Bees wiped out by amateur keepers

[jezd]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ears-amateur-keepers-says-honey-producer.html

Cant see this in the forum, maybe of interest to some from last year!

Wonder if his views have changed....

Jez

 

[BKF Admin]

I new who this was going to be about as soon as I read the newspaper headline

This from the guy who is the only beekeeper in the uk selling Organic honey.

There is a very good video around online that has him saying what he thinks of uk amateur beeks(You may need to be able to translate his Afrikan accent first though).

 

[m100]

Admin, don't you mean Active Honey?

 

[RoofTops]

Completely overstated of course but as in most stories there is a grain of truth. For example, people are using unregistered products to control varroa and also importing them from overseas. I would also not be so brave as to say all honey that is sold has been extracted in the most hygenic conditions.

However, I would not have it any other way as only total regulation would overcome these problems. It would probably mean banning all amateur beekeeping unless the beekeeper was prepared to undergo the sort of inspection regime that commercial food companies have to go through and the premises where honey is extracted were built to the same sort of standards, rather than be extracted on the kitchen table next to the cat's bed.

 

[VEG]

Lol you would be very shocked at the condition of some of your local take aways. I have gone through the process of registering as a food producer as anyone who sells honey should do. They come inspect your extraction room/kitchen then give you the ok to proceed.
As honey producers we are a very low risk. They are more interested in your local take away.

 

[RoofTops]

No I wouldn't, which is why I don't use them. We prefer our own germs.

Plus the germs from the dog and the salmonella from the hens and the horrors the wife brings home from her job as a nurse.

Probably best to tape up all the doors and windows and live off baked beans for the rest of our lives.

Might be one way to avoid swine flu.

 

[Tom Bick]

I prefer to do it the French way

 

[jezd]

using unregistered products to control varroa and also importing them from overseas.

right or wrong this happens with small and large scale keepers I suspect - in fact I would argue that smaller 1-3 hive setups would not bother with the hassle of importing unregistered products.

 

[Hombre]

Rooftops old chum, we just haven't had an insight into the goings on in the baked bean industry yet. Perhaps best we remain ignorant of some things.

Do you remember that in the baked beans wars of the late 90's that some cans of supermarket own brand beans cost 3p. Somehow I don't think it could have been enjoying top of the range production attention in all areas.

I guess we nominally have about 8.5 Spacey years left! I can see that Tony had decided to rubbish the opposition - amateur bee keepers - with impunity .

What would be the reaction if each and every one of those amateur bee keepers were to make largely unfounded remarks regarding his business?

I wonder how many ex Littleover Apiaries employee are there out there or on the forum?

There is ALWAYS a skeleton or two to be found in the cupboard. It might be the pasturisation of so called 'active' honey or the fact that it is processed along with literally tonnes of other honey.

Does anybody know how to validate/verify the presence of this "unique Spacey active element".

I understand that it doesn't exist and is merely a lie perpetrated upon the greater British public for commercial gain.

The commercial production figures this year shouldl make interesting reading. No sign of a Chinese connection I suppose?

 

[victor meldrew]

I new who this was going to be about as soon as I read the newspaper headline

This from the guy who is the only beekeeper in the uk selling Organic honey.

There is a very good video around online that has him saying what he thinks of uk amateur beeks(You may need to be able to translate his Afrikan accent first though).

Couldn't Mon Capitan from Outer space could it ??

John Wilkinson

 

[thurrock bees]

sounds like he is trying to promote his honey and discredit other local honey to me.

 

[jezd]

sounds like he is trying to promote his honey and discredit other local honey to me.

does anyone know him personally?

 

[Black Comb]

I haven't seen the video but wonder where he keeps his 4,500 hives?
Will 4,500 hives fit in Derbyshire (he is described as a UK honey producer)?

Organic honey is for sale from a local importer - I asked him how he knew it was organic and he says that it's from Argentina where the apiaries are so remote that the bees can only access wild plants.

 

[Frisbee]

Organic honey is for sale from a local importer - I asked him how he knew it was organic and he says that it's from Argentina where the apiaries are so remote that the bees can only access wild plants.

Oh well that's nice to know his production/extraction standards are as up to UK standards as ours are then

I wonder where food miles comes into it.........

Frisbee

 

[Rosti]

Thank goodness there is no hint of bias or self interest!. I've always questioned the organic staus of honey - any honey. Unless the bees are captive within a biosphere such as the Eden project or that proposed for manuka honey production then you can't control the forage. My experience of residue source and pesticide 'active' profiling suggests to me that the forage will have a far more dramatic effect on residue loadings whether it was a year ago or today. The commercial (or domestic) treatment pre-dating flowering relationship is almost joined at the hip and that remains outside the control of any beek under a 'traditional' management scheme. You would not believe the number of British agronomists who find them selves in South America over winter, so as for the South American import argument the intensity of soft fruit farming in particular makes that claim something that requires substantiation rather than convienient hearsay.

"Does anybody know how to validate/verify the presence of this "unique Spacey active element"."

I believe that a tell tale colour and smell may be a useful first indicator, are there many dairy herds in Derbyshire?

 

[jezd]

I wonder if the 4500 hives that is quoted is the entire number of hives including all that produce the import stuff they do (majority it seems), seems a high number for a UK producer

 

[Hivemaker.]

Admin, don't you mean Active Honey?

Only honey described as active is the manuka,the English honey is described on the jar as organic.
And they sell a very nice brasica napus honey.
We are 100% chemical free in our process trusting in exemplary cleanliness and the strict replacement of all wax and removable woodwork every two years.
This is written next to a guy holding a comb over a hive that looks about ten years old.
We only produce to one exacting standard but unless our hives are placed in a certified environment the honey from that hive cannot be called certified as “Organic”. We are as a company, 100% chemical and drug free in all of our hive operations.

I don't believe they are the largest honey farm in this country either.

 

[MuswellMetro]

We are 100% chemical free in our process trusting in exemplary cleanliness and the strict replacement of all wax and removable woodwork every two years.

my father had a non chemical approach, but he had to destroyed a super of honey, after the council sprayed a local overgrown sports field covered in flowering dandylions with weed killer.The super smelt of 2-4-5-HT ( agent orange or similar) as the council had got the concentration wrong by 10X

So how can any honey within 3 miles of a town be organic, The allotements behind my house often smells of some posionus legal weedkiller or insecticide...or burning plastic..

Amateur gardeners are worse that commercial farmers....as i have 150 allotementors plying obnoxious chemicals every day all through the growing year...at least farmers onl y spray on one or two days a year

 

[Brosville]

Don't know about allotmenteers, but unfortunately, much of the UK countryside is "Green Concrete", thanks to the enormous quantities of sprays used by "conventional" farmers - we live "in the sticks", and nearby field's winter wheat crops have recently been sprayed for the third time in as many weeks (the stench when walking past the field was unbelievable) - if last year's crop on the same land was anything to go by, it'll have been sprayed dozens of times before harvest.........
These particular fields are growing the same crop, year in, year out, depleting all the same resources, and allowing a pest-build up which they counter with more and more "icides" - and when ploughed, unlike when I was a child, when there were enormous plumes of birds following the plough, there's nary a one, because the land is stone dead!

 

[victor meldrew]

A little guy on a quad bike drives around this village(urbane sprawl) ,often in bright sunshine spraying all the vegetation he can reach , working bumble bees, honey bees all get covered with his herbicide. When challenged all he reply is "Look I get paid to to spray it not analyse it, bog off".
This quad biker complete with tank of nasties is an employee of the local council .Nuff said!.

John Wilkinson