Hi All/Madelaine
 
Madelaine - you mention you contacted English Nature - your
government nature conservation department - about placing beehives on
heathland.
 
I support their decision not to allow it on the following grounds:
 
- The bees you keep are not 'wild' bees. They have different
characteristics to wild honeybees and have been bred to be aggressive
foragers. Hence they will outcompete 'indigenous' bees in the
heather, including solitary bees and bumble bees possible.
 
- To keep the bees there you place probably more beehives than would
naturally occur - in the long term this will lead to over pollination
of bee pollinated plants (which is in the bees interests, but not
neccessarily the interests of the overall ecosystem that one is
trying to conserve)  - and as a result more of these will set seed,
and your plant average will swing towards Apis mellifera forage
plants, as opposed to maybe wind pollinated this, or solitary
pollinated that.
 
- Beekeepers will bring in varroa - beekeepers practise 'prophylaxis'
- the treatment of hive pests with unnatural chemicals - hence one
brings in bees with crutches - one could  make an analogy to going
into an african nature reserve and seeing a leopard wearing infra red
goggles, or a rhino wearing crutches so it does not develop arthritus
because of it's weight and so on. One wants a nature reserve to be
maybe a breeding ground for bees that are resistant to humans mess.
 
- You mention you don't want to do 'bee' education in a nature
reserve. I think that is good. Remember - beehives in nature did not
have wood frames and nice boxes - they tended to bee in trees and
cliffs. Hence bee education in a nature reserve should maybe be in
the form of a tree hive with a small glass window - to show how
natural bees work. A beehive demonstration of a normal hive fits more
snuggly into an aggricultural demo - beekeeping is afterall farming,
not game keeping.
 
In summary - why fight for beekeeping space in a nature reserve - we
try to minimise our influence on these spaces so they remain
beautiful. Only in an agricultural sense is a line of scruffy white
boxes beautiful. In a natural sense it is about as beautiful as a
coca cola billboard next to the Grand Canyon, or a cellular phone
billboard near the Kruger Park main entrance.
 
Keep well
 
Garth
Garth Cambray           Camdini Apiaries
Grahamstown             Apis mellifera capensis
Eastern Cape Prov.
South Africa
 
Time = Honey
 
After careful consideration, I have decided that if I am ever a V.I.P
the I. may not stand for important.
(rather influential, ignorant, idiotic, intelectual, illadvised etc)