Not surprisingly, I have some thoughts....

First of all, our bees appear to generally be doing well.  Some hives are a bit (or very) light right now...some of our apiaries are overstocked.  Goldenrod is coming in strong on the roof of the Intercontinental (I'm not sure where it is coming from...most open space there is heavily manicured...perhaps from a island).  Some hives appear to be a bit ahead having turned over the brood nest....we are hoping for a continued flow...but there are probably a few hives/nucs that will need honey...probably shifting frames around will be enough.

We had some issues with snotty looking brood...lost two small nucs to it, otherwise it appears to have cleared up.  I've seen a few shriveled wing bees...but only in a few hives, and only one or two...with one inherited large cell hive looking a bit weak in this regard.

We started 15 packages this spring, each one got a frame (or most of a frame) of capped honey, and new PF100's.  These are all doing well, some have produced surplus honey, most were either requeened with our virgins, or superseded during the season.  All in two deeps, some in 3, one in 4.

Some of our locations we don't visit often, so I don't have a full report....but we have about 50 colonies (a few of those are 1 or 2 story nucs).

We don't tightly control most of our breeding areas, but much of our stock came originally from don fatbeeman kuchenmeister.  He selects heavily for temperment, and thus far we have been able to maintain those traits.

We generally don't feed...and if we feel the need to, we feed crystalized honey, or frames of honey.  We don't treat with anything.

We don't do mite counts, so I can't share any metrics...but I do have good eyes, we do put bees in observation hives from time to time (where you can spot mites between the tergits on their bellies), I've stopped uncapping drone brood to check for mites....I never found more than 1 in 10, and never more than one mite.

One well respected researcher (I won't out him/her), when asked what he/she uses as treatments on their own bees, answers, "Well, I'm managing for honey production, so I don't treat with anything."

This is, I think the crux of the issue.

There is no question that one can produce more honey from a given flow if the bees are already built up.  There is no question that a professional pollinator, as a bottom line, has to have populous/building colonies throughout the pollinating season.  

I think there is also no question that the practice of always keeping the bees built up (through feeding or migration or both) puts stress on the bees.  A break in the brood cycle is often recommended as a way to control the mites...most locations offer a break in the brood cycle if the bees are allowed to react to outside influences.  I'm not passing any judgement here...just pointing out some of the difficulties that arise out of efficient management.  I understand that this is "baseline beekeeping"...and that for many operations, and most of the migratory pollination industry that this is essential...but I think that in beekeeping, it is a mistake to think the stationary honey producer or backyard beekeeper has to run a miniaturized version of this model...certainly the backyard and small scale egg producer has nothing that looks like an industrial "chicken hive".

Is there a difference between bees that are and aren't medicated?  Is there a difference between honey that comes as a surplus and honey that is traded for feed?  Is there a value in keeping/propagating bees that can take care of themselves_and produce a surplus?  ...in supporting beekeepers who practice such management?


I think so.  It's not really any different than not wanting to buy clothing made by slave labor...you want your money (the product of your work) to support the world you want to live in...you give it to political causes and/or charities you believe in, you buy products and services that you want to include in your life, and one might spend more for honey that is produced from bees managed in a way the consumer can understand and support.

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