In Allen's defense.  I am not entirely sure that skep beekeeping is an 
anachronism... it is wierd but it certainly captures my respect.  From 
what I have seen skep beekeepers use very few inputs to make their honey, 
which is in itself an great accomplishment.  They achieve this 
sustainability by elegently fitting their system to bee biology.  Although 
Peter's exhaustive list of the history of state bee act's is impressive 
and useful (and one which I will file away for later use as it is so 
comprehensive... who knew there was a bee breeding program in NJ) and 
there is no doubt that movable hive technology revolutionised beekeeping, 
this should not undermine the accomplishments of skep beekeepers.  I have 
never come across any evidence to suggest that a well-trained skep 
beekeeper is a AFB-spreading menace... if you watch the video you will see 
that skep beekeepers check their combs routinely and replace all their 
brood combs annually... a big improvement over the current state of 
affairs.  It is my understanding that to keep bees in skeps in Germany (at 
least this is what the video led me to believe) you need to be 
acredited... there is no threat here.  

Overmanaged agricultural systems are not always the best ones.  Ingemar 
Fries and his collegues just published a study of varroa levels in largely-
unmanaged bee colonies in Gotland.  The bees swarmed and many died, but a 
few years into the study colonies are persisting and the rate of colony 
death has declined.  Kirk Webster in Vermont has long advocated having the 
bees define the form in which we keep bees and not the other way around.  
He claims to have outpaced his losses to varroa using the high 
reproductive capacity of bees in his area (he makes a lot of nucs to make 
up his losses and then noticed his nucs last a lot longer without 
treatments than full-sized colonies).  One book Kirk referenced in his 
summer ABJ series, the One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukoka, lays a 
compelling case for the resiliance of natural systems to deal with 
problems that we have become accustomed to managing ourselves.  I think 
skep beekeeping, with its long tradition and ties to the master beekeeping 
programs in Germany, has a lot of knowledge to offer.

Adony

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