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Thread: We're the bad guys - again!

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  2. #12

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    Ahhh Dan I didn't realise you were here too mate! A much better class of clientele on this side of the interweb!

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    Quote Originally Posted by drumgerry View Post
    Ahhh Dan I didn't realise you were here too mate! A much better class of clientele on this side of the interweb!
    No it is NOT a better class of person.

    I am here:-)

  4. #14

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    I really don't have a problem with exponents of the TBH Madasafish especially one such as yourself who can make them work and who talks about them and their bees in a reasonable and logical way. I don't think it's an especially easy way to keep bees so you have my respect if you've made a success of it.

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    There is no insurmountable problem with keeping bees in any kind of container assuming it is watertight and of big enough capacity.
    The problem arrives in the form of baggage (madasafish this does not refer to you)

    -don't use anything 'chemical' to treat for varroa. Non corporate potions are however quite acceptable.
    -let them swarm at will
    -other religions, I mean other ways of keeping bees, are bad
    -don't open the box (sounds like a game show)
    -sugar syrup is bad stuff
    -sentimental touchy feely stuff (the bees really like me, I can practically work them naked)
    -suspension of belief in science if it contradicts an existing dogma.
    -massively over egging the risks associated with pesticides.
    -I am personally saving the bees (even though they die every winter due to dogma re. the first point on the list)

    and so on and so on.

    The bits of 'natural' beekeeping I like involve
    -letting them draw some of their own comb at the cell size they want
    -using bees which are local to where you live
    -taking a stance against the risks of imports

    To be honest, bad beekeeping techniques and attitudes will be present to some extent in any form of beekeeping, hobby, commercial, top bar, whatever.

    -clumsiness and bad handling
    -lack of observational powers
    -laziness
    -denial
    -reluctance to reevaluate your practice
    -greed and selfishness

    There is a false dichotomy created between commercial and non commercial. As far as I can see there are many 'natural' beekeepers trying to make a living from beekeeping through selling top bar hives, delivering courses, sun hives and other stuff. No harm in that at all but dividing beekeeping into commercial and non commercial seems a bit hypocritical to me.
    Last edited by Jon; 17-01-2013 at 02:53 PM.

  6. #16

    Default We're the bad guys - again!

    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!

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    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.)

  8. #18
    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Neils View Post
    (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.

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    Default We're the bad guys - again!

    I recall the general reaction, pre SBAi to the state of some if the US commercial 'keepers frames and how the hives were handled in those documentaries and I can't help but feel that for a lot of the "natural" crowd that is indicative of how everyone with a box hive treats their bees.

  10. #20

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    The scary thing is she's now saying that her organisation (it galls me to even call it by its name) has been asked to join some DEFRA management committee on bee health of all things. I'll give them one thing - they're bloody good at PR.

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