There is no standard in which we label hives as far as treatments go.
Everyone has their own label for them. Take the Organic Beekeepers
list headed by Dee Lusby. Since it uses the label "organic" people
mistake it for a list where treatments that come from a "natural"
source are ok. The list is actually for strictly no treatments at all.
Nothing that the bees wouldn't bring in the hive themselves is used.
The only exception made is feeding sugar in an emergency.Also the
management technique of regressing bees down to 4.9 cell size is used
as it is believed that it is beneficial to the bees to do so. The jury
is still out for many on this. So in the meaning of "organic" as far
as the public and farming industry is concerned the word in this case
has been commandeered. So now we're stuck in a game of general
semantics. Perhaps saying that no treatments, no supplement management
of bees is either "strict organic" or even "vegan" beekeeping is
appropriate.

So we have those who are very strict and use no treatments or
supplements at all. Either small cell foundation is used and the
foundation is manufactured themselves using their wax stock since they
know its clean or they use no foundation at all. In regression they
either use HSC or PermaComb as a tool and phase it out or let the bees
do it themselves.

Those that treat bees with organic substances and use small cell or
standard large cell foundation.

Main stream beekeepers who use chemicals and industry standards.

Of course there are various combinations of all of the above. Which
makes it really hard to label management practices in fine terms.

Jamie

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