We're the bad guys - again!

[drumgerry]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening...g-friends.html

Yet again the "natural beekeeping" lot tell us everything would be perfect if only we were like them.

[Jon]

from 1985-2005 there was a 53 per cent decline in managed honeybee colony numbers.

And from 2005 to 2012 there has been a massive increase.
there are current statistics available so why stop the clock at 2005 unless it is a case of lies, damned lies...

Traditionalists might scoff at some of her methods, but the proof of Heidi’s work is in the bees themselves. Each hive houses a healthy colony. Of the 30 colonies that faced last winter every single one survived. Most beekeeping groups reported winter losses in the order of 30 per cent .

Well done if she got 30/30 through the winter but last year's UK winter losses were in the normal range in the teens not 30% as claimed.

The worst thing about the article is that there are beginners who will follow the

'Don’t use chemical treatments for disease and pest control (incl varroa mite)

. who will lose their bees as a consequence.

The other aspect I would take issue with is promoting swarming at will. Maybe she lives miles from human habitation but non beekeepers don't want bees taking up residence in the chimney.

The 'let them swarm' and 'don't treat the varroa' advice lines are probably the worst messages associated with natural beekeeping. The reality is that most untreated colonies will die.

I have plenty of time for the more sensible aspects of natural beekeeping but this is poor advice.

[madasafish]

Anyone who promotes a hive which is not weather tight and has to be kept under cover has their priorities wrong.

I speak as one whose TBHs have very good temperament and little varroa drop but I treat with thymol and try to control swarming.

[drumgerry]

Someone needs to do an interview with you Jon or a combined interview with you and Randy Oliver. It seems the press only want to hear from the fringes of beekeeping and if the hives are painted in pretty colours so much the better.

[prakel]

I've no issue with people who truly know what they're doing going down the treatment free route but I can never get my head around these small scale guys (with insufficient colony numbers to offer a realistic point from which to select) who refuse to treat against a parasitic mite. Do they allow their dogs to carry thousands of fleas because they're 'still alive'? Do they refuse to kill lice in their their children's hair because they're 'still surviving' irrespective of their infestation? Yet bees are different. Do they actually understand why they believe that to be the case? I only ask because none of them seem to be able to explain why they don't treat against the one but think it's fine to kill other parasites.

[marion.orca]

I like the bit where it says " she regularly collects swarms and handles her bees in her everyday clothes without being stung " - so it's just the BBC presenters then that accompany her that get stung then ?

[madasafish]

Anyone who promotes a hive which is not weather tight and has to be kept under cover has their priorities wrong.

I speak as one whose TBHs have very good temperament and little varroa drop but I treat with thymol and try to control swarming.

[Easy beesy]

Trouble is she just keeps spouting the same old tosh - beekeepers take all the honey, 'mutilate' (clip) queens, have to wear 'armour', feed bees chemicals, etc etc.

If she would just listen (or ask!) she would understand that she is stuck in the past and its not like that. Pretty much all beekeepers (regardless of the hive type) feel that it's the bees that are important and their passion is for the craft not the product.
Christ, humans did lots of dumb things in the past and have moved on, why can't she!

[Neils]

Because she's selling an ideology as much as anything. She's not that different to Chandler in that they feel the need to "fix" problems as they see it rather than just put forward their way of keeping bees.

I have no objection to the Sun hive any more than I do the a top bar hive. Keep it quiet but I was actually quite taken with how she'd set her hives up on the countryfile segment it was just that as soon as she started to launch into what a bunch of barstewards we were that I wrote her off as a kook. There isn't a beekeeper I know that removes all the honey and feeds syrup instead any more than I don't know anyone who wouldn't dance round a cow horn at midnight if it meant we could stop having to put stuff like OA or Thymol into hives to manage varroa, but no. We're the "problem" with beekeeping.

There are numerous threads about foundation-less beekeeping for example, including on BKF, yet she's totally ignorant of that fact because it doesn't seem to fit well with her ideology so "lalalalalalalala, you're all a bunch of gits who keep bees in ways that would make the worst examples of beekeepers ashamed" (I can think of a few notable ones off the back of recent documentaries in US commercial circles around bee loss where I suspect a lot of this stuff comes from.)

[Jon]

(I can think of a few notable ones off the back of recent documentaries in US commercial circles around bee loss where I suspect a lot of this stuff comes from.)

Exactly, and the press and the general public take it as a given that we have CCD and 'the bees are dying' based on half a dozen documentaries which have looked at US beekeeping and its problems.