Alternative beekeeping website SNS v0.9 -
The translation of our website in english has still to be done, so to wait for it we wrote this little résumé including the main ideas of our method.
WE ARE…
… a small group of people from Vosges (Lorraine, France), who are all fond of bees, and who wish to testify of another possible way of beekeeping. For the time being, with all those threats to biodiversity and pollinators, we believe that trying and following other ways than the industrial one is a serious and usefull challenge.
Our practice limits us to use only a small part of our bees production, but we are very proud of the quality of our honey!
Very mindful of the well-
“OUR” BEEKEEPING
Basically, the primary principle of the modern beekeeping method is to take out the honey which bees make for their survival and to feed them with some industrial sugar to maintain them alive.
Looking for an ecological alternative, we decided to take out only the part of the production the bees don't need (what limits drastically our harvest) in order to allow our bees eating nothing but their honey, as they have always been doing in nature!
MORE DETAILS
Bees naturally produce more than they need, because they plan their colony to swarm (making two independent colonies from one), which is their natural mode of expansion and compensates for the loss of other colonies around the world (because of depredation of all kinds as harsh winter or predation).
As modern beekeeping is subjected to the market's law, it lets apiarists who want to live on their work with no other choice than to sell huge quantities of honey. Finally technological development made man work out substitution foods for the bees he kept, which are known as industrial syrups. Because those liquids are cheaper than honey to be produced, the modern beekeeper takes out all the honey stacked up in the honey supers of his beehives and feeds his colonies with syrup to avoid them starving to death during the winter.
But honey is the natural bee food, and this lasts for 30 million years. Syrups that apiarists use generally contain no vitamins, proteins or trace elements. These lacks inevitably weaken their colonies, which are striked harder by diseases and predators of all kinds. To counter this fatal effect, they can use pharmaceutical treatments, what does not necessarily prevent them from suffering huge loss of colonies each year. Furthermore, even if the feeding periods and the chemical treating periods are supposed not to coincide with the harvesting periods, those practices allow sceptical people to doubt on the absence of residues of these products in the honey they eat. To remain respectful of our “pets” and not making those beasts of burden, we prefer to produce less and so are not able to live on our work : we thus have other sources of income (sciences, IT, services).
Scientists estimate at a little more than 30 % of their overall production the volume of honey the bees don't need to survive. We take approximately 25 % of their overall production...
If a professional beekeeper (prisoner of the spirit of profitability) wanted to make the same thing, either he should have an unmanageable number of hives, or his honey should be up to four times more expansive than the one his pairs would sell just beside him in the same market place… and we know that consumers would complain. We thus give no morality lesson to whoever it is. Our website’s only purpose is to share a different experience from the commercial context.
To make it work on a large-
If the absence of artificial feeding is the heart of our attention, we stand aware of other issues :
· hives are cleverly situated (to remain away from pesticides zones, to avoid the windy zones, to be close to a water source, to have an accurate orientation and to stand at an accurate distance to the ground) ;
· hives are well protected from extreme weather, hot in summer and cold in winter (see the “How to” section of our website) and they are strongly fixed to prevent them from being knocked down by storms or wild animals) ;
· We lead some beside actions to promote our ideas. Creating this website is a part of it, to help us sharing information. We also work with several other people and association on connected projects : some local farmers, an apiary school for newcomers in the region, public schools in order to help children developing their sensibility to those kind of issues, which we believe are so essential and critical in those days.
We do not consider our bees as honey cows and we know that Mother Nature is grateful !
