Are Commercial Beekeepers Our Friends?
Are Commercial Beekeepers Our FRIENDS?! Beekeeping 101 #beekeeping
https://youtu.be/mVpXkWnfutE?si=L2Q4mcPUkm7Pnj4K
I have said some dumb stuff over the years. But, as I’ve learned and grown and expanded my operation I have come to realize a few things..
Did you know that the commercial guys are literally trying to communicate with us but until you have hit a certain level in beekeeping you won’t be able to understand the lingo or how to speak the commercial language. But, when you start to understand it, it all starts to make sense.
At the North American Honey Bee Expo, let’s call it NAHBE for short, I sat in on two very important discussions on where the state of the commercial industry currently is today. Charles Linder spoke on some of the laws that are changing and the help and data that they will need from little guys like us in order to make any sort of difference. Both talks were absolutely eye opening because I have noticed that somewhere long the way backyard beekeepers have learned to throw tomatoes at the commercial guys. And you know I am very guilty of this myself! With some of the things I have said by looking on the outside what I have felt should be changed in their operation without truly seeing the full picture of what is going on. Everything is interconnected and I now see that we can almost think of the commercial guys as the guard bees to our hive and then you have the other commercial guys inside the hive trying to waggle dance us to success.
So I am going to go through some of the arguments between commercial and hobbyists that you usually see on Facebook or in YouTube comments but after that I am going to explain some of the things that we can agree on as a whole and why commercial beekeepers actually really need your help. So, try to make it though all of this because what I am going to talk about can only happen if we can all band together.
So what are some of the reasons we have created such a big rift between commercial and the hobby beekeeper?
Well, the first thing that comes to mind and is probably the biggest thing that we disagree on is how we manage varroa mites in a commercial operation with thousands of hives vs how a hobbyist manages mites with only a few hives. But you see this is like comparing apples to oranges, yes we both keep bees, but both sides of the industry are vastly different from the other. And part of the argument when discussing treatment vs treatment free at both scales is a hobbyist generally keeps their hive in the same place all year long and they most likely don’t have a high density of bee hives in one place which in turn helps keep varroa levels more manageable. Not to mention the stress on honey bee colonies when moved from location to location and everything that is involved when bees start coming in contact with different pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. This is something that the hobby beekeeper doesn’t even have to worry about. I only mention these things because when it comes to bees every stressor that the hive endures will severely weaken their immune system. Making them more vulnerable to varroa. Also, to go into this even further generally a hobby beekeeper at some point in the year will allow their hive to have a natural brood break, whether that be from when their hive accidentally swarmed on them or when they perform a split to keep their hive from swarming. Brood breaks are a game changer when it comes to managing varroa. But, you see this is where things get a little more tricky for the commercial guy. Generally starting in late January/early February commercial guys begin the start of their pollination season moving hives from place to place each month. The schedule usually goes something like this.
February - March: Almond pollination in California
April: Peaches, pears, apples, apricots, and cherries
May: Blueberries
Then you get a few weeks to get your hives cleaned up before placing them in melons for almost 2 months.
Melons: Late June thru the end of July.
Then as y’all know August is the time that we need to prepare our hives for the winter and get them all fed up to weight. Now this is just a general schedule for my particular area in Michigan. Of course the months will change as the blooming schedule is different in every state. But, you get the picture.
So what does this all mean when it comes to varroa?? Well what we know about varroa is the more a hive grows varroa levels will respectfully follow. So when commercial hives are pretty much in a constant state of expansion because in their minds, their hive is on a constant flow since they are moved from place to place. Now this isn’t even incorporating the type of nutrition these bees are getting when they are placed on fields that can span a mile in every direct of that distinct plant. Like us, honey bees need a variety of resources available to them to stay healthy. And I partly wonder if this is a contributing factor as to why commercial hives can become so vulnerable to varroa.
Now I know you are probably thinking well what about our varroa resistant stock? Well ya see that is the thing…the answer is right there in the name. With where we are today we still currently only have a bee that is resistant to varroa. They’re not indestructible and we still have not found a genetic of bee where you could throw a cup full of mites in a hive and the bees still somehow manage varroa on their own.
So, lets third person this and just think of a scenario where all commercial beekeepers were to go fully treatment free today with the genetic stock that we currently have. So when these hives are placed in area surrounded by mono crop fields with multiple hives in one area, varroa is pretty much the straw that breaks the camels back. Not to mention the stress of the sprays that the bees may be coming in contact with as well. So then what happens? Well, now commercial guys are not able to fulfill the amount of hives required to pollinate their farmers crops leading to a food shortage which then raises the price for the normal consumers and it continues in a viscous cycle until the whole system collapses.
I hope some of this is making sense because I am hoping I can help explain the whole situation of what is going on and not just what we see on the surface. Many commercial beekeepers that I have met are currently involved in state and nation wide studies to help find solutions to varroa and the viruses they vector. But with where we currently are today, we still aren’t there yet and have some work to do.
Okay what else do we disagree on in the commercial vs hobbyist debate?
Well, being able to go out to your yard to put on 3 flow hives is not the same as going out and taking off 2,000 honey supers. Kasey and I looked at a flow hive while we were at NAHBE and they do look like a lot of fun to try out. For the backyard beekeeper yes they are expensive but when you think of the money you’re saving on needing to buy an extractor, maybe it can be worth it?
Okay what else? Well lets just cut to it and address how hobby beekeepers and commercial beekeepers view feeding. So most hobbyists like to follow a no feeding protocol in their yearly management. Which, this can in fact be done when you don’t have a whole lot of competition on your area and your hives are not navigating other external stressors. Kasey and I have been purely following a no feeding management style until we watched all of our hives almost starve out and die because our local forage decided it was going to just skip over this year and not bloom. We had made splits in May expecting for our big black locust flow to hit. But, it never came, due to the weather giving us too much rain the trees just decided to save their energy and wait till next year. And this happens frequently. The wether has a huge impact on whether or not our bees get a flow. So we had these hives that still needed to build up and draw out frames but they didn’t have any resources to do so. And to be honest with you I didn’t fully know what was going on because my mite washes were showing all zeros to a couple with just 2 mites in a wash. And at first it looked like European foul brood in my hives. So I looked into ways to treat it with nothing that I tried actually working. Until, we got our late summer flow. Once those hives started getting some resources coming in they immediately exploded. I actually had went out with the plan to start combining hives because they were looking so bad I thought they were going to collapse but on that day I started noticing that the hive was building for something. I saw this based off of the queens change in her laying and I didn’t know at the time what was coming but they knew a good flow was on the horizon. Anyways, what I am getting at is that we do not have control over what happens in terms of a flow in our area. And a lot of these flows require the beekeeper to time their hives right so that they can capitalize on the flow to make honey while it is here. If their hives are too small and weak like mine were then they will only be able to bring in enough food to bump up their own hive numbers. You really need a lot of bees in order to fill a deep or medium of honey. Does that make sense? So this is a contributing factor as to why commercial beekeepers need to feed their hives at certain times of year. This also includes when they move their hives to a new location and that hive needs to find where the local forage is. A hive that is well fed can combat almost anything. Nutrition I believe is the biggest factor when it comes to the heath of our hive and their ability to manage varroa even just slightly. There is one more point to this argument around herbicide tolerant crops but I am going fully explain what that is and why we need to care about it in just a few minutes.
But first lets talk about the last thing we commonly disagree on. And that is how quickly commercial beekeepers cycle out their queens. It is fairly normal for commercial guys to re-queen their hives all at least once per year and some maybe even twice depending on what they are putting their bees through. And the reason for this is because of what we have seen from queens that come back after a full year of pollination, usually they start to fizzle out one because of the high amount of brood they were producing for as long as they were but also because of the sprays that their hive is coming in contact with does seem to really wear that queen down. Now hobbyists can most definitely have queens in their yard that are 3 years old! Vipliloo is about to go into her 4th season. That is why Kasey has put her into retirement and if she wants to swarm out this spring then she can.
But okay so there are a lot of things that we disagree on but there are some things that we can come together on in fact the commercial industry needs you if we are going to protect our honey bees. And the reason I say protect and not save is because right now we have more honey bees in America than ever in history but the can and will change very quickly if we do not start protecting them from some of the threats that are on the horizon.
And the first one being tropilaelaps mites. Tropi mites are similar to varroa, but worse. They can only be found in the brood, scientists have said so far that the tropi mite can’t bite into the exoskeleton of an adult bee. But they instead go after the brood where they feed on the developing bee and keep reproducing. We currently have scientists over in Asia that have gone over to try to get ahead of the problem before they get here and they have said that when tropi mites infect a hive, they can collapse the entire hive in just 30 days…..YIKES! So to be honest we have enough problems as it is in America today when it comes to beekeeping, so tropi mites are a MAJOR threat to our entire food system. And what we need to do is think about how can we keep them out for as long as possible. Australia was completely free of varroa mites until June of 2022. Meanwhile varroa mites made their great debut in America in 1987. So they went 35 years without varroa. Meanwhile in the meantime we have came up with many different management strategies to fight varroa. And that is exactly what we need to happen with the tropi mite here in America. Right now Canada imports bees from almost the exact location in Indonesia where there are tropi mites. Canada is not a suitable place for honey bees which is why they do have to import bees. But, there is no reason for why America could not be their supplier for package bees so that we can completely close our borders in North America. We need to start thinking of this as how do we keep tropi mites out for as long as possible? This is something Charles Linder and Randy Oliver are currently working on with our government so they will need all of our support in order to make this happen.
Next we have fake honey and Charles Linder’s work with the Hive Act. If you missed my last video explaining the problem with fake honey definitely go check that out but after watching it you will understand what fake honey is and why it is a problem. The Hive Act stands for Honey Identification Verification and Enforcement Act. It is a proposed American legislation aimed at establishing a standard of identity for honey meaning it will define what can legally be labeled as honey and protect consumers from mislabeled products. Because honey is just a product until you meet the beekeeper behind it. And that is exactly how honey vs corn syrup honey needs to be labeled.
And lastly we have the farm bill and beekeeping being moved over to the FDA’s regulations instead of staying under the EPA’s rules. This would mean that all varroa mite treatments would only be accessible under a veterinarians prescription meaning less access and more expensive treatments. Charles Linder has pushed forward a proposal that would first distinguish beekeepers as their own entity instead of under an umbrella of farmers so that we have rules applicable to use and not just generalized rules assigned to us. He has proposed all organize acids be available for generic use which would open up doors for us to find better ways to treat for varroa and possibly combat tropi mites in the future, if they are ever here, but they aren’t going to ever come here if we can band together to prevent it.
Each one of these points have a HUGE impact on all beekeepers. In fact some of the regulations could in fact cut out the hobby beekeeper all together if we don’t all ban together as one industry to fight it.
So who is our queen bee? Who is our top personality in beekeeping pulling all the strings and running the show? Put it in the comments and lets see what we can do to start making some changes. My motto up till now has always been Don’t quit and BeeFit but from here on out I want to start hearing that honey is just a product until we know the beekeeper behind it. Cmon guys let’s band together and save our industry. See ya soon.