Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/is-beekeeping-wrong

by fortran77 • 3 years ago

101 182 3 years ago

No of course not. Paywalled article so just guessing.

The real headline could be more accurately put as "Is modern amateur/hobbiest beekeeping making bee's genetically weaker?"

"None of us knew at the time how strong the selection would be in the wild,” Seeley told me recently. “It turned out that the bees had the variation needed to develop the traits to resist the mites.” While beekeepers were experimenting with chemical treatments and hive designs, the bees in the forest were changing genetically. Their life styles helped them, too. “Colonies living in the wild have many things going for them,” Seeley said. The bees lived in smaller groups, relatively far apart, which made it harder for varroa to spread. They swarmed every year, which broke the reproductive cycle of the mites. (If a colony swarms, the nest is left without bee larvae, which is where varroa mites take hold.)"

Heres a small snippet that briefly explains some of the things some Beekeepers think amateur beekeepers do incorrectly.

psychphysic2• 3 years ago

That makes more sense, but the answer is still of course not.

It's not like beekeepers keep their hives significantly overlap with where wild bees live.

cryptonector30• 3 years ago

Heres a small snippet that briefly explains some of the things some Beekeepers think amateur beekeepers do incorrectly.

Not just amateurs. Professionals too.

Lacerda692• 3 years ago

As always with these kinds of headlines the answer is no.

Humans live in a symbiotic relationship with bees, we can not exist without each other.

hagbarth• 3 years ago

That seems untrue. If nothing else due to the fact that bees existed for 10s of millions of years before humans did.

lopis2• 3 years ago

What do you mean? We can live without bees from bee-keeping just fine. That's like saying cows and us can't live without each other.

bnt• 3 years ago

Uhm are you gonna run around fields chasing wild cows for milk and burgers?

bryanrasmussen• 3 years ago

sure - but the current number of cattle in the world would be unsustainable without human care and need for them.

on edit: fixed grammar

bborud2• 3 years ago

Not quite. Much of the industry for growing fruit depends on beekeepers renting out their bees as pollinators. As for cattle, well, yeah, they wholly depend on us. If you are in doubt just look at the relative sizes of populations of cattle vs mammalian wildlife.

inglor_cz• 3 years ago

Our current civilization certainly seems to score very high on neuroticism.

50 years from now, people will label the Zeistgeist as a resurgence of old Victorianism, with different (in direction, not in kind) racial and sexual taboos and an extra dollop of hairshirt environmentalism.

throwaway290• 3 years ago

Was there anything but neuroticism in non hunter gatherer societies?

dvh• 3 years ago

I think bees can easily live without humans, they would just became another insignificant species like many others, say for example, like Alburnoides Bipunctatus. Wait, why did I picked that one? What's so special about it that I picked it? Nothing, that's why I picked it.

spookie2• 3 years ago

That's true, but I do agree in part that we've a pretty good relationship with bees. And, any beekeeper will respect the bees and only take what's needed without making their life harder.

pvaldes5• 3 years ago

(second word in lowercase please: Alburnoides bipunctatus).

In any case some species are key species and have more impact on ecosystems than other.

hef19898• 3 years ago

Ah, yet another reminder to never ever read articles when the headline contains a question mark.

helsinkiandrew2• 3 years ago

As always with these kinds of headlines the answer is no.

The article is making the case that the answer is Yes. It goes over the reasons why the current way of Beekeeping (predominately for harvesting their honey) could be bad for bees and explains methods that the 'natural beekeepers' are using to make their pollination role more sustainable.

From the article:

Most beekeepers’ colonies are much larger than those which occur in the wild, and rival colonies might be separated by only a few yards, rather than by half a mile. Much of the bees’ honey, which is supposed to get them through the winter, is taken before they have a chance to eat it. A queen bee goes on a spree of mating flights early in her life, and then lays the fertilized eggs until her death. In apiaries, queens often have their wings clipped, to interrupt swarming (a colony’s natural form of reproduction), and are routinely inspected, and replaced by newcomers, sometimes imported from the other side of the world. Propolis—a wonderful, sticky substance that bees make from tree resin and that has antibacterial qualities—is typically scraped out of hives by beekeepers because it is annoying and hard to get off their hands.
Natural beekeepers leave their bees alone. They seldom treat for disease—allowing the weaker colonies to fail—and they raise the survivors in conditions that are as close as possible to tree cavities. They fill their hives with swarms that come in on the wing, rather than those which come from dealers who trade on the Internet.

mrweasel6• 3 years ago

replaced by newcomers, sometimes imported from the other side of the world

Depending on how you view it that bit is actually wrong. You are specifically NOT ALLOWED to ship bees between e.g. Europe and North America. I think you can send sperm and maybe eggs (not sure if that's possible).

cryptonector30• 3 years ago

> In apiaries, queens often have their wings clipped, to interrupt swarming

This is nonsense. Beekeepers like to do "splits" (simulated swarming) because it increases the number of hives they have (and if they have too many, they can sell them), and mated queens don't and can't fly far unless the colony prepares her for swarming by making her lose weight for a couple of weeks before swarming.

> and are routinely inspected, and replaced by newcomers, sometimes imported from the other side of the world.

This is true. Well, the queens themselves don't get "inspected" so much as the whole colony, because the beekeeper wants to see the queen laying lots. Re-queening is very much a thing, and quite frequent too.

> Propolis—a wonderful, sticky substance that bees make from tree resin and that has antibacterial qualities—is typically scraped out of hives by beekeepers because it is annoying and hard to get off their hands.

I never scrape off propolis (which really is wonderful), and all beekeepers really should not scrape it off. But it's generally understood that propolis is very good. Indeed, there are beekeepers who stimulate production of propolis to harvest and sell it (you can definitely find propolis products out there), but only ignorant ones scrape it of because it's annoying.

> Natural beekeepers leave their bees alone. They seldom treat for disease—allowing the weaker colonies to fail—and they raise the survivors in conditions that are as close as possible to tree cavities. They fill their hives with swarms that come in on the wing, rather than those which come from dealers who trade on the Internet.

True! Except that catching swarms is no guarantee that those are not "from dealers who trade on the Internet" (oh noes, not the Iinnnternet! and dealers!!). I've bought queens "on the Internet", though not from dealers but from beekeepers who do queen rearing. The problem with those queens is that they're often not very good, possibly because the larvae used for the grafts was too old, or because they didn't get enough chances to mate, or because of in-breeding.

primax• 3 years ago

Also hives can (and do) abscond and go feral from the beekeepers hives any time they wish. They stay because the conditions are good.

cryptonector30• 3 years ago

Basically this. Colonies stay for the room and occasional board, as well as all the flowers that beekeepers typically plant in the hopes of making their bees productive.

Colonies do abscond, absolutely, and there's lots of feral honeybee colonies out there.

ehnto• 3 years ago

I would be focusing on other types of farming long before I worried much about beekeeping. It's a wild stretch to consider it harmful for bees, and if the planet is to survive we should probably do all we can to keep them around.

You could argue that you are benefiting from them still I suppose, but we all benefit from bees pollinating even if they are wild bees. We are still part of the ecosystem, we can't remove ourselves entirely (even though we seem determined not to make it through The Great Filter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter)

londons_explore• 3 years ago

In a way, beekeeping is stealing nectar from wild bees.

I pretty much never see wild bees in my garden anymore - they're all honey bees, and usually some human is keeping/farming them - effectively stealing nectar from my garden and that of thousands of my neighbours that we had left out for wild animals.

4gotunameagain• 3 years ago

Stealing is a weird choice of words. Do you steal the oxygen that you breathe, or the water that you drink ? For it to reach your tap, it has been stolen by some fish's lake

blueflow• 3 years ago

Wait until they realize bees do all that work without a profit incentive!

distances2• 3 years ago

The parent has a point, though I never thought about it that way. In a way a similar case would be if you had a squad of squirrels that gather seeds and nuts from your neighbour's gardens, and you would then take and sell the bounty that they bring back.

Modified3019• 3 years ago

The nectar and pollen that flowers produce is in fact a limited resource, both in quantity and in time available.

Honeybees have the capability of depleting such resources because they are far more active than they actually need to be, which is one of the reasons we use them for crops with very high densities of flowers, like blueberries. They are efficient and thorough enough to get the job done.

There are times of the year (in particular, late summer/fall) where good flowers are especially hard to come by, and so solitary bees can have trouble trying to compete against a hive in the area when they are trying to gather the resources they need to reproduce. Meanwhile a hive also has honey stored so dips in availability during the year matter much less.

funcantor• 3 years ago

Sir, please stop stealing my internet

laputan_machine• 3 years ago

Interesting, I only ever see wild solitary bees in my (UK) garden.

meerita• 3 years ago

And bees steal the polen and the nectar from flowers.

will5421• 3 years ago

Bees steal nectar, not pollen, but in exchange the flower reproduces

Tagbert2• 3 years ago

Bees and flowers have a commensel relationship where the flowers provide nectar and some pollen to the bees in exchange for distribution of the flower's pollen for fertilization. The bees aren't "stealing" anything. That nectar has no purpose to the plant if it doesn't attract pollinators.

Of course neither the bees nor the flowers are conscious of this relationship or their roles in it as it evolved naturally from the natures of both plants and insects.

mike_richards3• 3 years ago

It may have to do with the flowers you have in your yard. I have a beehive and a large number and diversity of native pollinators, but I plant to attract and support them.

khazhoux• 3 years ago

In a way, beekeeping is stealing nectar from wild bees.

Congrats! You've independently discovered the plot of Bee Movie, spawner of one million memes.

cryptonector30• 3 years ago

I have every kind of wild local pollinator on my flowers as well my honeybees: wild solitary bees, wasps, butterflies, and hummingbird moths.

mrweasel6• 3 years ago

This is completely anecdotally but keeping honey bees in my garden appeared to attract a large number of wild bees, like bumblebees, ground nesting and solitary bees. Part of it might be that I've attempted to great an good environment for my own bees, part of it might also simply be that I notice bees a lot more.

Commercial beekeepers are a different story, but they mostly place their apiaries in areas where wild bees couldn't possibly manage to cover the entire area anyway, like fields.

One issue that might be at play in your case is that types of bees beekeepers normally keep are way better at dealing with pesticides, as compared to bumblebees and solitary bees. Your neighbors might be going a bit heavy on the spraying and some might actively be destroying the nests of ground nesting bees out of fear. For a few weeks each year my sidewalk is alive with ground nesting bees, while just a few meters away everything is fuck dead, because a stupid neighbor is allergic to bees and wasp and assumes that every bee is going to kill him (he doesn't keep an epi-pen so I question the seriousness of his affliction), so he sprays pretty much all sidewalks around here, except mine.

dotdi• 3 years ago

https://archive.ph/MJDbV

mrweasel6• 3 years ago

There's a lot of weird assumptions in the article. "Normal" beekeepers try to breed varroa resistant bees as well, but still trying to keep the non-resistant ones alive too. It might be faster to just let nature deal with the issue, but that means losing an insane amount of hives. It's basically the same as claiming that hunters don't care about animals or the forrest, or that dairy farms don't care about their cows. All beekeepers want the same thing, health bees, being able to go out and just watch them, it's not like we have some weird need to open a hive every week and inspect 30 frames for bad signs... That's the boring part.

Most of the bees being kept by beekeepers aren't natural as such. One of the most common types is Buckfast and that's a cross between a number of different species. So is the suggestion that we kill 75% of the bees in apiaries to "keep it natural"?

Normally you also only buy one or two colonies, the rest of you apiary will be made from those original colonies and you only buy new ones in case of disease or if you want to build a larger apiary faster. So I don't get the negativity towards "buying bees online". While I do think swarm catching is great, I'd recommend getting the swarm checked for disease before placing it in any apiary.

pell• 3 years ago

or that dairy farms don't care about their cows

If you go by the conditions the majority of milk cows in industrialized nations live under that is a very obvious conclusion.

BbzzbB• 3 years ago

That's particularly a US problem, ours are not crammed like sardine cans.

Retric• 3 years ago

Farmers want less stressed cows because they produce more milk. The underlying economics means they have other concerns, but even “factory” dairy farms will tend to optimize more for cow comfort than you might think.

People also overly focus on density without understanding cows are herd animals. They form dense herds even in empty fields.

cryptonector30• 3 years ago

Strong, no-chemical-treatment hives with "good genetics" in low-pesticide environments have low loss rates.

Even the loss rates we see advertised (38% or whatever) are not existential problems for beekeeping because you can split hives (i.e., reproduce) at a higher rate anyways. So the switch to no-chemical-treatment plans is not that hard.

Honeybee colonies are mainly stressed by a) pesticides (in the pollen and nectar that they gather, in the wax that beekeepers give them to accelerate comb building, in the water they drink, and in the mite treatments they are subjected to), b) the varroa mites that have inadvertently been bred to be strong while the bees have been inadvertently bred to be weak.

kurthr2• 3 years ago

As an urban beekeeper I find this argument a bit odd and not matching my experience. I'm not trying to optimize for growth rate or monocrop pollination and frankly find that the hives grow quite fast and can swarm multiple times per season (late spring early summer). However, they seem to swarm most WHEN they start being stressed by varroa! I haven't seen a clean hive go a year without developing varroa so it's endemic in my area.

I treat the hives once a year (after honey harvest) to protect other native pollinators. It's easy to know when mites boom just by looking at viral infection effects (deformed wings etc). That starts in mid-early summer (not when most people would be treating with insecticide) and builds into fall. Yes, I can count mites on sticky paper, but once you get to know the hive cycle for an area it's rarely necessary. My queens/drones mate with the local population, but I don't see significant queen/brood changes in them so they're as "natural" as a european honey bee is in the US.

I prefer to alternate Apiguard ("natural" thymol) and Apivar (miticide) to minimize tolerance effects and they both work quite well (100x reduction). However, going a year without mite treatment is often a death sentence for the winter hive, and I haven't had a hive fail since I started annually treating. Winters are mild and there's barely a month without pollen so there's really no reason for a healthy hive to fail. When untreated hives do survive they are very weak going into spring and have huge mite load in summer.

filthy-animal2• 3 years ago

You're right - and due to panmixia and the strong capacity for beehives to spread and intermingle their genetics, a site treated with 'standard' practices with many hives acts as a genetic bomb, damaging the whole species in the region, while the owner likely complains about natural beekeepers being at fault for distributing varroa.

Of course, they'll never get rid of varroa without also getting rid of all natural, feral (or wild) hives. That would be an immense natural loss, and it's the direction that commercial beekeepers (and those influenced by commercial practices) are taking things.

Fortunately, there are some sharp people with a solid understanding of bees and bee genetics that are fighting this tendency, breeding bees with new behaviors, and tracking down isolated wild/feral hives that are surviving well because they have adapted characteristics that help them fight varroa. The wild/feral hives have to be pretty far from commercial facilities, because of the massive capacity of these facilities to pump out poor genetics.

So far, there are brood-killing behaviors (checking on the developing bees, sniffing for varroa, and killing the immature bee of it's infected), and mite-biting behaviors (grooming other bees to remove or harm the mites directly).

The sad thing is, that the bees can largely adapt to Varroa. It's the beekeepers that can't let them do it, because it means taking losses.

000ooo0006• 3 years ago

It's basically the same as claiming that hunters don't care about animals

Is there a suggestion here that people who kill animals for fun/leisure care for them? In the same sense that one might use the word 'care' when referring to a loved one or a pet?

mrweasel6• 3 years ago

Yes... I mean you probably won't shoot the family dog if it's sick, you'd take it to the vet.

Arguably hunters don't think in terms of single animals, unlike farmers, they care about the overall welfare of the ecosystem so that it may support sufficient number of animals to allow for hunting. I don't know how it works elsewhere, but I'd bet that Danish hunters do more to protect nature than any vegan or vegetarian organisation and they almost always work with nature preservation organisations.

jemmyw• 3 years ago

I guess there is the idea that hunters wish the animal species well so they can continue hunting. Tell that to the passenger pigeon, whose last existing flock was knowingly hunted, making the species effectively extinct.

caput770• 3 years ago

You clearly have little idea of what you're talking about if you think hunters kill animals for fun and leisure.

giantg22• 3 years ago

Unless you're doing AI, all your subsequent stock will be mutts anyways.

JacobAldridge• 3 years ago

I think I just realised why no farmers trained in Artificial Insemination are opening my “Detailed” and “Visual” Artificial Intelligence tutorials…

Jedd2• 3 years ago

Yeah, lots of questionable assertions made there by author and/or interviewees, eg:

“I don’t think anybody contests that free-living bees have a better, easier life,”

This feels wrong - supplemental feed, internal space that grows and shrinks with their colony size, well insulated & single-entrance (easier to defend) home, a mesh base they can push their detritus through, pest / predator control, etc.

The bit about wild colonies:

The bees lived in smaller groups, relatively far apart, which made it harder for varroa to spread. They swarmed every year, which broke the reproductive cycle of the mites. (If a colony swarms, the nest is left without bee larvae, which is where varroa mites take hold.)

The relatively far apart thing isn't a natural consequence of wild colonies, unless there just isn't food to sustain them. (If there is, then bee / nest population would increase.)

Swarming every year isn't guaranteed - I suspect even new 'wild' queens don't get itchy feet until their second birthday.

But even if they do, swarming doesn't mean there aren't larvae in the original nest. A normal swarm process means the original colony is without an egg-laying queen for maybe 10-14 days. However, assuming the departing queen was laying up until departure, you've got ~8 days of larvae in that nest, and that means a further ~13 days those exist as pupae (which I understand are also vulnerable to varroa). At that point your new queen's progeny are already into their larvae stage.

I do get the pastoral idyll being painted by some of the people involved here, but I'm unconvinced.

rob742• 3 years ago

Where I feel they do have a point is that traditional beekeepers are meddling too much with systems that are more complex than one might think. At the start of the article, they mention the routine clipping of queens' wings to prevent swarming. And then, at the end, they mention that queens used to "last" several years, whereas nowadays they are rejected by the hive after only 1-2 years. Maybe there was some natural selection going on there which beekeepers are hindering by preventing the bees from swarming?

ggm2• 3 years ago

A different article I read this week says urban bees exceed the feeding capacity in the city in some places and we need to be more circumspect about who, and how many bees.

More diverse pollination insects would probably be net beneficial in bee pollinated foods.

cryptonector30• 3 years ago

and we need to be more circumspect about who, and how many bees.

Urban beekeepers in low-capacity areas will give up when their hobby colonies fail. Let them.

voisin2• 3 years ago

That’s one approach. Or we could advocate for more pollinator friendly plantings on boulevards and the edges of parks, and advocate for the outright banning of pesticides/herbicides in parks and on lawns. I find it unconscionable that we have elevated green, non-native monoculture lawns to the highest order, allowing people to spray what they want and waste up to 75% of household water on irrigating their lawns for… the ego stroke of green lawns in August?

tptacek8• 3 years ago

In the US, urban beekeepers are harming native pollinators by keeping livestock bees --- all honeybees are livestock in the US, where they're invasive.

adolph• 3 years ago

A recent popular science book I'd recommend is "Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps" by Seirian Sumner. It speaks to wasps' utility as pollinators, pest eaters and how bees and ants are descendants of wasps. After reading it I turned over a dirt dauber next and showed my kids the wasp larva with the separate chamber of immobilized but living spiders and other bugs the mother wasp had apportioned for the larva.

https://www.amazon.com/Endless-Forms-Secret-World-Wasps/dp/0...

lostlogin5• 3 years ago

On the flip side, I got 250kgs of honey from two urban hives with many other hives in neighbours gardens within 500m.

avalys• 3 years ago

You can tell who didn’t bother to read the article here, by the people who clearly assumed the article was asking “Is Beekeeping Morally Wrong?”, as opposed to the actual topic of the article which might have been better titled “Is Beekeeping Using the Wrong Approach?”

swores2• 3 years ago

Or maybe people are just more interested in arguing for/against the first one and a comments thread like this seems like a good place for it? It's not like they're such unrelated topics that discussing beekeeping ethics in this thread is ridiculous if that's what people want to discuss, it's not like discussing potato chips in a thread about CPU chips.

I'll also add that I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong, as you seem to, with coming straight to a HN comments thread without first reading the article. I know I'm not alone in intentionally doing that quite often, partly because for many subjects (including this one) I'm not really interested enough to want to read an article-length deep dive of any single person's opinion, whereas seeing a wide range of views in comment-length bee-sized pieces has the potential to be interesting to me. I've always got the option to go read the full article if after reading the comments it seems like I'd find it interesting to do so.

cryptonector30• 3 years ago

I highly recommend Top-Bar Beekeeping: Organic Practices for Honeybee Health, by Les Crowder.

My bees are treatment-free and going strong, and we'll be converting all of our Langstroth hives to top-bar hives this coming Spring.

Basically, honeybee hives with mite treatment have high failure rates, and honeybee hives with no chemical treatments do better when the bees have been bred for mite resistance, so do the latter.

As for top-bar hives vs. Langstroth, it's nigh impossible to keep from killing bees with Langstroth hives every time you get into them, and that's what makes them sting. Besides wanting a better relationship with the bees, it feels real bad to kill any, so why do it? Langstroth hives are only advantageous for large-scale commercial beekeeping (because the "supers" stack, and because the frames fit neatly in honey extractors), but in every other way Langstroth hives are just awful.

voisin2• 3 years ago

I am new to beekeeping this year and just trying to build my colonies up from the nucs I received. I have not done mite checks as I don’t want to kill a cup of bees every few weeks just to do the check, and a shocking number of beekeepers I’ve met have mentioned that they lost entire colonies as soon as they treated for mites. I desperately want to be treatment-free - if I pick up that book would the lessons be applicable if I stuck with Langstroth hive bodies?

cryptonector30• 3 years ago

Starting from nucs is hard work. I also wouldn't bother testing for mites because killing a few hundred bees from a very weak colony is not really a good idea. Also, be very careful not to expose bees -especially young nurse bees, which don't fly yet- to the hot summer Sun -- I once killed hundreds more bees that way than I'd needed to for a mite test.

I desperately want to be treatment-free - if I pick up that book would the lessons be applicable if I stuck with Langstroth hive bodies?

Yes!, yes quite!

Jedd2• 3 years ago

Whilst not as effective as an alcohol wash, a sugar shake will show you some number of varroa, without killing (m)any bees. At the very least it'll show you if you've got lots of mites in your hive, but might report a false negative at low numbers.

RajT88• 3 years ago

You could never domesticate a robin.

I dunno. We domesticated the Rock Dove just fine.

throwawayoaky• 3 years ago

Too many honeybees! Was hoping this would be about bumbles and carpenters

giantg22• 3 years ago

Very interesting read, even for someone who has some exposure to these ideas as a beekeeper. A lot of it really comes down to personal theories and opinions.

I keep my bees as "treatment-free". I don't treat for mites. I haven't had anything like AFB, but that would require drastic measures. I leave on plenty of honey for the bees and try not to feed at all. I use foundationless frames. I want to have "survivor" stock, but that might take a few more years.

The average colony loss in the US is around 50% last time I looked. It seems most people have good years and bad years regardless of the management. I've had years when all, or nearly all, hives have survived. I've also had years where all, or nearly all, had died.

lostlogin5• 3 years ago

For anyone that isn't aware (and the following depends on your jurisdiction), the treatment for American Foul Brood (AFB) is pouring petrol into a sealed up hive and then burning the hive and hiveware.

It's typically spread by poor beekeeping - infected hiveware being shared or infected, dead hives getting robbed by healthy bees. It's all bad and really sad. I haven't had it, but it's within a few kilometres of me (which is well within bee flight range).

justinclift3• 3 years ago

John asked me not to disclose his exact location, because his hives fell off the radar of the National Bee Unit ...
Gareth John ... who lives on a quiet lane above a river in Oxfordshire.
In Oxfordshire, John led the way to his apiary, which was on a small pasture at the back of his property, bounded by high hedgerows.

Giving his full name and the area he lives seems like a super incompetent way to "not disclose" his location.

Just a basic online search for his name and bee keeping related terms finds the guy's location pretty clearly, with very little effort.

peteradio• 3 years ago

Probably gave the name of his beekeeping rival/nemesis.

justinclift3• 3 years ago

Doesn't seem like it.

The photos in the article look like the same person found using that name doing bee related activities.

h2odragon2• 3 years ago

John asked, but that doesn't mean a reporter will do.

justinclift3• 3 years ago

Good point. "Don't trust reporters" or some such. ;)

lostlogin5• 3 years ago

From the article:

But they’re not dependent on you. They don’t need you.

Here in New Zealand we have too many bees, and they are most definitely dependant on humans. If you don't treat them, they'll die in a season from varroa. They might survive a little longer, but not much. There are wild colonies sin a nearby park, and all fail.

h2odragon2• 3 years ago

anonym29• 3 years ago

I am shocked that nobody has yet brought up the 2019 Macedonian film, Honeyland! https://m.imdb.com/title/tt8991268/

An excellent must-watch film if you are interested in natural beekeeping!

Review from the same publication as OP: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/honeyland-re... / (no paywall: https://archive.is/qspek)

11235813213455• 3 years ago

I love insects, all of them, they all participate in pollination, there's no reason to have a so big focus on honey bees. Let alone that honey is not really optimal for us, we need fibers. So I'd rather have many various plants, fruits trees (figs - some depend on wasps, persimmons, ..), other trees, and insects varieties than this formatted landscape

Natural beekeepers are the radical dissenters of apiculture

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