The question on 'how can a backyard beekeeper can get high quality honey that is the equal of that produced by commercial beekeepers'? raises the issue that places the whole future of recreational beekeeping at risk, in my view. 

Modern beekeeping took off 150 years ago when Langstroth designed the movable frame and was quickly adapted by Root to provide the basis for large scale honey production. Methods for keeping bees were fully developed say 100 years ago. While lifestyles have changed enormously since that time, with vast improvements in hygiene and concern over human health, beekeeping has simply not kept pace. Beekeepers know that but have taken too little action. So far, honey consumers seem not to have noticed but I believe a crisis could explode at any time. 

Let's not beat about the bush - many beekeeping practices (for example sugar feeding), that have recently been recommended to beginners in this list, are quite simply incompatible with producing pure honey. There is absolutely no way you can plump a colony up on sugar before (or even it seems, during) a flow and keep supers clear of 'cured' syrup. It's in the biology of the bee. They build a brood nest and pack stores around it. As the nest expands, they move the stores up and around. They simply do not consume sugar to draw out a super of foundation and leave it dry for use later. George Imirie said it - 'bees do not build comb unless there is an immediate need'. UK beekeepers in WW2 who fed only small amounts of green-dyed sugar (when sugar was rationed) found they got green honey. 

Any large-scale honey producers who use sugar feeding to draw supers before a flow will contaminate their honey, but if the honey crop is large, the degree of contamination may be small. Less skilful beekeepers who get smaller crops will have a higher level of contamination. Anyone following George Imrie's advice to feed to set a colony by 15 April, then feed steadily sugar to September and use that colony for honey production next spring, will not be able to escape having a very high level of fake honey in the crop. 

The danger for the future of beekeeping is clear. Quality honey retails for £2.50 to £4 (in UK), 10 times the price of sugar, but only because a sizeable part of the population is acutely concerned with health. Sugar (sucrose) is known to be an artificial food which the body cannot properly absorb - it produces 'sugar highs' in children, with later risk of obesity and teen-age diabetes. The health conscious accept that pure honey is one of the finest foods for humans, containing almost everything the body needs, to which humans are fully adapted through the process of evolution. So they are prepared to pay a price sufficient to compensate for the increasing costs and losses caused (or about to be caused) by Varroa, africanized bees, hive beetles, tropylaelaps (?), and carpensis clone workers. While the reputation for quality is maintained, beekeeping will be able to continue - the reputation of honey for purity is beekeeping's greatest asset. But current practices put all at risk. One can just see the headline by some influential food writer 'beekeeper's honey is plumped full of sugar!', repeated and passed on to 10,000 health magazines and newsletters. No matter if it is only partly true - in the media age, bad news is good news and rebuttals are rarely read. If honey is down-graded in the public imagination from 'miracle health food' to a cooking additive worth only less than £1 per pound, we are finished - and it will be totally our own fault. 

So, to cut to the question, how can a backyard (or any other) beekeeper produce pure honey for selling at top price to the health-conscious? Follow the large-scale producers? We have been assured they produce the highest quality honey, which is checked by testing. It is still strange that they sell only at a low price to packers who then disguise the character of the honey by blending. Fine unblended honey can retail at say £4 (say $6), so why do they not copyright a brand name, contract with packers to work to standards set by the producers and market to quality stores, health outlets and direct to the public? A hobbyists like me sells all the honey from 20 hives locally, with my own label giving my name and address, some through the Centre for Healthy Living, some at schools, some direct off a market stall. I face my customers - why do large producers hide anonymously behind packers if the product is really so good? 

I suggest it would be in the best long-term interests of beekeepers to stick to only 'natural' methods to safeguard that vital health market. My last message drew long responses that attached all sorts of extensions of meaning to simple words, seemingly based on prejudice. Can we agree to use words with only their face meanings, not as 'codes'. 'Natural' means merely 'as nature does it' which still leaves wide latitude as bees are pretty adaptable, 'commercial' means doing it 'as a business' and does not imply anything as to size of operation, 'amateur' means doing it for the love of it, 'backyard' means the bees are kept at home as part of the family's lifestyle and does not imply ignorant, grubby and a walking danger to the public. The terms are not exclusive - natural hny can be produced commercially.  

We may not agree on what is 'natural' beekeeping but my list is:


  1.. Keep strains of bees already adapted to your local climate and day-length - it is unnatural for bees to move great distances. The concept of wonder strains that will succeed everywhere is a myth. 
  2.. Do not use plastic foundation as the bees find it an unnatural material to find in a bee nest and will only draw it if stuffed with sugar. Wax foundation is readily used by bees and quickly turned to comb as needed. In UK, expert beekeepers in canola areas put on supers with no foundation at all, just a triangle of sealed honey left from cutting out last year's comb. Bees draw comb very fast in a major flow. 
  3.. Start packages and swarms on foundation with a single feed of 1 gallon of syrup, then wait for natural expansion of the new nest in accordance with nectar flows, however long that takes. If you want honey in your first year, go help a local beekeeper who will both teach you and pay for your labour in honey - or don't take up beekeeping. Don't plant raspberries either - they fruit only on second year wood. 
  4.. Replace at least 1/3 of the brood combs annually with fresh foundation - better 100%. This suppresses disease organisms that infect comb.
  5.. Never ever feed any anti-biotics. Burn any colony with AFB. Make an artificial swarm of any colony with light EFB infection, starve until bees drop from the cluster, then re-hive in the sterilised hive on new foundation for 24 hrs, then destroy whatever comb has been built, and only then feed 1 gallon of syrup. (This prevents any carry-over of diseased honey).
  6.. Control swarming by accelerating the natural cycle in the bees nest (the Demarree principle) as you both lose your harvest if bees swarm and you add to wild colonies that become disease reservoirs.
  7.. Most importantly, get to know your area and how many colonies it can support . Never over-stock an area. Hungry bees get bad tempered and prone to disease. 
  8.. Most importantly, if you live in an area that is unsuitable for honeybees, admit it. Some areas only have one short flow. There are many solitary bees adapted to that environment - they emerge with the flow, stock a few cells and lay eggs,  then die. The next generation emerges next year. Honeybees evolved in the tropics where there is forage most of the year except in the rainy season. They have great difficulty in coping with a 10-month fast - even honeybees get bored with nothing to do! Sugar syrup is not a replacement for nectar - it lacks all the vitamins, minerals and enzymes needed to build healthy bees. Bees, like humans, are what they eat. When humans were undernourished in the Industrial Age, bodies were small and life expectancy only 40 years. Nurse bees rob their own bodies of protein when raising larvae on sugar and insufficient pollen, and the resulting bees also lack vitality. So keep colonies alive by feeding back their own honey and their own pollen in patties. The true surplus is only what is left over at the start of the next year's flow and it may not be much at all - a colony needs some 200 lbs of honey to sustain itself for a year. Above all, do not feed sugar and then claim the harvest is honey - call it 'hunny' if you will, and perhaps add fruit juice for flavouring and develop a market for 'a product made from sugar by honeybees with added natural flavouring'. 
  9.. Use a honey extractor only when you have a rush on. Honey was not meant to thrown out as droplets and crashed into walls. Part of the aromatics that give scent and flavour are driven off - try extracting where bees can find you and see how quickly the scent reaches them. Premium honey is got by uncapping fresh comb, then scarping off the honey and cell walls into a sieve and letting it drain. It comes off the small amount of open-textured wax very quickly. The process is so gentle you can do it in the evening by the hive side without trouble. If extracting, never put in unsealed frames or frames with open brood - customers do not expect blood in cows' milk and should not get bee juices in honey (but Root's ABC states all extracted honey must be strained to remove dead bees, larvae and other rubbish! Ugh!). Let all honey - extracted or strained - settle in a tall tank in a warm place until all debris has risen to the top. Never heat honey, only warm it to hive temperature 35degrees C. Coarse filter only the last honey in a tank after the clean honey has been bottled. Never use fine filters that take out natural ingredients such as pollen grains. Have nothing to do with packers who will alter the character of your honey. Inform customers how to soften honey safely if they want to. 
  10.. Monitor Varroa levels regularly by checking mite drop. Use Apistan only when necessary within an Integrated Pest Management System that includes open mesh floors, culling drone brood, dusting with powders, careful application of formic acid. 
  11.. Keep careful records and learn to do better by studying them later. 
When reviewing your methods, you might think also about the hive you are using. The Langstroth and clone (the UK National) are basically now out of date. They were designed a century ago when people were physically much stronger than today. You cannot Demaree a National (Langstroth is worse) while keeping within the UK Heath & Safety Executive guidelines for lifting. Beekeepers' back is common - how clever is it to spend years in pain because you used outdated equipment for your hobby? The Dartington Long Deep Hive is a new pattern where the heaviest lift is a honeybox (or half-sized super) weighing only 16 lbs, and you can Demarree sideways lifting no more than individual deep frames. More info if you email me at gmv47@ dial.pipex.com. 

Good luck - here hoping for a better future for bees, beekeepers and beekeeping!


Robin Dartington 

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