Spring will come eventually and people will start seeing classes on beekeeping or actual bees for sale. One thing to remember is that your bees will come with mites(the bug that kill the bees) and other diseases. The instructor will give you all the info on how to treat the bees with chemicals which in the long run will weaken and eventually kill the bee. They will tell you how to feed them sugar water after you take all the honey which can cause dysentery in the bee and weaken the hive. The mite came from China by boat around 1986 or so to the states and made its way to Canada. The first thing they did was come up with a chemical to kill the mite who then became immune to the chemical so they had to keep making it stronger and stronger to the end produced a super mite. Here in NB if you had mites they would make you destroy the hive and burn all the equipment like they do with foul brood which the bee can also deal with on its own. So you will start beekeeping by learning how to not help the bee problem but by promoting it. Make your instructor show you other ways of doing it naturally. In Africa the mite came about 4 0r 5 years ago and the beekeepers from all over the continent got together and decided best to leave the mite alone and in two years there were no mites and still none today. Now over 60% of beekeepers in the States do not give their bees any form of chemicals at all. Most of the problem for the bees have been farmers and beekeepers. Kill with chemicals and it does not work. You are helping to promote the problem and I can't say it enough, help the bee. It would be better if you bought the bees and let them go into the wild as they would be much safer. Bees have been around for thousands and thousands of years with no help from man. As soon as the bee came to America and put in Langstroth hives it has been a downhill battle for the bee. The pesticides and the chemicals given to the bees is what has caused the colony collapse. They have come up with BS stories but its the farmer and the beekeeper. I will get a lot of crap about this but after having bees and learning about bees for the past 40 years have come to the conclusion man is not worthy to have bees. Bees should be kept as a favour to Mother Nature not to destroy Mother Nature by trying to change the shape and size of the bee. The African killer bee came out of South America after it escaped from a lab trying to make a better bee. They have tried changing the size of the bee by changing the size of the comb to no avail except to screw up the bee. If you do get some bees and if you are so interested in keeping bees for health and not money use foundationless frames and give the bees a chance.
Raise bees for love and not greed as the beekeeper has become in this day and age. Get two hives to give yourself a chance to learn as you may lose one in a winter or to a swarm. Read and research Michael Bush from Kansas and Micheal Magnini from Nova Scotia. Look to giving helpful herbal tea to the bees when you get them, research, research research. Its the bee that counts here not the human. Remember you will not be able to get any disease or mite free bees from any beekeeper in New Brunswick. Actually one of the only places you can get disease and mite free bees guaranteed is in the states or if you can find an organic beekeeper around. Just so you know you can not bring bees from the states. Find out how they take care of them, question and question more. This is information that you won't get in classes or from people you buy bees from. I do have bees and do not treat them and they produce lots of honey. The Province of New Brunswick does not actually support natural or organic beekeeping. No matter what they tell you you can find a ton of useful info on youtube and the web. Again look up Michael Bush on youtube and listen to his speeches and you will see and hear the real evidence. Let them disprove all the new info instead of making you or me prove it. One last note is that blueberry growers have been one of the real problems here. They take their bees all over the maritimes and into Maine with mite and disease infested bees which makes it harder to combat. One place with no mites is Newfoundland but there are only a few beekeepers and no blueberries. Blueberries make more money than bees so you know who wins this battle. The chemicals they spray on the berries will kill the bees over time but its money as always. Beekeeping has not changed but the beekeeper has and is destroying the bees. Remember if you have enough bees like 20 or more hives you will be making hives over and over but if you get one or two you have to be careful. Look it up if you don't believe me the info is out there.
The zika virus that just seemed to come out of nowhere was another experiment gone wrong. They were trying to make a spray for mosquitos and ended up with the deadly zika virus.
Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture by ROss Conrad will give you lots of info. Do not go into this blindly as the bee will be the one who pays for your mistakes.
No comments:
Post a Comment