The most important items in the list of UK organic rules posted by Gavin 
are:

> - plants in a radius of 3km must be 'spontaneous vegetation' or organic 
> crops or 'crops treated with low environmental impact'

This is most likely wrong and it should start like this: most of the plants 
.......  which means more than 50 %

Also the end

>'crops treated with low environmental impact'

is important as this refers at least here in Finland to fields the are 
farmed according to EU environmental farming rules. These mean restricted 
amounts of fertilization and chemical use. As the farmers get a big part of 
subsidies from farming under environmental rules almost all field area here 
is included in this.

When the first rule says  more than 50 %  is enough and the other includes 
most normally farmed fields this means that organic beekeeping is possible 
in Finland in  most of the country excluding areas near cities, main 
motorways, waste dumps etc. The radius from these has been set here  to 6 
km.

I recommend all English beekeepers interested in organic beekeeping to see 
what these points exactly mean in England, and would be interested to know 
the answer myself too.

Maybe many of you are not limited by the restrictions about the beekeeping 
area for organic.

Ari Seppälä
Finland

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