Hello all. Long time no write. I know. Is life an excuse? Probably not but it is all I have to offer for not posting more. Basically I ignored my blog for the whole entirety of 2011 but since 2012 is the last year before the Mayan calendar implodes I thought I should write down my final thoughts about beekeeping to be stored somewhere in the I-Cloud.
Last year was a pretty good year for my most of my bees. As many of you know I have three hives on about 500 acres of someone else’s land. It sits across a farm plot managed by organic farmers and is fairly isolated from prying eyes.
During the 12 or so years I have been keeping bees I have primarily followed the traditional route of managing a hive using all sorts of chemical treatments, antibiotics, miticides, essential oil massages, vitamins, and positive thinking to keep my bees healthy. It worked well enough but turning your hive into a biological storage facility for DOW Chemical products is not what I had in mind when I started beekeeping. It should be idyllic. Warm sunny afternoons with the smell of hemp, (the legal kind), burning in your smoker and the soft sound of bees humming in their hive as they diligently work to produce liquid gold.
I decided I wanted to have that beekeeping experience rather than the other one. To that end, I decided I would no longer treat my bees with any sort of chemical or oddball treatment method that would turn my hive into a Rube Goldberg device of integrated pest management. I would rely solely on the genetic attributes of bees to solve their own problems. Survival of the fittest as we say outside of the circles within the Creation Museum.
I needed bees that were bred to be resistant to the onslaught of mite-oligical imports from Asia. I worked before with the Buckfast bees and they were great to manage and were also resistant to the Tracheal mite. The Varroa mite, not so much. After searching the all-knowing “Google” I arrived upon a breeder in Texas known as BeeWeaver Apiaries. They sell a breed of bees called “Bee Weaver” which are a hybrid “of our very best All Star and Buckfast and BeeSMaRt colonies. “
These bees have proven during the last 2 years to be almost bullet proof in their resistance to disease and mites. I have not treated them with one iota of treatments and they have so far thrived. The colonies are strong and have over wintered well according to my last check a few days ago. With our warmer than usual February they have already started laying and are bringing in loads of pollen to start the season.
The only downside to these gems is their disposition. If you want to learn to keep bees, I might suggest working with the Buckfast variety instead. I believe their ability to fight off everything short of kryptonite has made them a little more tenacious than your average Italian honeybee. When I enter the field to work on them I am sure to hermetically seal my suit because when they get agitated, and they will, you will know it. When I leave the field, I need to walk about 300 yards before the last one of them has stopped trailing me. They are defensive with a capital “D”.
This year I plan on introducing my daughter to beekeeping and I aim to start her off on bees that are easy to work with, like the Buckfast. This may mean I have to treat them however it is a fair tradeoff so that my daughter has a pleasant experience and not the nightmare scenario I can see in my head with the other bees.
Part 2 Coming Soon.
