What is Natural Beekeeping?

I first started keeping bees over 10 years ago. The course on which  I was enrolled was much the same as what would have been rolled out over the country to many novices and, to a large extent, still is. Unless otherwise stated, that is what people will get when they enroll on a bee keeping course. It didn't occur to me for a very long time that there was an alternative. I added the potions and powders that were prescribed and checked my bees with an alarming regularity. My honey harvest declined and the bees seemed to need more and more attention; to stop them swarming, to count mite drops, to administer medicines, to cull drones, to feed them.....the list went on. After a few years oxalic acid was advised during the winter months to catch varroa mites in the 'phoretic' phase(i.e out of the cells). This just didn't seem right-to open my bees in winter! To give them something which had allegedly killed 2 German bee keepers! So I didn't. I still had mites but they were at a manageable level so I carried on.
Then last year I went to a talk by Nicola Bradbear with the Gwent Bee Keepers who was advocating this new, 'alternative' method of bee keeping. I had come home! This was what felt natural and right and ever since then I have been exploring the strategies behind Natural Bee Keeping.

The Warre hive

How is Natural Bee Keeping different from Traditional Bee Keeping?

(as understood and practised by myself)

• Bees naturally grow comb downwards. Instead of adding 'supers' to the top of the colony they are added below to allow a more natural spread
• No queen excluder. Traditional beekeeping is designed for the bee keeper to harvest honey and therefore the queen is kept below decks in a specific nursery area and only honey will appear in the higher chambers. Bearing in mind that the queen releases a pheromone that is key to the cohesion of the colony and in the wild she would have full access to the hive then it seems more normal to allow her to roam at will.
• A ban on chemical use. There are cultural methods which we can employ to limit the infection and spread of parasites and diseases.
• Leave the honey on. Under traditional methods ALL the honey in the supers would be removed at the end of the season in August and an artificial substitute sugar syrup added to recompense the girls for their labours. We wouldn't want sugar syrup instead of honey so why should they? It is a bland, non-nutritive substitute.
• Typically the hive of choice for natural bee keeping is the Warre (pronounced Wo-ray). Over the many, many years man has kept bees there have been an astonishing variety of designs which have waxed and waned. No particular one is better than any other and more often that not it seems to be the bee keeper who dictates the design rather than  the bee. The Warre is designed to be easy to handle and it's design has been transported all over the world.
• A general tolerance of natural behaviours such as swarming and drone production. Both of these are discouraged by the profit seeking bee keeper.

For further reading visit the link below:

.http://www.dheaf.plus.com/warrebeekeeping/warre_experiment_heaf.htm

If you need any more convincing of the state of our honey bee population try and see this docufilm.http://www.vanishingbees.com/