The Wainwright Approach

[MrMouse]

Hi all,
Just watched the Gwenyn Grufydd video interview with David Wainwright about his fairly hands off approach.
I appreciate there will be very mixed views on this and some will be very anti it (each to their own etc).
Has anyone got much experience of keeping bees like this? Has it worked well?
Not necessarily going to do it myself, but interested to hear from people operating at a much smaller scale that have tried this sort of approach.


(I very much still advocate for treating for varroa and intermittent disease inspections). My bees are in places where the odd swarm wouldn’t cause others inconvenience.
Thanks

 

[mbc]

Hi all,
Just watched the Gwenyn Grufydd video interview with David Wainwright about his fairly hands off approach.
I appreciate there will be very mixed views on this and some will be very anti it (each to their own etc).
Has anyone got much experience of keeping bees like this? Has it worked well?
Not necessarily going to do it myself, but interested to hear from people operating at a much smaller scale that have tried this sort of approach.


(I very much still advocate for treating for varroa and intermittent disease inspections). My bees are in places where the odd swarm wouldn’t cause others inconvenience.
Thanks

Its a fascinating approach but the main gains of it are keeping labour costs down if teams are travelling to distant apiaries to do everything needed at one go.

 

[Penninetrader]

There are no herds of wild cows sheep etc, so veterinary control and isolation is achievable. Now to bees, you already know where I am going with this, unless you completely eliminate wild and or feral bees the thoughts that your varroa control can make much difference is easily dispelled by your own experiences. Multiple treatments and still finding heavy viral loads. Long term will require a different approach which in the early stages will be much more labour intensive. I look at Banana production that has been on a precipitous knife edge for some time due to it's ever increasing use of pesticides and lack of variety to keep production at economic levels, they are slowly losing the fight. Cavalier approach ? not at all, husbandry and selection plus accepting a lower yield if that is what is required.