HoneybeesHoneybees are perhaps the quintessential symbol of fertility and abundance. Even from ancient Biblical times, a "land of milk and honey" was considered a land rich with fertility, health, wealth and happiness. We are honored to bring bees on to the farm, and we look foreward to working with them and sharing their bounty with friends, family and customers alike. But we pledge that our honey harvesting will only be from hives which have a strong surplus. We will not weaken our hives' health by taking more than the bees can spare. Bee Welfare and Bee HealthAnyone who watches the news today knows that both hobbyist and commercial beekeepers around the world have suffered huge losses in the last few years. Varroa mite, tracheal mite, foulbrood, Colony Collapse Disorder and other maladies, together with a general reduction in the number of hobbyist hives (from 7 million in the USA alone to only 2.5 million in recent years). Somehow, we have managed to love our bees to death. Many people offer their theories about why honeybee hives are having so many problems. Some believe that all the problems can be traced to a single source of trouble, such as cell phone towers or pesticide use or even global warming. Others believe that pests and diseases such as the Varroa mite and foulbrood merely have become stronger than our most recent batch of drugs, so we need to develop new drugs. We disagree. With all due respect to the hobbyists, professional apiarists and scientists who have spent many thousands of hours doing research on these individual issues, we think we need to stand back and look at the big picture. If you look at how bees are managed in standardized hives vs how they choose to live in wild hives, there are glaring discrepancies. We are putting together some points to consider for those who might be interested in our theories, experiences and practices. We hope you'll visit these pages again as we write up and post those notes. Whatever your interest, approach or level of involvement with bee keeping, we hope that you will support beekeeper activities in your particular area. And we encourage you to start a few hives of your own. Bees work so hard to provide us with so many of our foods. The very least we can do is provide a world fit for them (and us) to live in.
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