Hi All Chris described UK Organic Standards thus: > For practical beekeeping purposes they are unmeetable, > even by hobby beekeepers. Here are examples of the criteria which need to be met for certification as organic: Origin of bees: - must be from division of colonies or swarms derived from stock kept to these organic criteria (except for 10% of the stock which can be brought in from non-certified sources annually) Siting of colonies: - plants in a radius of 3km must be 'spontaneous vegetation' or organic crops or 'crops treated with low environmental impact' - the more stringent Soil Association standards require a 4 mile (6.4 km) separation, which may be why, in our crowded islands, no-one in the UK is yet able to produce organic honey to these standards - 'maintain enough distance' (unspecified) from urban centres, motorways, industrial areas, waste dumps etc Feeding: - must be left with sufficient reserves of honey and pollen to survive the winter - in extreme climatic conditions, can be fed with organic honey, preferably from the same unit (or possibly organic sugar syrup in some situations) Diseases: - prevent by using hardy stock and 'certain practices' including regular renewing of beeswax - phytotherapeutic and homeopathic products preferred to allelopathic ones - permitted allelopathic products (within the limits of the law) can be the acids and thymol, menthol, eucalyptol or camphor - if you need to treat with other chemicals, colonies must be placed in isolation apiaries, all wax replaced, and then you need to wait one year for re-conversion to certified organic Forbidden practices: - destruction of bees to harvest honey - mutilating the queen by clipping wings - using synthetic chemicals as repellants at harvest (sorry Jim) All in all, a fairly onerous set of criteria, which will have the effect of keeping organic production very restricted and relatively inefficient. Here in Scotland I could probably meet the criteria more easily than Chris, but then I'd be regularly travelling long distances to sites sufficiently isolated from conventional agriculture and other man-dominated sites - hardly sustainable beekeeping. best wishes Gavin ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ******************************************************