This kind of bee keeping feels wrong somehow...

[The Riviera Kid]

As a small-scale hobby beekeeper, the mechanics of mass beekeeping just seems wrong. 20 million bees dead/lost....

Bee welfare seems far down the list of priorities...


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15439754

 

[kazmcc]

If you look at related stories, it seems this isn't the first time it's happened and won't be the last. I'm not surprised they were aggressive! Poor bees

 

[jakethedog]

Bee welfare seems far down the list of priorities...

Sounds like an accident to me; that's not a standard management technique any more than a coach full of OAPs crashing is a normal day trip.

 

[The Riviera Kid]

Yeah it's the way they sounded surprised that the bees were p!ssed off!!!

I remember once accidentally banging a brood full of bees on the side of the brood box and seriously regretting it... I can't imagine 20 million of them...

I hope that at least some of them made it out alive but this late in the year, I can't imagine that they will make it through the winter.

 

[The Riviera Kid]

Sounds like an accident to me; that's not a standard management technique any more than a coach full of OAPs crashing is a normal day trip.

I wasn't really referring to the crash itself, which of course was an accident. It was more a reference to the practice of moving vast amounts of bees over vast distances and the stress that they experience. The Adee brothers (whose bees were in this accident) featured in the BBC4 documentary "Who killed the honeybee" and they move their bees from Floriday to California and to New England... And it's all for $$$ and not for the welfare of the bees themselves.

 

[Chris Luck]

It happens on a smaller scale in the UK and all over Europe and there are members of this forum that work this way.

Very simply where there is money to be made other considerations either go out of the window, are "justified", or perhaps the issues just aren't considered meaningful.

As for the bees, well, they are just insects aren't they? No good getting soft about bees unless you treat all species with the same respect.

Chris

 

[Brosville]

Common sense should tell us it's completely wrong - monocultures are completely unnatural, as is trucking bees thousands of miles as a matter of course - add into the mix the horrors of hundreds of "icides" and GMOs you have a recipe for disaster (for bees and all other creatures)

 

[Heather]

Having seen footage of American transporting of bees to the Almonds I am horrified at the rough handling of the boxes, bees not properly shut in so free to mingle, get lost, fight.

And then they scratch their heads wondering why they lose colonies in bulk..

 

[jakethedog]

...It was more a reference to the practice of moving vast amounts of bees over vast distances and the stress that they experience.

Hi, interestingly, in my oppinion the best comments (re bee management and welfare) which are being made on this forum at the moment are coming from ITLD who's also (as far as I know) keeping bees on a much larger scale than anyone else here -it's like a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of what is often written.

 

[victor meldrew]

Having seen footage of American transporting of bees to the Almonds I am horrified at the rough handling of the boxes, bees not properly shut in so free to mingle, get lost, fight.

And then they scratch their heads wondering why they lose colonies in bulk..

Bees all over the cargo nets slung over the hive stacks !
Bees all over the truck wheels !
Bees all over the ground and rolled over at the cry of "Wagons Ho!"
I can still see the guy in the filthy gear with a cloud of wound up bees around his equally filthy veil , bemoaning the incidents of CCD .
The neanderthal could only see $$$$s
VM

 

[The Riviera Kid]

As for the bees, well, they are just insects aren't they? No good getting soft about bees unless you treat all species with the same respect.

Chris

Yes, I generally do treat all species with the same respect and I have the same concerns for the way that other animals such as sheep and pigs are transported/treated and the corners that farmers have to cut so that teh big supermarkets can shave another penny off of the cost of a burger.

 

[The Riviera Kid]

Hi, interestingly, in my oppinion the best comments (re bee management and welfare) which are being made on this forum at the moment are coming from ITLD who's also (as far as I know) keeping bees on a much larger scale than anyone else here -it's like a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of what is often written.

Yes, for sure. There will always be good and bad/lazy beekeepers as with anything in life and ask 100 beekeepers how to keep bees and you will get 100 answers as each modifies ideas and techniques to suit their own circumstances.

Maybe it's just me, but every time I go to the hive, I am not thinking about money or honey but about the bees and their welfare.

They sometimes baffle me, or bemuse me, but they never cease to amaze me.

 

[user 6228]

A simple story

Crash catalysm fire death and destruction....then
deals are struck between the flowering plants and the animals, "we will feed you if you will help us dominate over the non flowering plants subject to the following conditions...."

fast forward 10s of millions of years
and alas some of the mammals hadnt read the non-exclusivity clause:

"the bugs are eating the product"
"kill the bugs"
"the product yeild is low cos we aint got bugs"
"buy in some bugs"
"the bugs keep dying"

 

[Chris Luck]

Yes, I generally do treat all species with the same respect and I have the same concerns for the way that other animals such as sheep and pigs are transported/treated and the corners that farmers have to cut so that teh big supermarkets can shave another penny off of the cost of a burger.

I'm merely trying to guide us towards the practices closer to home rather than always pointing the finger elsewhere.....

.....simply read this forum.

As for supermarkets, well that's the farmers and bee farmers, (large and small), that are selling us all up the creek by getting involved in the first place - even if that means selling into the "pool" that I wouldn't even consider, nor using treatments, nor moving my hives from crop to crop, nor using sprays on my land or crops, nor poking the bees about all the time.....but that's just my way and others have theirs.....

.....and to be honest, we use supermarkets for our main shop each week as I suspect most people do.

Chris

 

[Monsieur Abeille]

I find it odd that the driver apparently had no beesuit. Bit of common sense?

 

[newportbuzz]

id think twice before calling someone with that many alive hives a bad beekeeper. this was one lorry amoung MANY .
as for migratory beekeeping well i practise it with my 5 hives(heather). and i am sure most people do in one fasion or another weather it be to avoid a crop or include one.

as for the monoculture well theres a lot of science to back this one up but to a certain extent the bees use mono culture anyway. your crop is mainly rape then mainly clover//bramble then mainly ivy thats mono culture right there otherwise the honey combs would look like rainbows.

it could have something to do with the regular treating of hives themselves with stuff like teramisin and fumidil b which seems to be a common practice in the usa. Ask your self this is are you run down after taking a heavy dose of antibiotics. does it upset ur stomach why would ti be diferent for our little bugs.

what i am trying to say is its not nessarily the migratory nature of the buissnes thats the problem or the mono culture.
it could be the pesticides and herbicicdes.
could be the small genetic pool they have over there.
could be lots of stuff .

dont blame till you understand or can prove.

ps if you treat all the same then you gotta stop killin varroa and wax moth and dust mites and bed bugs and earwigs and all that other lovery fauna

 

[mbc]

Its easy to be judgemental but we all eat food, and the reason these commercial beekeepers truck lots of bees is to help to produce huge amounts of food.
From Chris Lucks post I surmise hes a conscientious, environmentally minded beekeeper, yet even he candidly admits to buying groceries from the supermarket, and I'm sure were all the same ( I know I am )
People in glass houses etc....

 

[Brosville]

The transport issue is just one facet of the whole "perfect storm" which is being visited upon all wildlife these days - I expect bees could survive trucking on it's own, but add in all the other factors conspiring to bring about their downfall in the US of A, it should have warning bells going off bigtime!
The US has CCD, we don't (yet) - the US has long-distance trucking, much larger blocks of monocultures, heavier use of "icides" than the UK, and GM crops, somewhere in there probably lurks the answer as to what is causing the problems, as to proving what combinations are guilty would overload a supercomputer with all the possible cocktail effects - so the juggernaut trundles on, crushing all before it in the name of the almighty dollar as it is incredibly difficult to pin down precisely which combinations are causing the problems....
As for "bad beekeepers" - if you watch any one of the recent videos on the problems in the US, some are going out of business, some are losing vast chunks of their colonies every year - as to whether it's their methods, or the pollution of the environment (or both) - who knows?......

 

[Skyhook]

as for the monoculture well theres a lot of science to back this one up but to a certain extent the bees use mono culture anyway. your crop is mainly rape then mainly clover//bramble then mainly ivy thats mono culture right there otherwise the honey combs would look like rainbows.

Ever looked at a frame of pollen? If they're not in the middle of a monoculture it will look like a rainbow.

 

[mbc]

Every facet of the "perfect storm" can be summed up by one word, humankind.
Without large scale eradication programmes I think a certain amount of compromise has to be sought between man and nature ( and if that means trucking bees, so be it )