So the reason why farmed bees stay in their artificial beehives when they are completely free to leave is that beekeepers are mildly eldritch gods! Seriously, here’s why:
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I know the Royal Beekeeper had to inform the bees that the Queen had passed and that King Charles would be in charge now. I didn’t realize it was an ‘English’ thing, I just thought it was a ‘royal’ thing. But that’s cool, keep them informed.
My mother came from a line of beekeepers, and firmly believed in “Telling the Bees”. She also had no fear of them; would be next to a hive with no netting or smoke gun! And never got stung. I too am not frightened of them; but my daughter is; probably as she is allergic to their sting. If I had time and space I’d keep bees even now!
We had a beehive in the wall of our house where a brick had fallen out (my father had made alterations to the bathroom and moved a pipe). Used to walk right through them without worrying. Never got stung either. Then we had plumbing problems and the plumbers wouldn’t come with the hive there. We had to call the bee movers to come and rehome them. I miss our “ladies”.
Slovenia also has the custom of telling the bees when the keeper has died.
Sooo… Beekeper speaking.
Bees accomplish incredible things by communication, cooperation, and compliance. Passing information of a food source that we now know isn’t just location, but quality and quantity. The architecture of comb in our frames is set to rules and parameters, let them make their own design, and its often fantastic art. Needing a leader, they can make a queen, support the queen, defend the queen, or at the sign of weakness, replace the queen, with a unified efficiency. Enviable order and thus, achievements.
Bees can drift, from one hive to another, and be welcomed into the new hive, especially if they are carrying nectar or pollen. Maybe they are welcomed in to a new hive when bringing an acceptable offering the the god….. One hive will also fight with another. A stronger hive will take the initiative to rob a weaker hive to decimation. Bees will ruthlessly fight at a open feeder over a plentiful food source. Its like my bees don’t know they all have the same god, and one believes that their god is better than the others, and that is reason enough to wage war. Sometimes I beg my bees, be less like us.
Question for beekeepers who move the hives from orchard to orchard, to improve pollination:
How does it affect the bees?
Do they get “confused”?
Simple and correct answer. The queen bee is larger than normal bees. A man-made beehive is basically divided into two chambers. The queen cannot move from her chamber to the chamber with the exit because of her size. The bees stay with their queen.
Beekeeper here also in Chester County, Pennsylvania, USA. Way too much beekeeping misinformation out there. More non-native honeybees and more beekeepers is the answer to zero problems we have.
CCD, Colony Collapse Disorder was an agricultural (produced) crisis, not an environmental crisis.
Year One = no bees. Shadow several beekeepers near you and learn learn learn. SO MUCH TO LEARN. This is best way to start. Remember, beekeeping is NOT conservation, it’s agriculture, bee farming. Honeybee beekeeping does not help our environment, only native plants do that. Honeybees have some negative impacts on native pollinators & in fact, honeybees may actually help spread non-native plants and worse, invasive non-native plants.
Too many honey bee colonies in one location will also out-compete all the other native pollinators and take too much of the food sources. Honeybees travel several miles for food and hoard all they can for overwintering as a cluster of thousands of bees. ONLY honeybees do this. There are no native honeybees in the US, or this entire continent in fact. The native pollinators only travel 30 yards , some up to a couple hundred yards for food. (some bumble bees can go a mile)
IMPORTANT:
The Western/European Honeybee is NOT native to this continent, but is an agricultural livestock and rare superorganism. Beekeeping is NOT conservation, it’s agriculture. Bee Farming. Honeybees do not need saving, nor are there any “wild” populations that need replenishing. They are not native, therefore cannot be wild. Sure, there are escaped feral colonies surviving unmanaged but they don’t actually belong here. We do NOT need honeybees for our environment. We need non-native honeybees for commercial agriculture pollination and for healthy hive products like honey, wax, pollen, propolis, bee bread, royal jelly, and bee venom. We do NOT need honeybees for our native ecosystem and food webs. We have plenty of native pollinators for that purpose in our North American environment who have evolved here for thousands of years with the local native flora and fauna. All the flies, moths, beetles, wasps, hornets, butterflies, native bees, hummingbirds, bats, all help pollinate our ecosystem.
“Save the bees” actually is meant for the native bees, over 400 native bee species in PA alone, over 4000 in the US. Most all are solitary, and only queens overwinter or larval cocoons, in the ground, in hollow dead plants, in leaf piles. Brush piles are very important habitat. Dead stems are often used year 2 after plant died. Did you know fire flies spend the first 2 years of their life in the ground? (keep chemicals off lawns please)
How to help the bees and more importantly all native pollinators?
*** NATIVE PLANTS. ***
*** MOW LESS, PLANT MORE. ***
*** There’s nothing better you can do to help “save the bees” than to plant more NATIVE flowers and trees ! ***
(save the bees = native bees, not honeybees)
Use no chemicals/poisons. If you “must”, after plants/trees bloom AND after dusk.
We have been fooled into thinking a green invasive turf grass lawn is some kind of status symbol if success but it’s actually a desert for nature and provides nothing for animals and insects.
*************If you don’t USE it, why mow it????***********
*************If you don’t USE it, why mow it????***********
*************If you don’t USE it, why mow it????***********
We are SO brainwashed right?
An acre of nothing, turf grass is “beautiful” vs. flowers? That’s accomplishment? Proud of nothingness?
Do not use any insecticides herbicides and fungicides on your property. Especially when flowers and trees are blooming. Please stop poisoning the planet! Research native pollinator plants/shrubs/bushes/trees/flowers & try to plant as much as you can. Bonus you’ll have less yard to mow.
SHRINK YOUR LAWN !
SHRINK YOUR LAWN !
SHRINK YOUR LAWN !
*** Why battle/fight/steal from nature every weekend when you could be Harmonizing with it? ***
Look up any Doug Tallamy YouTube video from 2020 or 2019 on his recent book tour for “Nature’s Best Hope”. He is a professor at University of Delaware and lives in Oxford Chester County. He puts it perfectly why native plants are so important and how everyone who owns land has a duty to provide for nature. His prior book “Bringing Nature Home” changed how my wife thinks deeply.
She started up the Wild Ones of SE PA chapter. A national non-profit to promote and educate about the vital importance of native plants.
Jessie would love you give you a Yarden tour anytime to show how much life you can bring back to just one acre one plant at a time. Yarden = garden + yard. Quiet Tour Link:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XxpO6GZ_yds&feature=youtu.be
(Also on our Hat Trick Honey FB page.)
***Why waste so much time, money, and pollution (sound, air, ground and water) FIGHTING nature and the outdoors every weekend off work when you could be HARMONIZING with nature???***
Jessie’s Native Plant Talk: (free on YouTube Wild Ones of SEPA)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8oPb37iXnI&t=1257s
Doug Tallamy: (Nature’s Best Hope book tour talk)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARdYLamTA-M&fbclid=IwAR1U3myggrelvrVgbCZHNoonrEmeD3XuNY83-JI9hn2hi9NYdJGdSMnUx7o
Some GREAT Documentaries:
Adam Ruins Lawns (free internet)
Inhabit (free internet)
Need to Grow (free internet)
The Pollinators (might be free now?)
Kiss the Ground (Netflix , possibly other sources too)
We are all children of Mother Nature. Please respect & help your Mother !
Interested in Beekeeping? Year One = no bees. Shadow several beekeepers near you and learn learn learn. SO MUCH TO LEARN. This is best way to start. Remember, beekeeping is NOT conservation, it’s agriculture, bee farming. Honeybee beekeeping does not help our environment, only native plants do that. In fact, honeybees may actually help spread non-native plants and worse, invasive non-native plants.
More honeybees and more beekeepers is the answer to zero problems we face.
Since I’ve learned these truths I’ve been slowly downsizing my beekeeping and focusing more on native plants.
Please do the same.
This is because honeybees are livestock and to keep the worst bee disease in control if there is an outbreak. AFB, American Foul Brood is a spore forming bacteria that can live on old equipment for decades and decades. If there is an outbreak the bees need killed and hive burned. THEN all hives in a 5 mile radius get inspected by the local bee inspector for disease spread.
So new beekeepers “failing learning curve” just doesn’t effect them, it can effect all the colonies around.
You’re a treasure of a human and must be protected at all costs. Thank you so much for taking the time to put together this well thought out, well written, factual post. I really appreciate it, and so does every right thinking person who cares about the environment, the bees, and the future of this planet. Thank you so much. Yes, honey bees are cute. But they are not native and they do not belong here and they are killing off other species.
I would not say killing off but they can and do indeed have negative impacts and effects that need to be discussed. It’s a shame most folks get fooled into beekeeping under the false pretenses of “save the bees” and “helping” the environment. I do fully promote Apitherapy: all of the healthy hive products to benefit human health. But not acknowledging / accepting / learning / teaching about the cons of the hobby is not ethical to me. However, honeybee beekeeping did lead us down the path to true conservation: habitat restoration via NATIVE plants. They opened the door for us but cannot follow us down that path.