am proud to consider myself one of the more mindful “do-ers” of our species.   I encourage you to be a mindful do-er as well.

By being mindful do-ers of our species, we continue to earn our place among the survivors of this world.