Commenting on the 'producing pure honey' theme, on 11 April Yoon wrote :' the overall point in your post is that we go back to primitive, prior-to-industrialisation beekeeping practice'. No, not at all. Quite the opposite - I want beekeeping to advance steadily as our understanding of bee-life grows. 

The total misunderstanding was puzzling until I found Microsoft thesaurus defines 'natural' as: unaffected; artless; unconstrained; impulsive; childlike. Readers Digest Illustrated Dictionary (as published in USA) gives 10 usages, of which 'primitive' comes only 9th. The primary usage is 'present in or produced by nature, not artificial or man-made', as in 'natural science' which is how the word is used in UK,. So once again we are two nations divided by a common language and I apologise for confusing an international readership. Let's use 'progressive' rather than 'natural'. 

The influences underlying the 'progressive beekeeping' approach that I lecture on in UK (termed 'New Beekeeping') - and which guide my contributions to Bee-L - are: Huber; Langstroth; Von Frisch; Butler; Free; Ribbands; Mark Winston and Seeley. Abstracts of beekeeping articles from IBRA help to fill in the last decade. So let's be clear - what I am urging is that hobbyists stick to ways of managing bees that derive from scientific investigation into what it is natural for bees to do, rather than force artificial conditions on bees even if experienced beekeepers say that you get more honey by doing so. 

Let me say again that there is an economic reason as well as a moral principle - hobbyists who produce honey by methods that guarantee purity can get a 30% to 50% higher price for the small quantity they produce than some professional beekeepers get for their much larger crops. This is because 'guaranteed pure' local honey, carrying the producers name on every jar, finds a market with the health-conscious who care about what they eat and mistrust anonymous blended brands identified only by the packer's label. Last year, all UK supermarket 'own brands' had to be dumped in landfill after antibiotics were found in the Chinese honey blended in. People want to see where the honey comes from which they can't in blends. Keeping bees is so expensive that this best possible price is needed if it is to remain sense for hobbyists to keep more than say a couple of colonies as pets. So beware when you hear it does not matter if a little sugar gets in, or antibiotics do not matter, or unauthorised substances to kill mites are OK, that it is 'normal beekeeping practice'. Times are changing and customers will no longer buy if they think the standard is too low. McDonald's have just registered their first loss after 50 years of growth - after the quality of the food was exposed by a food writer and a judge condemned McNuggets as McFrankenstein creations. McDonalds are being driven upmarket - in London and LA they already offer low fat meals from the New Tastes Menu. 

There's nothing unrealistic about protecting the reputation of honey by concentrating on 'progressive beekeeping, informed by science', and leaving behind some of the 'tricks-of-the trade'. Nor is it proven that you get lower production. Professional beekeepers use tiered hives because they move their bees. Most hobbyists don't - humping heavy boxes is not much fun - so you can use a modern hive like the Dartington Long Deep Hive where the unrestricted size of the brood chamber leads to larger populations and gives me more honey than my National hives (details by e-mail if wanted). 

There are professional beekeepers who sell honey for as much or more as hobbyists. I bought 'own brand' honey from South Western Australia recently for over £12 per 1½ pounds. A 1991 report to the Honeybee Research and Development Council said the state produces 10% of Australian honey, queen breeding is state controlled and sugar feeding is not practised. It would be interesting to hear more from South Western Australia. 

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