Towards Sustainable Beekeeping

David Heaf

This document comprises an update of an article which appeared in four parts in The Beekeepers
Quarterly (Issues 91, 92, 93 & 94, 2008) together with an introduction on various possible ethical
stances beekeepers might adopt. This introduction is added because it was pointed out by an aspiring
sustainable beekeeper that there should moral principles behind sustainable beekeeping that are more
fundamental than those of sustainability or bee-appropriate management. This introduction on ethics
is an effort to get closer to the 'why' of the approach described, rather than just the 'what'. Anyone
wishing to skip the 'why' may wish to jump directly to the more practical discussion which starts
under the heading Part 1 of Towards Sustainable Beekeeping below (page 5).

Agricultural and environmental ethics applied to beekeeping

Agricultural and environmental ethics is a relatively new academic discipline. For example, the
journal of that name did not start until 1988, and the Food Ethics Council was not founded until ten
years later. However, the field is well developed and offers some perspectives applicable to
beekeeping.
In my understanding of ethics, an action is only moral in the real sense if it is done out of free
choice, i.e. with no kind of compulsion, e.g. instinct, norms, culture or religion etc. Furthermore, it is
evident that the person doing the action understands and recognises the justification of the moral
principle motivating it, that is, that he/she1 recognises the ideal and is not being forced to follow it.
This being so, we cannot prescribe in advance what beekeepers must do. They have to decide
themselves on the right course of action.
Disregarding extreme views, for example that we should not take honey from colonies at all, four
possible moral stances or fundamental attitudes vis-à-vis nature in general and bees in particular can
be distinguished and supported with moral argumentation1: dominator, steward, partner and
participant. The series runs from the most anthropocentric to the most biocentric attitude, or from the
most utilitarian position to one of respect for the intrinsic value of the living being. Please note well
that no single attitude of the four characterised here is more important or defensible ethically than
any other. It is a matter of completely free choice where in the spectrum of attitudes an individual
beekeeper places himself.

The dominator
The dominator holds that nature is for supporting the existence of the human race. Therefore it is
merely a source of raw materials to serve human goals and to be conquered, controlled, subdued,
domesticated. The dominator seeks the maximum utility and profit that is legally and economically
possible. Nature on its own follows a course of trial and error by the natural selection. But by
breeding technology the trial and error process runs more efficiently, from a limited pool of starting
material, and at the expense of fewer misfits.
The dominator beekeeper will modify the genetics of his bees by whatever available technique
that is also profitable. It may involve artificial insemination and even recombinant DNA technology.
If he cannot find the desired genetics locally, he will import them, if necessary from the other side of
the world. He will keep his bees in conditions that give him greatest control over them, using frames,
embossed foundation, queen excluders, synthetic acaricides, antibiotics, swarm prevention, queen
clipping etc. If possible he will try to breed out any tendency to swarm and select for supersedure.
Mindful of the labour cost, he will open the hive only as often as he needs for maintaining full
control. He will take as much honey as possible and leave sugar in exchange. In search of lucrative
pollination contracts he will truck bees thousands of miles. By his supering strategy, including

1
In the remainer of this document just 'he' will be used, but in all cases 'he' or 'she' is meant.
chequerboarding if he deems it profitable, he will make sure during the main flows that the bees
perceive empty space above their heads that urgently must be filled.

The steward
The steward also sees nature from an anthropocentric perspective but, unlike the dominator, he
recognises definite limits. He sees himself as entrusted with the use of nature, not with its
consumption. The steward at least endorses a duty to care for organisms other than humans,
regardless of the extent to which they resemble humans in their capacity for suffering. The problem
is then one of ranking the intrinsic values of organisms which the steward recognises. Subjecting an
animal to a particular form of husbandry or breeding must not happen arbitrarily. Although human
interests prevail over those of animals and plants, the latter's interests are more important than purely
economic interests. Accordingly, society accepts that animals can be used for various purposes, but
sets limits on that use. However, bees fall outside such control. The steward's duty of care extends to
species conservation, protection of ecosystems to the extent that sometimes human interests must
yield to avoid putting nature out of joint. The steward does not want to damage its integrity but will
gladly domesticate it within limits.
The beekeeper with the steward attitude to nature favours the more traditional methods of
breeding, but, like the dominator, would resort to modern techniques if a very good case could be
made, for instance risk of entire loss of the species in a particular region due to epidemic. He will
keep his bees in the way that most beekeepers do, though perhaps avoiding extremes such as queen
clipping or not letting the bees winter on their own honey. He will nevertheless control swarming in
the conventional ways, though try to balance his inspection frequency against the possible harm it
does to his colonies. He will also inspect comb for disease and treat accordingly, perhaps favouring
non-synthetic acaricides and, instead of antibiotics, comb replacement combined with requeening.
He is willing to migrate short distances with his colonies to ensure that they are presented with a
good supply of nectar and pollen. He will err on the cautious side when deciding how many hives a
particular locality can support.

The partner
The partner regards animals as potential allies, thus presupposing that they have their own 'say' when
interacting with humans. He conceives nature as an interplay of life forms, in which each invests its
own expressiveness and intrinsic value. This need not conflict with a scientific approach but does
call for a respect for nature. Mankind distinguishes itself from other life forms in that it is not only
embedded biologically in nature but also is free to have a conscious relationship with nature, an
ethical attitude to it. The partnership is nevertheless asymmetrical, because it consists of the
interaction between life forms at different levels of organic complexity. Organic or ecological
husbandry satisfies the requirements of the partner but so does a sustainable husbandry that is not
necessarily certified organic. In such husbandries, technological exploitation can occur as long as the
animal is not unnaturally forced, i.e. its species-specific functions are not prevented. The exploitation
might even be of mutual benefit. Biodiversity including diversity of husbanded species is respected.
Compared with the dominator and the steward, the partner beekeeper is willing to accept lower
profits in return for maintaining his bees under somewhat more bee-friendly conditions. When
breeding he avoids any form of laboratory based genetic modification, though would nevertheless
accept conventional queen breeding in mini-nuclei. His hive may or may not contain frames. If it
does, he will make them deep enough to contain the brood nest in one box. If he uses foundation,
perhaps only as starter strips, it will be from beeswax produced by colonies that have not been
treated with synthetic chemicals. If he does not use a queen excluder, he will manage his hive to
minimise the chance of the queen laying in the honey boxes. By keeping inspections to a bare
minimum, reducing colony density in the landscape, allowing healthy drone populations and letting
the bees winter on their own honey he will optimise colony health. If, despite these measures, his
bees succumb to disease, he will opt for requeening and comb replacement rather than using
chemicals, or he will cull colonies. To control Varroa he will use formic acid, which is already
present in the hive or some other natural acaricide that does not contaminate his wax. To raise new
queens and make increase he will as far as possible work with the swarming process, intervening to
make splits when the time is ripe.

The participant
The participant sees nature as the totality of interdependent and interwoven life forms. Mankind is an
integral part of nature therefore respect is due to other organisms, not only because of their intrinsic
value, but also because nature's complexity. The innumerable relationships and balances between
organisms have a surplus value that exceeds their usefulness to mankind. This has implications that
are more far reaching for the participant than for the partner. The participant is more biocentric in his
principled choices for setting limits on man's interventions in nature. Although he must also
inevitably intervene in nature for the purpose of food production, in doing so he tries as best he can
to make use of the inherent dynamism of natural processes. He bases his science and technology on a
holistic approach guided by observable phenomena. But participation is not necessarily incompatible
with advanced technology. For example, it could be used to investigate the conditions the animal
concerned is aiming for, so that husbandry of it can best accord with its essential nature.
Relative to the partner, the participant beekeeper's interests are even more centred on his bees and
on their contribution to the natural surroundings. He works with locally adapted bees, raising and
selecting them for maximum health. Although he would like to harvest a modest honey crop, he is
willing to forego it if there is any risk that by taking it he would have to feed sugar. He is then
content to stop at helping maintain the population of bees in the landscape by providing 'bee-
appropriate' homes for them in which only natural comb occurs, supported by spales or top-bars. The
bees themselves thus determine their optimal cell size and its distribution in the colony, as well as the
population of drones they require at any particular time. He avoids supering altogether as he sees it
placing unnecessary stress on a colony to fill the space that would be constantly appearing above it.
His queens are free to roam the whole hive. He applies the principle that the bees work from the top
downwards so he gives extra space underneath the colony by nadiring. This helps minimise swarms
being triggered by lack of space. If the bees are nevertheless intent on swarming, provided that the
siting of his apiary is not too urban, he allows them to do so and uses the swarms to start new
colonies. He disturbs his colonies as little as possible, maybe even only once a year, and instead
observes his bees from outside the hive, learning as much as he can from hive sounds and entrance
phenomena. He uses no chemical treatments whatsoever. His Varroa policy is co-adaptation or co-
evolution of bee and mite. He harvests his honey by taking one or more boxes of it from the top of
his hives provided they are broodless and he leaves plenty of honey for the colony's winter needs. He
has no wish to return to the practice in skep beekeeping of asphyxiating colonies to harvest the
honey. He will be reluctant to move his colonies at all unless the natural food supply has become
threatened by unforeseen conditions. He welcomes an ethical scientific study of bees, including
sophisticated analytical techniques, especially if this will tell him how to keep his bees in an even
more bee-friendly way or conserve the species and its habitats.

The ethical matrix

It should be obvious from the foregoing that the boundaries between the different fundamental
attitudes are fuzzy. Indeed, an individual beekeeper's attitude to nature and his bees spans two
categories or moves between categories depending on the action contemplated. Another form of
ethical evaluation is the ethical matrix2. Four principles of medical ethics, beneficence (do good),
non-maleficence (do no harm), autonomy (freedom/choice) and justice (fairness) are adapted for
application to food ethics by merging the first two under the general heading 'wellbeing'
(health/welfare). Four broad stakeholder categories are identified: the animals husbanded (in our case
the bees), the producers, the consumers and the biota (the living environment). In ethics this kind of
deliberation it becomes a matter of balancing the various interests by considering how the three
principles of wellbeing, autonomy and justice apply to the four interest groups. It can be summarised
in the 'ethical matrix' (see Table 1).
 Respect for: Wellbeing Autonomy Justice
(Health & Welfare) (Freedom/Choice) (Fairness)
Stakeholders:
Bees Bee health & welfare Behavioural freedom Intrinsic nature
Beekeepers Adequate income & Freedom to adopt or not Fair treatment in
(producers) working conditions adopt a particular trade and law
beekeeping technique
Honey consumers Availability of pure, Respect for consumer Affordability for
safe honey choice (e.g. organic disadvantaged
Public acceptability of versus non-organic) groups
how the honey is
produced
The biota Conservation of the Maintenance of Sustainability of
biota (for its own sake biodiversity, including biotic populations.
and for availability of bee forage biodiversity
bee forage)

Table 1: The ethical matrix

In populating the cells of the matrix it is assumed that both consumers and producers generally
accept the evaluations to be made. The ones given in the Table can of course be modified, removed
or supplemented to suit the purposes of the person or persons carrying out the evaluation. The matrix
can be used to test any action in the honey production chain to see how it impacts the four interests
with respect to the three principles. For example, not everything that the beekeeper does to his
colonies has its impact confined to his bees and himself. Using synthetic pyrethroids to kill Varroa
results in measurable pyrethroid degradation product concentrations in the honey. Or, overstocking a
region with honey bees could impact the biota negatively by out-competing particular species of wild
bee and rendering them locally extinct.
Regardless of his attitude to nature, any beekeeper wishing to undertake an ethical assessment of
his own methods may at least find the ethical matrix a useful way of structuring it. It is presented
here with the same four stakeholders given in the source. However, in beekeeping there are two
other, albeit smaller, stakeholder groups to take into consideration: the neighbours and other
beekeepers in the vicinity. We have to consider if any of our actions impact their wellbeing,
autonomy and the justice due to them.
None of the foregoing specifically addresses laws governing beekeeping. All laws originate at
sometime in the past from moral intuitions of men or women. The more glaringly obvious
considerations of wellbeing, autonomy and justice are usually the first to end up in law. It has been
suggested to me that people with attitudes to nature at the two extremes, namely dominator and
participant, might be more inclined to break a apiculture law, only for different reasons. For
example, the profit motivation might lead to compromises with food standards. The presence of
antibiotic contamination or even added sucrose in honey would be an example. And beekeepers
trying to pursue a totally natural comb policy in jurisdictions where fixed comb is not allowed might
be tempted not to register with the authorities and even hide their hives.
Part 1 of Towards Sustainable Beekeeping, The Beekeepers Quarterly, 91 February 2008

On being asked to write on this subject, I looked around for comprehensive, explicit and concise
definitions of the term 'sustainable beekeeping' but was unable to find any that met those criteria. The
nearest I got to it was a booklet entitled Bees and Rural Livelihoods from Bees for Development, a
UK based organisation that works to assist beekeepers in developing countries3.
To be sustainable, a human activity should meet the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of people elsewhere on the planet, or future generations, to meet their own needs. Meeting
needs sustainably is often seen in terms of a 'three-legged stool' comprising social needs, economic
needs and environmental needs. Take away one of those 'legs' and the whole thing falls down.
Another useful picture for understanding sustainability is that of the ecological footprint. Put
simply, it is the area of land that each person requires to sustain their lifestyle. A fair earth share is
about 1.8 global hectares per capita. On average, a person in Britain uses about 5.3 gha per capita.
The figure is even higher in some other western countries. It means that if everyone in the world
lived like British people do they would need three planet earths to sustain them. The whole thing
works only because a majority of people in the developing world survive on far less than one 'fair
earth share'. But many of them aspire to a better standard of living and certainly deserve their fair
earth share. For fairness to be restored, the only logical way that lies within the power of human
beings is for those who live on three planets, so to speak, to reduce their consumption. This option
has major implications for beekeeping. Minimising consumption is one key criterion of sustainability
that we shall frequently refer to in the following discussion.
The ecological footprint can be further divided according to particular material flows. For
example, the carbon footprint is part of our ecological footprint that has received particular attention
in the context of global climate change. How much carbon a beekeeping operation consumes is a
factor to take into consideration when judging its sustainability. We need to consider the embodied
energies of the materials we use. A beekeeping enterprise doing just this was presented in the
previous issue of The Beekeepers Quarterly4. It offset its carbon consumption by investing in
'carbon-reducing projects such as renewable energy, energy efficiency and reforestation'. However,
some regard carbon offsetting as a form of 'greenwash' in that it merely postpones the real solution,
namely reducing consumption to one planet living. Indeed, hard liners in the 'business as usual' camp
even argue that the best carbon-reducing project is nuclear energy.
This series of articles attempts to show the practical implications of what sustainable beekeeping
involves. As we are concerned with a human activity involving an animal, namely the bee, there is an
obvious fourth factor necessary for our activity to be sustainable, which does not seem to fit into the
'legs' already mentioned, namely how we treat the bee. Do we deal with it in a way that is appropriate
to the essential nature of the bee; are our beekeeping methods bee-appropriate, bee-friendly?
In addition to the four factors society, economy, environment and bee-appropriateness, there is
one general and very important overarching principle to be borne in mind throughout this discussion.
What is sustainable in a practical sense varies from place to place on the planet. For example, we
would not recommend making a hive of wood in a region where timber is scarce or where wood
digesters such as termites abound.
As the discussion proceeds, it becomes clear that it is difficult to consider just one of the four
aforementioned factors in isolation. They affect each other such that we are forced to balance them
one with another. For example, it would seem absurd to most beekeepers if they were required to be
so bee-friendly that they could no longer rob a colony of its surplus honey. Even so, a new balance
between man and bee will have to be found unless we want to risk losing bees altogether.
Out of the four factors, I will deal with the matter of how we look after the bees themselves first
because on it depends the entire success of our beekeeping operation. Some beekeepers, especially
the more hard-headed among professional beekeepers, may regard some or all of what I propose as
ridiculous. In which case nature will continue to be their teacher. Indeed, we may already be seeing
some of the lessons in the form of colony collapse disorder (CCD) and the spread of alien pests such
as mites and beetles. But in Britain and many other countries, the great majority of hived colonies are
managed by amateurs and part-timers working on a small scale. Provided they look after their bees,
they are the ones who could have greatest influence for the future well-being of honeybees and the
husbandry that goes with them. We do not need to tell beekeepers about the important environmental
service performed by their bees or about the important socioeconomic benefits from them. I hope
that the larger group of beekeepers whom I am addressing, those who are not solely profit-driven,
will find something in this series of articles that will be useful in making their operation more
sustainable.

Bee-appropriate beekeeping
When I started beekeeping, I heard my mentor say from time to time when different ways of doing
things were under discussion 'I don't expect the bees are bothered one way or the other what we do'.
In a sense he was right. The honey bee (Apis mellifera) seems to be able to make any sort of cavity
into its home and even sustains colonies on comb constructed out in the open. However, with the
homes we give them and how we manage them, we can take care not to work against the bee's
intentions. We can avoid stressing the colony, especially at times of the year when it is less capable
of rectifying our mistakes. Coldness/heat, wetness/drought and shortage of food, or of food of
adequate quality, if beyond or nearly beyond the capacity of the bee to cope with, can be expected to
predispose to stress and thence disease. We will look at the issue of heat and moisture management
in the hive first.

Thermal and hygrological issues – 1. Comb support

A bee colony, a super-organism already likened to a mammal5, maintains a brood nest temperature of
about 35ºC, and even in winter, when there is no brood, the temperature is kept as high as 25ºC,
whereas conditions outside may be many degrees below freezing. The active, targeted and finely
structured nature of this temperature regulation has been revealed by thermal imaging studies in
observation hives at the level of individual bees and comb cells6. The colony is a warmth organism
par excellence. In nature, to retain nest heat, the combs are hermetically sealed to the top of a cavity,
such as a hollow tree, and fixed to the walls at the side. This creates cul-de-sacs of warmed air
which, because the warm air rises and has nowhere else to go, is retained in the nest. Renewal of the
nest air by diffusion and active fanning by the bees occurs only at the bottom of the combs. This
natural 'air-conditioning' is under the bee's control. Anything that is done to undermine it is done at
the expense of increased activity by the bees. Increased activity necessarily increases the
consumption of sugars, the bee's heating fuel which it normally derives from nectar or honeydew.
Whilst skeps perfectly mimicked the natural arrangement at the top of a feral colony cavity, modern
beekeepers undermine nest heat retention by using frames. These leave air gaps round the sides and
the tops of the comb, contrary to the natural situation. Some even winter their bees under a queen
excluder with a stack of supers on top. This only works in mild climates provided the sugar supply is
adequate to balance the excess heat loss.
Bees abhor empty space. They try to fill in the gaps outside the frames with wax and/or propolis.
To retain frame mobility, beekeepers must constantly remove the extraneous deposits. But as fast as
they remove them, the bees replace them. This too increases consumption of food. Thus beekeeping
using frames, because it increases consumption by the bee and thus by the beekeeping operation,
must be less sustainable than not using frames. Natural comb hives such as the horizontal/long
format top-bar hive (hTBH, see Figs. 1 & 2)7 and the vertical/tiered format top-bar hive of Abbé
Émile Warré (vTBH, see Fig. 3)8, provided that they are not repeatedly opened, are examples of
hives that are inherently more sustainable regarding heat retention. Compared with framed hives they
reduce energy consumption. They save some stress on the bee, or at least save wasting the bee's
efforts on repairing the damage to nest integrity that frames cause. However, both TBH formats are
not necessarily sustainable everywhere on the planet. The horizontal format performs less well in
colder climates and the vertical format has not only yet to be tested at climatic extremes, but also is
probably unsuitable for hanging in trees, which is how horizontal TBHs are often deployed in the
tropics.
Figures 1 & 2. A horizontal format top-bar hive (top); Phil chandler working
on a comb from a horizontal format top-bar hive (bottom).
(Photos, courtesy Phil Chandler; www.biobees.com.)
 Figure 3. 'Exploded' view of The People's Hive of Abbé Emile Warré showing
a stand, the floor with alighting board, two hive elements with top-
bars, the top-bar cover cloth, the quilt filled with wood shavings
and the roof.

For my being made fully aware of the implications of framed beekeeping, I am indebted to books
by Johann Thür9 and Abbé Warré8. Thür gives a persuasive argument for observing the principle of
retention of nest scent and heat (Nestduftwärmebindung) in hive design and resurrects the hive of
Abbé Christ (1739-1813) which was identical in concept to Warré's. Later in this series of articles I
will discuss a type of frame, originally designed for a Warré hive, that minimises violation of the
nest heat retention principle and may offer at least an interim solution in countries where the law
requires combs to be very easily removable and replaceable.

Figures 4-7. hTBH combs: new comb on top-bar (top left); comb with brood
below (top right); examining a new comb already with brood
(bottom left); wax makers building comb (bottom right).
Photos: Courtesy Phil Chandler.

Thermal and hygrological issues – 2. Covering the nest

What is the most sustainable arrangement at the top of the nest? Heat dissipation here will be high
because warm air rises, but in hot or even temperate climates the top of the brood nest also needs
protecting from solar radiation. The hollow tree overcomes the problem as it is both a solar shield in
the midday sun and contains rotting wood that insulates and absorbs moisture. In hot climates, apart
from placing hives in the shade, beekeepers try to overcome the problem of thermal control at the top
of the hive by fitting an insulated crown board and a roof with well ventilated cavity, for example, a
gabled roof with wide-aperture eaves and gable summit ventilation.
As moving away from dependency on petrochemicals, a non-renewable resource, is a desirable
feature of sustainability, using synthetic insulating materials in a hive cannot be the most sustainable
solution. For insulation, it should be possible to devise insulating quilts based on renewables. The
most interesting nest heat retention configuration I have seen, and use myself on my Warré hives,
closely simulates the situation in the hollow tree trunk. It comprises a 100 mm deep wooden box
'quilt' closed with hessian below and filled with any kind of plant fibre: straw, sawdust, shavings,
leaves etc. This filling also absorbs and buffers water vapour flows and is changed each spring. The
discarded contents are used to suppress weeds round the hive. The quilt rests on coarse-weave
hessian that is in immediate contact with the top-bars. This is soon propolised and can be gently
peeled off without annoying the bees. (This paragraph was unfortunately omitted from the version
published in The Beekeepers Quarterly.)

Figure 8. Warré vTBH comb with some drone cells bottom right.

If hives cannot be kept in the shade of trees or vines, the aforementioned gabled roof would be
indicated. Access by mice to the quilt is prevented by an internal board. This arrangement works well
with the Warré quilt in continental Europe. It remains to be seen whether it works in northern sub-
tundra climates where Warré beekeeping experiments are starting in 2008. There, the board might
usefully be perforated or replaced all or in part with a metal screen. The question at issue here is
whether a quilt should be impermeable to water vapour if there is a high risk of condensation and
freezing above the bees. Otherwise, it is highly sustainable because all materials are renewable. All
the wooden parts can be made from recycled wood if available. There is no plywood in the
construction. Plywood has a higher embodied energy than plain wood and contains synthetic resins
for bonding.
In the next article I shall conclude thermological and hygrological concerns by discussing the
design of the hive body and the floor. What freedom we can give a colony to build the kind of comb
that meets its natural inclinations will also be discussed.
Part 2 of Towards Sustainable Beekeeping, The Beekeepers Quarterly, 92 June 2008

In Part 1 of this series we considered the 'triple bottom line' of any sustainable operation, namely its
social, economic and environmental aspects. In drawing up the balance sheet, a satisfactory outcome
regarding all three is essential for sustainability. And to those aspects we added a fourth that is
crucial to the success of our beekeeping, namely how we treat the bee itself. Thus we gave priority to
bee-appropriateness or bee-friendliness, beginning with discussing the thermal and hygrological
issues to be considered when providing a shelter for bees. We presented top-bars as a more bee-
friendly comb support than frames, and the arrangements for covering the brood nest.
Here we conclude thermological and hygrological concerns by discussing the design of the hive body
and the floor, primarily in the context of a vertical top-bar hive. We also discuss what freedom we
give to the bees when they build their comb.

Thermal and hygrological issues – 3. The hive body

Considered thermally, the ideal shape for a divisible/expandable hive is cylindrical as it presents the
smallest external surface to the environment. A hollow tree or a log hive approximates well to this
shape. And, as Günther Hauk has pointed out, everything about the bee speaks roundness: hanging
and flying swarms; the nest; the queen cell; the economical packing of round cells resulting in the
hexagon shape; the catenary shape of combs; the winter cluster10. But roundness is not easily
practicable when the material chosen is wood, so the square is the next best choice in the hierarchy
of thermally efficient shapes.
The ideal composition of hive walls depends to a certain extent on what renewable materials are
available locally. Usually the solution will be wood or some other plant material. Considered just in
terms of the materials used, the skep, made of bound straw, has an ideal wall composition because of
its insulating and vapour permeability qualities. Indeed, it may even approximate the closest to the
conditions of a hollow tree: a domed, cylindrical cavity lined with vapour permeable and insulating
material: rotting wood in the case of the tree. There are problems with skeps though. They can
engender the barbaric and wasteful practice of sulphuring colonies at harvest time. Their limited
rigidity restricts colony size. And they generally have to be given a secondary shelter, ranging from
the simple, transportable and renewable hackle to the resource intensive bole. Matthias Thun
overcomes all these problems with his composite straw/wood hive that is robust,
extendable/divisible, will accept top-bars. Samples of these have lasted over 50 years11. His
impression is that bees feel better in straw hives. To achieve maximum robustness and weathering
the straw used should ideally be rye, high in silica, and cleamed with a clay-dung mixture. Otherwise
a secondary housing is needed.
In embodied energy terms, when we consider what it takes to get wood from standing tree to
seasoned plank ready to make into hive walls, it seems likely that rye straw has the advantage, even
in some of the places where wood is plentiful. However, until straw-hive apiculture is more
accessible, wood will be the material of choice for most. And we should also not forget, that in some
regions it will continue to be clay.
Even if the choice is wood, it matters a lot which method is used to turn it into a hive. In regions
where the appropriate technology is log hives, for example in Jumla, Nepal, wooden hives made
from planks are not viewed with favour, as they would not only have to be planked laboriously with
an adze, or by hiring two sawyers, but also be joined somehow (Fig. 9). Straw is not the appropriate
choice here either as it is highly valued as livestock bedding etc. and is prone to rodent damage. Thus
the log hive remains the viable option and indeed performs well thermologically at the high altitude
(circa 3,000 m) because of its thick walls.
We come now to a bee-appropriate design for wooden hive bodies. Water vapour passes through
wood if it is not obstructed by certain kinds of paint and wood gives enough insulation in all but the
coldest climates. The desirable thickness depends partly on the expected ambient temperatures. In
warm or hot climates about 20 mm would be a minimum if only for the sake of robustness.
Figure 9. Colony in side-access log hive, Jumla, Nepal. Photo: Naomi Saville

Figure 10. The hive-body box of J. L. Christ's tiered, top-bar magazine hive.
Each box, ca. 300 mm square internal plan, has an entrance which
can be closed, a shuttered window at the back and six top-bars.
The entrance of only the bottom box is kept open13.
 Concentrating now on the vertical, tiered top-bar hive, such as those of Christ (Fig. 10, above) or
Warré, a sustainable option for very cold climates might be a combination of a thicker wall, some
renewables-derived insulation protected from the wet and with appropriate internal dimensions. A
large bee swarm hanging freely is about 30 cm wide. In winter, a Langstroth has a cluster diameter of
20 - 35 cm3. If a hive is sized to just fit such a cluster – say 30 x 30 cm – there should be occupancy
and therefore warming of most of the width of the inside. Such a size cuts down on voids for
convection currents and helps prevent the condensation and mould commonly associated with the
walls and outer combs of wide-bodied hives. However, this measure alone does not suffice for very
cold climates. Here walls should be thicker, i.e. at least 25 mm, possibly as much as 38 mm in sub-
tundra regions. As the boxes are narrower, the extra weight is manageable. Thickening the hive wall
approaches the situation in the hollow tree.
A narrow inside is bee-friendly for another reason; it places the bulk of the winter fuel supply, if
not all of it, above the cluster which naturally works upwards into its stores and in extreme cold is
unable to move sideways. Colonies can starve with peripheral combs of stores only a few centimetres
away.
How deep should the box be? If the comb is to be removed and replaced, as required by law in
some states, it must not be inconveniently deep. But it also must not be so shallow that the brood nest
is excessively divided by top-bars. Warré experimented with some 350 hives of several different
designs before settling for a depth of 210 mm, which gives a comb depth of about 195 mm allowing
for bee space8. This happens to be only a few millimetres more than the brood comb depth in a
National hive. Jean-Marie Frèrès accidentally rediscovered the importance of the depth of 210 mm.
He made several hive bodies 300 mm deep. The bees rapidly built comb to an average depth of 193
mm then stopped. Allowing for bee space and a top-bar he realised the wisdom of Warré's choice of
210 mm14. The apparent smallness of a hive element of only 300 x 300 x 210 mm internally is made
up for by vertical expansion.
Whether or not to insulate a hive also depends partly on the severity of a typical winter. Too
much insulation loosens the cluster and thus could increase activity and consumption of stores. Or it
could nullify some of the benefit from insolation, which at that time of year falls more horizontally,
i.e. on the hive walls. So there is a balance to be struck. Insulating again raises the problem of choice
of sustainable insulating material (see Part 1). An alternative to pieces of polystyrene wrapped with
plastic sheeting is preferable, for example some sort of natural fibre. One solution is a double-walled
hive such as that of William Broughton Carr (WBC). But this greatly increases complexity, material
use, capital cost and inconvenience for the beekeeper. Furthermore, Warré was surprised to discover
in his experiments that colonies in his double-walled hives consumed 2 kg more honey from
November to February. For extremely cold climates, excess use of resources would also be the case
with single-walled hives wintered in bee houses, but not the case if hives are wintered in a cellar that
has been constructed for other purposes such as winter storage of foods. Another traditional solution
is surrounding the hive with straw bales protected from precipitation, in which case the obvious
question is why not make the hive of straw in the first place?

Thermal and hygrological issues – 4. The floor

The floor must allow adequate ventilation and access during peak foraging as well as the shedding of
any condensed moisture. If a solid floor is used, it helps if the inside surface slopes slightly
downwards towards the entrance.
Many have found that open mesh floors for controlling Varroa have also increased ventilation
and thus reduced winter mouldering of combs. Does the advantage of expelling some of the live
Varroa justify introducing ventilation conditions that are far outside the control of the bees,
especially in winter when they should be conserving energy, and thus stores? Is the higher
complexity, cost and ecological footprint, especially of the metal mesh with its high embodied
energy, sustainable?
Varroa does better in a cooler hive, so if mesh floors are used, the drawer needs to be closed15.
This also helps the bees with their thermal control. Given a small but adequate entrance, the bees can
create the airflows inside the hive that they require. The drawer, being inaccessible to the bees,
accumulates hive debris which is a breeding ground for wax moth and micro-organisms, especially
when condensation forms on it during nectar flows. Keeping it clean requires extra apiary visits and
labour, thereby reducing the sustainability of the overall operation.
On balance, a solid wooden floor is probably the most sustainable solution. The entrance aperture
needs to be sufficient to cope with ventilation requirements and maximum foraging traffic, whilst not
tying up too many bees in defending it or risking 'leakiness' to robbers. Warré, who kept bees in
France, experimented with various widths and found 120 x 15 mm the most satisfactory. However,
that might not be wide enough in regions with more abundant forage and larger colonies.
Experimentation and reference to local beekeeping experience would be necessary.

Natural comb
Most beekeepers will find it impractical to let the bees build entirely natural comb, for example by
using, instead of frames, a perforated board or even top-bars without starter strips. Aside from the
constraints of the cavity size and shape, the comb produced in this way has its architecture entirely
determined by the bees, including comb spacing, cell size distribution and undulations. Beekeepers
usually prefer to guide the bees' comb building to some extent. This can range from plain top-bars to
top bars with a beading of wax along their undersides as starter (see Figs. 11 & 12), to top-bars with
starter-strips of foundation, to frames with starter-strips of foundation, to frames filled with wired
foundation.

Figures 11 & 12. Natural comb in Warré hives viewed from below. Left: box
only two-thirds completed (one broken comb); Right: filled
box with some combs crossing to adjacent bars despite use
of wax starter-beads on top-bars.

A full sheet of foundation is the most bee-unfriendly option as it predetermines cell-size. This has
two aspects: drone comb and worker comb. Drone comb is usually regarded as unproductive because
hives with it have been found, albeit in experiments where it was given artificially, to store less
surplus honey16. Drones consume stores. So, following Langstroth17, drone comb building is
discouraged by using worker size foundation and, more recently for Varroa control purposes, capped
drone brood is removed or drone pupae forked out.
While we do not know the long term importance of a natural population of drones to long-term
health of colonies we should be willing to question these practices. We do know that a beekeeping
landscape well populated with drones helps maximise the frequency, and thus quality, of queen
mating. At worst, a poorly mated queen will fail prematurely as an egg layer and, at best, the workers
will supersede her because they can detect when a queen is poorly mated18. Multiply-mated queens
produce colonies that are better able to resist the development of American foulbrood after artificial
inoculation with Paenibacillus larvae spores19. Genetically more diverse colonies of honey bees, i.e.
with a higher number of patrilines, are better able to maintain stable brood temperatures20, and are
fitter and more productive21. Furthermore, it is believed that drones contribute a lot of the food
energy they consume to warming the nest. Whilst the importance of their role in thermal regulation is
a matter for research, if this is true then it potentially frees up more workers to go foraging.
Letting the bees determine worker cell size may also be important. Some argue that foundation
embossed to give cells larger than in natural comb has impacted bee health, particularly as regards
resisting infestation with Varroa destructor. The 'small cell' school holds that bees are better able to
tolerate Varroa if the cell size is reduced, initially by using special small-cell foundation22. Certainly
it has been shown that Varroa infestation is lower with smaller cells23, 24. However, regimenting bees
with foundation is hardly bee-friendly whatever its cell-size and a paper published after this series of
articles has called the efficacy of the small-cell approach into question54. A possible course of action
is to let bees find their own mix of cell-sizes by preparing top-bars or frames with no more than a
beading or lamina of plain wax. The extra wax production might use some of the incoming nectar
that would otherwise add to the honey surplus, but it is likely to maximise the health of the bee
population in colony and landscape. Furthermore, Warré noted in his experiments that bees drawing
natural comb took no longer to complete a comb than those given foundation. But, if the instinct to
build free comb has become weakened, wide starter strips of foundation may be needed, at least
initially.
Using foundation adds a lot to the complexity, cost and ecological footprint of beekeeping
through the milling, wiring and redistribution involved. It may also contain chemical residues and
viable foulbrood spores. Frames, too, are rarely made by the beekeeper himself but in a factory
somewhere. There is much more wood wasted in their manufacture than with hive bodies and they
greatly increase the footprint and cost of beekeeping.
Without any kind of wax starter, be it bead or lamina, the bees are entirely free to orientate their
comb according to their requirements in the cavity presented. If comb orientation in relation to the
earth's magnetic field is at all important, as seems to be the case25, freely built natural comb would
allow this. In which case it would also make sense to minimise the amount of iron in the hive.
In the next part in this series we shall discuss the bee's need for seclusion, their foraging and
colony density, feeding and a holistic approach to the problem of bee diseases and pests.
Part 3 of Towards Sustainable Beekeeping, The Beekeepers Quarterly, 93 September 2008

In the last issue, part two of this series concluded our consideration of the thermal and hygrological
issues of sustainable, bee-appropriate beekeeping and discussed how to provide for manageable
natural comb. In this part we look at how to minimise the stress on bees regarding their needs for
seclusion and appropriate nutrition. Both these factors affect colony health which is the essential
theme of this article.
To recap: we are aiming for beekeeping which provides a satisfactory economic benefit to the
beekeeper whilst fairly sharing the honey with the bees, which enhances our environment and which
is therefore beneficial to society. If we keep bees in a way that accords best with the nature of the
bee, i.e. that is bee-friendly, our own inputs will be minimised and thus the sustainability of our
operation maximised.

Seclusion or intrusion
Disturbance unsettles colonies. Probably the commonest form is the intentional disturbance by the
beekeeper himself. Every opening of the hive that lets the heat out forces the bees to repair the
damage – repairing broken comb and repropolising – and to restore the 'thermal structure' of the
colony by extra heat-production activity. In winter, the cluster can take as much as three days to
return to normal26. Depending on the extent of comb manipulation, even in summer the restoration of
the pre-opening condition could take as much as a day.
The repair work is done at the expense of other activities, and certainly increases energy
consumption, thereby reducing stores and/or a honey surplus. Opening a colony already coping with
the challenges of pests and disease may tip the balance towards its succumbing to them. Thus, to be
bee-friendly, such interventions should be minimised whilst maintaining good management, and
could involve just one hive opening in the real sense per year, namely at harvest. A vertical top-bar
hive, such as that of Warré8, makes possible this low frequency of intrusion because new elements
are added only below the brood nest, i.e. by nadiring. In nature the brood nest grows sideways and
downwards, and combs can extend to 1.5 metres tall. Adding boxes below allows the colony to
expand indefinitely and does not let the heat out of the brood nest because the latter can be lifted
intact together with its covering. A simple manual lift allows a single operator to do this without any
obvious disturbance to the bees27. Full boxes of honey are removed from the top, if possible only
once, namely at the end of the main nectar flow.
Even a horizontal top-bar hive can be worked to some extent without letting the heat out of the
brood nest as it is worked from the back, i.e. away from the entrance, and the top-bars, which abut
one another, retain the nest heat. Combs can then be harvested or moved further back and new space
given.
However, the extremely infrequent disturbance possible with the vertical top-bar hive is not
possible where it is believed, or there is a legal requirement that, to control disease, bees must be
induced to construct comb in frames that can be removed for inspection. Moveable frames are a
relatively recent phenomenon in the history of beekeeping. Could they be a contributor to the rise of
bee diseases and epidemics? Such a question could be answered by a well conducted, ideally multi-
regional, research programme.
Controlling swarming is another reason colonies are disturbed at frequent intervals. But bee-
appropriate management accommodates the bee's instincts. Arguably the most inconvenient of those
instincts is swarming and we use all sorts of methods to reduce or manage it. Certainly swarming and
our management of it can impact all three aspects of the sustainability of an operation: economic,
environmental and social. We double up on equipment at least for a while and natural swarms could
be a public nuisance. So just letting the bees fly is not good practice. Some management methods
that avoid frequent opening of the hive include various kinds of swarm traps fitted at the hive
entrance. These have the disadvantage of being relatively labour intensive. Bait hives with swarm
lures are another option (Figs. 13 & 14). To work well they should be a few metres off the ground in
a prominent location; be about 40 litres capacity; have had bees in before; have an entrance of about
12 square centimetres at the bottom; face southward; and be over 300 metres from the parent
colony28. Provided they are checked regularly, there is no need to use actual hives for this purpose.
One trigger of swarming can be minimised by giving plenty of space for the brood nest ahead of
demand. This is easily done by the bottom-expansion method described above, ensuring that at least
one element is present below the growing brood nest. No weekly comb inspection is needed. Indeed,
inspection might even provoke swarming. We shall return to the matter of swarming in a later article
in the context of breeding.
An empty element at the bottom of the colony also allows disturbance during feeding to be
minimised. A container of feed can be placed on the floor. No heat is let out of the brood nest.
Indeed, the colony appears rarely to notice the intrusion.

Figures 13 & 14. Bait hives: (left) made of recycled tongue-and-groove timber
prominently sited on the roof of a garden shed ; (right) two
Warré boxes in use as a bait hive with another bait hive of
recycled timber to their left.

Beekeepers accustomed to opening hives frequently will probably find the bee-friendly, non-
interventionist approach advocated here difficult to adjust to. Admittedly, after even a few years of
frame beekeeping experience, no opening can be a little frustrating at times. So what are the
alternatives for surveillance? Firstly, consider the history of the colony: the date of hiving and
weight; its expansion rate; whether it has swarmed etc. Secondly, there are the conditions in the
environment: has the weather been so bad soon after hiving that the bees could not forage and are
likely to need emergency feeding? Thirdly, observe the activity at the hive entrance. Is the colony
foraging at the same rate as others in the apiary? If not, depending on its history, it could be a failing
colony. Does the proportion of foragers returning with pollen look about right? If not, there may not
be a laying queen. Would you expect there to be one already or was it not so long ago that it
swarmed? A lot of information can be gained from entrance activity. Is it purposeful or are the bees
scurrying around as if looking for something? Storch's excellent book on the hive entrance is worth
reading29. Fourthly, we can heft the hive to check the status of stores. This can be done by just lifting
one side a fraction, or by using a simple weighing device. Fifthly, listen to the colony by putting an
ear to the box. Can you hear the normal bustle of a good sized colony or is it very faint. Are queens
tooting and quacking at one another? If you have cause for concern about queen status compare the
sound after a sharp tap. Is it a 'hiss' that's gone in a second or a prolonged grumbling? And finally,
novices, while gaining confidence, might start with a hive with a shuttered window in each box such
as the Frèrès-Guillaume version of the Warré hive. It is less sustainable though, because of the high
embodied energy of glass and the increased construction complexity.

Figure 15: Observing the hive entrance ('Der Bienenfreund' (1863) by Hans
Thoma, with the kind permission of Staatliche Kunsthalle,
Karlsruhe; the cover picture of H. Storch's book29)
 We should also consider unintentional disturbances. This will only be brief as the manuals on
beekeeping usually cover this particular nuisance quite well. Intrusion by people other than
beekeepers, namely vandalism and theft, of course reduce an operation's economic sustainability. If
we can, we keep our hives well screened and away from thoroughfares. Roger Delon, who kept over
600 modified Warré hives in the Vosges/Jura region, found that he needed to padlock and chain them
under communal steel roofs in fours with concrete blocks set in the ground as anchors!30 The extra
materials and cost were clearly necessary to make beekeeping viable in that locality, but it seems
hardly sustainable in the full sense.
The risk of major disturbance, even destruction, of colonies by animals varies a lot according to
locality and therefore local knowledge amongst beekeepers would be the first point of reference.
Beekeepers have always sought to protect their hives from such disturbance, if only for the sake of
economic sustainability. Protection from farm livestock is generally easy. But the list of intruders
that present more of a challenge is almost endless: insects (wasps, small hive beetle), rodents (mice),
birds (woodpeckers), mammals (bears). Solutions include insect lures, fencing off apiaries, wire
netting the hive, putting it on a platform accessible only by ladder, hanging it in trees or keeping it in
a building. The more elaborate the defences, the less sustainable the operation and there may come a
point where the extra materials used make its continuation at a given site hard to justify on
environmental, let alone economic, grounds. Interestingly, the logo of Bees for Development is a
top-bar hive in a tree (beesfordevelopment.org). What could be simpler?
Finally, extraneous vibration is a source of disturbance worth taking into consideration. Passing
trucks or trains shake the ground. Even heavy rain or hail on flat, metal-clad roofs has been identified
as a cause of colony disturbance. Such roofs are more likely to transmit this vibration to the colony
than sloping roofs made only of wood. If it happens in winter, it could loosen the cluster and risk
increasing consumption of stores.

Forage and colony density in the landscape

Beekeepers should not need to be told to put their hives where there is enough nectar (and/or
honeydew) and pollen within flight range throughout the flying season. Visscher and Seeley
observed a median foraging range of 1.7 km and 95% was within 6 km31. Foraging of up to 14 km
has been reported32, but the benefit/cost ratio decreases as the distance increases. From time to time
surveying what is available and what the bees are visiting within a mile or two radius seems prudent
as it could inform stocking density.
Food availability over a whole season largely depends on floral diversity and the consequent
wide range of flowering times. But in our cultural landscapes floral diversity and quantity are
severely declining, helped by the use of herbicides and the over-manicuring of marginal land and
hedgerows. We can expect this to impact bees as much as it does other species that depend on
flowering plants. In my own locality, dominated by grazing, my bees could have abundant clover.
Certainly the fields are sown with clover mixes, but local farmers, in their struggle to combat dock,
manage to eradicate their clover at the same time.
Obviously the bees need a sufficient quantity of nectar and pollen, in the latter case it may be as
much as 25 kg. per season33. Less obvious for maximal bee health is the requirement for diversity of
pollen, and possibly also of nectar. Pollens vary greatly in quality, especially as regards the amino
acid composition of their major nutrient, protein. Pollen varies in its capacity to supply natural
antagonists of bacteria/fungi and antibiotic substances34, for example, certain fatty acids35. Lack of
pollen diversity decreases the colony's antimicrobial defense faculties and it becomes more
susceptible to disease. A balance of pollens allows one pollen to make up shortcomings of another,
for example too low a protein or fat content or too high a mineral content36. Indeed, honeybees are
generalists in their pollen gathering, evening out and diversifying it37.
It is usually not practicable for beekeepers to compensate significantly for poor floral diversity
and/or abundance by planting, as they usually lack control of sufficient land to make an appreciable
difference. However we can have a certain amount of influence, such as by planting suitable
herbaceous plants, shrubs and trees; lobbying for agriculture that has regard to biodiversity and only
purchasing products from such an agriculture. We could encourage neighbouring landowners to plant
appropriately, for example when we give/sell them a sample of the honey we produce. A neighbour
of one of my apiaries delights in the profusion of honey bees that visit his ornamental heathers and
poached egg plants. The time is ripe to raise awareness of bee plants while the plight of the honey
bee is so frequently in the media.
How many hives should a single apiary have? Too many in relation to floral resources will risk
stressing the bees and thus their health. Competition from feral colonies will exacerbate this.
Maximum densities of ferals in an area with no managed colonies have been found to range from 7
to as high as 12 colonies per km2, although estimated pollen and nectar resources would have
supported far higher numbers38. But those low numbers may result from another factor determining
feral density, namely minimising spread of disease or infestation due to drifting. Seeley reports as
low as one colony per km in forest dwelling ferals that have co-adapted with Varroa39. Probably only
few beekeepers would accept such a low stocking density and may thus look for a compromise. But
for most, judging exactly how many hives a site should hold will usually be a somewhat subjective
procedure involving weighing up forage quantity and quality as well as competition from known
colonies nearby. The experience of previous beekeepers at a particular site will no doubt help decide.
The aim is to avoid over intensification because, as in any branch of husbandry, disease rates are
directly correlated to stocking density.
Let us encourage extensive, i.e. low-intensity, beekeeping carried out by a larger population of
beekeepers and made possible by much simpler equipment that requires far less intervention. 'Small
is beautiful'. Top-bar hives, especially that of Warré, make an increase in small-scale beekeeping a
real possibility.

Figure 16. Garden apiary of three Warré hives

Feeding
Should a sustainable beekeeper feed his bees? Ideally, no. Bees are supposed to feed us, not we
them. So routine feeding is not the ideal option. However, there are bound to be emergencies when a
colony, through no fault of its own, i.e. through no inherent genetic weakness or failing queen, falls
on hard times. It may be because of a long patch of bad weather or through some manipulation that
the beekeeper has done, such as artificial swarming to make increase. These are the times when we
can justifiably feed.
The need routinely to feed can be eliminated by always leaving sufficient honey for the bees.
This seeming erosion of the harvest, and therefore of our profit, can be minimised by using a hive in
which colonies winter very economically. Warré consistently found that his hive needed 12 kg stores
for winter whereas his Dadants needed 18 kg. This has since been confirmed by others. The better
thermal performance of the Warré hive largely accounts for the difference.
What to feed is a source of endless controversy amongst beekeepers. The sustainable option is
not to feed sugar or corn syrup. They are usually products of intensive monocultural agriculture and
are processed in a chemical refinery before being transported long distances. The energy
consumption, environmental degradation and pollution involved do not justify their use. Routine
sugar feeding entails procurement, additional equipment, preparation, distribution and cleaning – all
of which add complexity, cost and labour to the operation. If sugar must be used, then the gold
standard would be organically certified, refined, i.e. crystallised, sugar. The choice of the actual plant
source for sugar, whether cane or beet etc, depends on its relative environmental, social and
economic impact. Food miles, supporting sustainable livelihoods and fair trade should all come into
the equation.
If sugar is not fed, then it leaves only honey as the possible primary energy source. Honey is the
natural choice. A sustainable beekeeping operation retains sufficient comb or extracted honey to
satisfy emergency feeding. Life cycle analysis has shown that, compared with sugar, honey is the
sustainable and ethical sweetener40. A compromise would be to feed a sugar and honey mixture
which in Demeter beekeeping guidelines is enhanced by the addition of chamomile tea and a trace of
salt.
But two objections to feeding honey to bees immediately come to mind. One is that the honey
used, even honey from the same apiary, may contain sufficient foulbrood spores to spread infection.
This objection is based on the 'germ theory of disease', i.e. that micro-organisms cause disease. In
contrast there is the view that if, through our husbandry, we create the conditions for disease, for
example by over intensification, frequent hive opening and other stresses, then the micro-organisms,
which are generally ubiquitous in small amounts, will find conditions in which to proliferate. The
micro-organisms, i.e. the symptoms of the disease, will start to manifest, whereas beforehand, only
ultra-sensitive detection methods yet to be invented, would detect them. Sustainable beekeepers have
the opportunity to create bee-friendly conditions in which bees can cope with challenges from micro-
organisms by using their own defences. Obviously, one condition would be not to feed honey from a
colony known to have had foulbrood. Its spore burden may be way beyond the capacity of the
recipient colony's defences, especially as it is already most likely under stress through having to be
fed artificially. Foulbrood has been seen as nature's way of weeding out weak stocks. Brood that has
been chilled in spring provides an opportunity for foulbrood to get a hold.
The other objection is that, compared with honey, sugar has been found to increase colony
survival over long northern winters, especially where honey stores have a relatively high pH, ash,
conductivity and/or protein content, for example from honeydew or heather. But it really depends on
how well the bee is adapted to its local forage. For example, a less thrifty bee imported from the
south will quite likely require its winter food to be imported from the south too in the form of sugar.
Similar arguments apply to the choice between feeding pollen or pollen substitutes. If pollen
diversity and quantity are low, the question must be asked as to whether the site is at all suitable for
sustainable beekeeping.
If a beekeeping operation can be managed so as to rely on nectar and pollen then it will be
supported by marginal land, gardens, trees and crops that need pollination. No additional land needs
allocating to produce food for bees.
Diseases and pests
We have so far discussed shelter (parts 1 & 2), natural comb (part 2), seclusion, nutrition and colony
density as factors that we can optimise to create healthy living conditions for bees. Another highly
important factor is comb renewal. Given the choice, queens prefer to lay on new comb and
beekeepers have long recognised that good management calls for systematic renewal of comb. But in
framed beekeeping, systematic comb renewal is not easy. Either one goes to the extreme of a Bailey
comb change or one seeks to replace two or three combs in the brood nest each year. Both involve
intervention by the beekeeper and it is all too common to let combs in decent shape stay there for
years. But in Warré's vertical top-bar hive, comb renewal is inbuilt into the way the hive is expanded
in spring. Hive elements are added under the two already containing the colony. In the following
months, as new comb is added below that of the previous year, the brood nest moves gradually
downwards onto the new comb.
Despite our best efforts to make conditions for our bees as ideal as possible, there is an additional
factor that commonly demands our intervention if our bees are to thrive. This is the destructive
pressure from Varroa. As already discussed, managing Varroa by maintaining extremely low colony
densities will not appeal to many. Instead, we try to make conditions in the hive unfavourable to
Varroa. One way is by using chemicals. These increase in acceptability to the organically inclined in
the sequence: synthetic pyrethroids, thymol, organic acids and powdered sugar.
There are two primary reasons against putting synthetics into hives. The first is the burden on bee
health through the direct effects of the chemical or through their having to detoxify or otherwise deal
with it in their metabolic processes. The other is the impact on human health through ingesting
chemicals via the honey produced, for example 3-phenoxybenzaldehyde, a degradation product of
tau-fluvalinate41. Other reasons include the associated increase in the complexity of the operation and
labour involved; the increase in its ecological footprint through these chemicals having to be
manufactured, a process that usually produces a far greater weight of waste than the weight of
product produced; and the increase in cost of production of honey which is especially high if
patented acaricide delivery systems are used.
Bought foundation usually introduces a complex spectrum of wax soluble chemicals into hives.
All the foundation manufacturers whom I contacted on this matter when writing this article said they
do not monitor wax residues. However, just how serious is the contamination of foundation by
pesticides introduced by beekeepers only became apparent after this article was published in The
Beekeepers Quarterly55. Toxicology recognises the potential health burden from small traces of
substances migrating from manufactured products including from plastics and from finishes. We
should keep them away from our hives. To avoid chemical introduction via foundation, it should be
home made or from a clean source, for example Demeter (organic) certified. Such wax fetches a
higher price as it is preferred by cosmetics manufactures for its low residues content42.
Of chemicals put in hives, those used to control Varroa take up the greatest portion by weight. To
what extent can we do without them? One approach, namely using foundation with a reduced cell-
size, was mentioned in part 2 but in bee-friendly beekeeping we are not using foundation. Dusting
the bees with powdered sugar keeps mites at tolerable levels but needs doing regularly which means
opening the brood nest, something to be avoided if possible. Some colonies on frames without small-
cell foundation survive with no chemical treatment but such reports are not yet the rule19. Feral
populations are recovering or have recovered in regions where Varroa has been introduced44. This
has been attributed to a reduction in Varroa virulence as the bee and mite co-evolve39. Another factor
suggested for feral recoveries is interruption of the brood cycles by natural swarming. This gives a
clue to a sustainable Varroa management strategy. French commercial Warré beekeepers have found
that artificial swarming gives satisfactory control. At peak foraging time in warm settled weather, all
the bees are swarmed into a new hive. The brood is left on the site of the old hive and the new one is
taken to another apiary out of flying range. Returning field bees repopulate the brood combs and
raise a new queen. Egg laying and therefore Varroa reproduction is interrupted in both halves45.
Certainly in the long term, to step off the treadmill of Varroa treatments, mite and bee will need
to co-adapt and this means tolerating a mite population that is sufficient for mite and bee fully to
interact with each other. Beekeepers in several countries are well down the road to co-adaptation, but
their colony losses would be unacceptable to some. Even so, I believe it is the only sustainable
solution to the Varroa problem.
Whether breeding Varroa tolerant strains is viable vis-à-vis the degree of monitoring and breed-
purity maintenance involved remains to be seen46.
If chemicals have to be used just to keep colonies alive while co-adaptation is taking place then it
needs to be part of integrated pest management, i.e. monitoring Varroa burdens and treating only
when absolutely necessary and at the most appropriate time. The organic acids are preferable for
their documented low residues. Essential oils, such as thymol, are less acceptable because of their
absorption into wax. But any intervention just further postpones the achievement of co-adaptation.
European beekeeping has not yet had to deal with the challenge of small hive beetle (SHB). It
appears that strong colonies with no crannies to hide in will cope with the SHB challenge. Top-bar
hives with their natural comb may prove well suited to this.

Figure 17. New natural comb in a Warré hive box

And if disease manifests we cull the hopeless cases, artificial swarm into a clean hive those cases that
merit it and, if it is a minor ailment, let the colony remedy the matter itself. In the extreme case of
culling and burning, the economic loss with a top-bar hive is a lot lower than with one filled with
frames and foundation. Above all, we do not keep diseased colonies that we try to prop up with
antibiotics.
Part 4 of Towards Sustainable Beekeeping, The Beekeepers Quarterly, 94 December 2008

In the first three parts of this series we have looked at sustainable approaches to how we give shelter,
seclusion and nutrition to our bees and how we manage comb construction, colony density, pests and
diseases. We have kept the bee-friendliness of our interventions in mind as the key to successful
beekeeping whilst at the same time having regard to the environmental impact and socioeconomic
benefit of our operation. Overriding principles throughout have been minimising consumption by
keeping the operation as simple as possible and enabling the bees to take care of their own nutrition
and health. We have identified the top-bar hive as the simplest and identified two basic types: the
horizontal/long format often referred to as the Kenyan top-bar hive, and the vertical/tiered format
designed by Abbé Émile Warré and named by him 'The People's Hive'.

The Delon frame

Although beekeeping with frames can never be as sustainable in the real sense compared with only
top-bars, many of the principles of bee-appropriateness and sustainability that we have discussed
could nevertheless be applied using frames. For those who have committed themselves to frames re-
equipping would increase consumption and thus undermine the advantages to be gained. A phased
transition would be more appropriate, replacing hives as they become unserviceable with top-bar
hives. Older beekeepers long experienced in the use of frames, which we have to admit are there for
the convenience of the beekeeper, and who may feel that it is too late to re-equip, should
nevertheless find some hints in these articles as to how to make their operation more sustainable.
There are also beekeepers in countries where the law requires combs to be easily movable.
Although top-bar combs can be removed and replaced, more care is needed and the inspectors may
not take too kindly to having to go through an apiary full of top-bar hives. In which case, a
compromise is available, especially with the Warré hive. Roger Delon developed a modified top-bar
on which was fixed a 'U' shape of 3 mm stainless-steel wire that surrounds the remaining three edges
of the comb30. The wire is 'invisible' to the bees to the extent that it eventually becomes embedded in
the comb and the natural retention of nest heat is safeguarded. The only objections to this on the
grounds of sustainability is that stainless-steel has a high ecological footprint and the construction of
Delon frames increases the complexity and cost of the operation (Fig. 18). The all wooden half-
frame of Gilles Denis is another option which came to my attention after writing this article56.

Figure 18. Delon frame

Management and harvest

Allowing the bees to build natural comb is part of top-bar hive beekeeping, but, especially with the
horizontal format, the beekeeper may nevertheless destroy the brood nest structure, either
inadvertently or to suit his own whims. Natural brood nest development in a top-bar hive is described
and beautifully illustrated by Dennis Murrell who experienced the importance of the integrity of the
brood nest for bee health47. Dave Cushman has also recognised the importance of nest structure for
bee health and for framed beekeeping describes the simple precaution of marking all the tops of the
frames with a line drawn diagonally from corner to corner of the brood box to help avoid any
misplacement48.
The most bee-friendly approach is to minimise intrusion into colonies, but if we wish we can
learn a lot about what is going on in colonies by hive entrance observations. An excellent guide to
this was published by Storch29. A lot more information can be gained if an open mesh floor is being
used to control Varroa, in which case the drawer which is 'read' from time to time should be left in all
year, at least in cool climates, cleaned regularly and positioned no less than 50 mm below the mesh.
Benefits need to be weighed though. Such a floor increases the complexity, cost, labour and
ecological footprint of the operation.
Top-bar hives of both kinds allow all the normal beekeeping operations including artificial
swarming, splits and uniting. A good policy is to get rid of weak colonies by choosing which queen
to kill or letting them fight it out. One strong colony produces more honey than two weak ones.
Top-bar hives of both kinds have no need for a queen excluder, thus save on cost, materials and
labour. In the Warré hive, the queen moves down with the brood nest as the season progresses and
the upper boxes are left full of honey. Some have noticed that in hives in which in principle the
queen has access to the whole hive the honey does not granulate so quickly.
No bee escapes, blowers, fume boards, fumes, extra supers, uncapping knives, extractors or
bottling tanks are needed when harvesting honey from a top-bar hive. With the horizontal format,
bees are simply brushed off the combs and the comb cut into a bucket with a lid. With the Warré
hive the bees in the topmost box are smoked into the one below with natural smoke. If the box
contains little or no brood it is taken for harvest after making it bee tight for transport (Fig. 19). The
next box is treated the same way and so on until the brood nest is reached. Honey is drained or
squeezed from crushed comb. This avoids the exposure of fine droplets of honey to air as occurs in
extractors and helps conserve the subtler aspects of flavour and bouquet.

Figure 19. Honey harvest from a Warré hive (Photo: Steve Ham, Spain)
Breeding and making increase
As well as the economic value aspect of sustainability, namely harvesting honey and other hive
products, we do not forget the impact of beekeeping on the environment and its more general benefit
to society. It is interesting to note a recent intensification of interest in the latter aspect, not only in
the media but also from the recent UK government survey of beekeepers, which among other things
was interested in finding out to what extent they would no longer replace colonies that are lost.
That there have been larger losses than usual in many countries in recent years is beyond dispute.
For example the average colony survival in USA over the 2007/8 winter was estimated at 64%,
slightly higher in the UK. All sorts of reasons have been put forward including aspects of
management, for example the practice of trucking thousands of colonies from state to state, which
cannot possibly be regarded as either bee-friendly or environmentally sustainable. But a central
aspect of management has rarely come under scrutiny, namely breeding. In part two we mentioned
the importance for bee health of having plenty of genetically diverse drones and thus the need to
dispense with drone-suppression measures. Here we will look at how queens are raised.

Artificial queen breeding

In a lecture series on bees in 1923 Rudolf Steiner warned about the problems that artificial queen
breeding would introduce in 50-80 years49. A beekeeper who was contributing to the lecture series
queried this and was told that the effects of modern breeding would not show up at first. Steiner was
referring to something more subtle, namely the forces in the hive that had hitherto been organic were
becoming 'mechanised' and he said that the intimate relationship between a colony and its queen that
has been raised naturally cannot be achieved with a bought queen. Breeders and their customers used
to profitable honey crops from their queens will no doubt think this statement absurd. But might
there be something in it? The aforementioned 64% winter survival rate is propped up by medicating
colonies and feeding them imported sugar. Take away those props and what would it be? And
Steiner was not alone in his time in warning that artificial queen breeding produced inferior colonies:
Emile Warré, a beekeeper with direct experience of artificial breeding, said that the colonies from
such queens were more prone to disease8.
Whilst the queen breeding aspect should certainly not be overplayed, it seems worth keeping it in
mind as a factor in bee health, especially since considerable public money is being diverted into
trying to discover why colonies are dying out. So let us look at it in some detail and at the
'mechanisation' of breeding. It increases in the series progressing from queens raised in the natural
process of swarming, to splits made where no swarming impulse has started, to modern queen
breeding including grafting larvae etc, to artificial insemination, and ultimately to recombinant DNA
technology, which has been suggested as a way of creating queens capable of producing colonies
with disease resistant traits.
There is a distinct difference between a normal queen whose larva is raised from hatching in
copious amounts of royal jelly in a specially prepared round, domed cup hanging vertically, and an
emergency queen whose larva is initially raised in an almost horizontal hexagonal cell from an egg
or larva that had been destined to be a worker. Beekeepers have long known that colonies often
supersede such emergency queens with normal ones. The two types of queen may look the same but
the bees can tell the difference. All commercial queens are emergency queens, only they are usually
raised in round cells from the outset after grafting the larva. To introduce such a queen to a colony,
the colony needs to be brought to the point of 'desperation' to receive a queen. And once introduced it
is liable to be replaced by a queen that the colony has produced itself, one in which the 'intimate
relationship' that Steiner mentioned has a chance properly to unfold. For a further discussion of
modern queen breeding see Günther Hauk's Towards Saving the Honey Bee10.
The physical basis for the intimate relationship between queen and colony may by highly
complex, but one obvious factor is queen substance. It is difficult to tell whether research into queen
substance is still in its early days, but it seems likely. Indeed, queen substance, in particular queen
mandibular or retinue pheromone, has been found to comprise nine chemicals and there is evidence
that it contains others as yet unidentified50. And with 170 odour receptors having been detected in
honey bees, it seems not improbable that the chemistry of the intimate relationship between queen
and colony will turn out to be even more intricate. We can justifiably ask the question: is the
receptor-pheromone chemistry and its responses something we can instantly 'switch on' by
introducing a queen to a colony or does it take time for the various classes of worker to adjust their
behaviours to the spectrum of pheromones available? If the latter, then the longer-term exposure of
the colony to the maturing queen may be essential for full development of the intimacy of the
relationship.
A few other aspects of artificial queen breeding deserve mention in this context. Purchased
queens are rarely from the same locality as the one in which they are used and are thus not locally
adapted strains. In husbandry there was a great wisdom in the development of landraces, i.e. breeds
adapted to the locality in which they were raised. And recognition of the value of local adaptation
partly motivates efforts to restore the European black bee, Apis mellifera mellifera, in its original
habitats. The race evolved to cope with the climate and forage of the region without needing the prop
of imported sugar, and was/is no doubt rich in locally adapted sub-types. Using a locally adapted bee
is the sustainable option, especially as it does not require a whole industrial breeding infrastructure
and the carbon-inefficient supply system that goes with it. But if that is the case, then the whole task
of breeding falls on the beekeeper, or at least on very local co-operatives of beekeepers. A
consequence of this is that importing even the black bee, that according to some ideal or model has
been reassembled from the available genetics, is unsustainable. Indeed it very often may not turn out
to be sustainable in practice except in regions whose geography would allow the establishment of
drones that allow maintenance of racial purity.

Figure 20. Taking breeding too far?

In situ breeding with the whole colony
To maximise the intimacy of new queen and colony by raising queens from normal queen cells, it
follows that we must breed queens while working with the swarm impulse. Once occupied queen
cells are present, a colony is split whilst ensuring that the part without the queen has one or more
queen cells. Conventional practice requires removing all but one or two cells from the split.
However, this risks selecting a less vigorous queen. Bees have managed to select their own queens
without our help for millennia, so should we not let the maturing queen and the bees decide? The
answer depends on whether the beekeeper wants bee colonies to be under his total control for his
own profit and convenience or whether he sees the bee as also having its own intrinsic value (see
below) as part of the natural landscape. In the latter case it may be better not to interfere too much in
letting the bee adjust its genetics to what is coming towards it in terms of changes in available
forage, climate, pests and diseases. Too much artificial selection risks reducing the genetic variability
and thus the future options for tackling new challenges.
I digress briefly here to clarify the term 'intrinsic value' by contrasting it with 'instrumental value'.
Bioethicists identify several stances of man in relation to nature. One extreme sees man as having
dominion over nature, valuing the natural world as an instrument for his purposes. The other extreme
sees the natural word as having its own independent intrinsic value and man interacts with it in a
relationship that is not one of domination but of participation. A vivid example of the
instrumentalisation of a creature is the cow bred to such an extreme for milk production that she
needs a 'bra' to support her udder (Figure 20, above). An example from breeding domestic fowl
would be the elimination of broodiness, and from bees, of swarminess.
In beekeeping in a more bee friendly way we try to find a balance between the two approaches.
Thus, if we avoid intensively targeted selection for the various queen traits that have appealed to
beekeepers from time to time, such as supersedure tendency, docility or hygienic behaviour etc. it
does not mean abandoning selection altogether. Selection can still continue while cultivating the
intimate relationship between queen and colony. If a colony is not developing normally in
comparison to others, despite good foraging conditions, then it can be culled or, if not diseased,
united with another. And if a colony available for breeding shows undesirable behaviours outside the
normal range compared with the beekeeper's other colonies, for example it is excessively defensive,
then it can simply be ruled out as a source of a new queen.
Working with the swarming impulse whilst retaining a high degree of control over the outcome is
of course more convenient with frame hives because of the relative ease of access for inspection and
subsequent manipulation. However, in this series of articles we have been considering top-bar hives
as being more bee friendly than frame hives. Colonies in top-bar hives can be split just as they can in
frame hives. Even so, it should be obvious that neither form of top-bar hive easily lends itself to
intensification of queen breeding, i.e. raising many queens from a single colony. In the horizontal
(long) top-bar hive a split for raising a new queen is relatively easy as the hive can be simply divided
and rotated to put the queenless half with the foragers and queen cells in one half whilst leaving the
other half with the old queen51. In a vertical top-bar hive such as a Warré hive, splits involve working
with whole boxes as the combs are not easily moved about. Two examples of such splits are
illustrated in the videos on the website of the commercial Warré beekeeper, Gilles Denis52. Denis
also raises queens using Warré hives equipped with semi-frames53. Incidentally, both kinds of top-
bar hive use no queen excluder. The queen is in principle free to wander over all the comb. Could
this freedom facilitate the intimate relationship between colony and queen?

Swarming
The splits described above result in artificial swarms and, even though they use queen cells that are
part of the natural swarming process, they nevertheless involve a degree of interference in the normal
process of multiplication. Like a colony, a natural swarm also has a more intimate relationship to its
queen than is likely to be produced in an artificial swarm. At the very least, this relationship
comprises the quantity and mix of bees, i.e. the ages of the bees and thus their stages of development
and corresponding functions in the colony. And I have been struck by the speed with which a natural
swarm fills an empty Warré hive box with comb and builds up a vigorous colony. I prefer to start
new top-bar colonies with natural swarms. But this is clearly not an option for everyone. It requires
much more vigilance at the apiary and in non-rural areas risks annoying neighbours.
It is not always practicable or safe to take a swarm, for instance if it is high in a tree. So in order
to minimise losses of swarms, some inexpensive bait hives can be distributed in the vicinity of the
apiary and inspected frequently. Ideally the hives should be in an elevated prominent position at
about 3 m from the ground, 300 m or more from the apiary, have a volume of about 40 litres and an
entrance size of about 12 square centimetres54. It should also smell of bees. This can be achieved by
coating the inside with beeswax and the entrance area with propolis. Bait hives have been made from
all sorts of containers. An ingenious solution involving a piece of drainage pipe from which the
swarm can be simply lifted and transferred to a Warré hive is shown in Figure 21.

Figure 21. Drainpipe bait hive (Photo: Steve Ham, Spain)

Swarms will nevertheless be lost. But in what sense is this a loss? It certainly reduces the
profitability of beekeeping, but it also has the potential to restock the landscape with feral colonies,
most of which, at least in the UK, were wiped out by Varroa. Thus an apparent loss is partly
mitigated by the contribution to the environment.

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Acknowledgements

I thank Dr. Johannes Wirz (Goetheanum, Switzerland) for introducing me to Warré beekeeping,
Bernhard Heuvel (Germany) for his helpful advice on sustainable beekeeping and Phil Chandler
(Devon) and Dr William Hughes (Wales) for kindly offering web space to support this work. I thank
John Moerschbacher and Berhard Heuvel for reading and commenting on the ethical introduction. I
thank John Phipps, editor of 'The Beekeepers Quarterly' for suggesting this series of articles, for his
helpful comments towards it and for enabling the Warré approach to be made known in the
anglophone regions. I also thank Dr. Naomi Saville for her helpful advice on appropriate hives
design in Jumla, Nepal. Finally, this document would be less comprehensible and have many more
typos without the careful copy-editing by my wife, Pat.

First edition, Llanystumdwy, 22 March 2009

© David Heaf