The Honey Bee Situation
In this episode of the Soulful and Wild Show, Karen speaks about beekeeping; the presence of varroa mite in the local area, the potential impact of hive collapse, and her thoughts on how she will move forward in regards to treatment for her home apiary, and ways that you can help our honey bee population.
If you’d like to check out info from the natural beekeeping experts who spoke in Canberra recently, you can click through to their respective websites and there is a link for Les Crowders book lower down on this page;
https://www.happierbees.com
https://www.naturalbeekeepingsummit.org/speakers/les-crowder-gz4xj
https://www.bee-mindful.com
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Episode Transcript
Hello, thank you very much for joining me. I just wanted to chat with you today about the bee situation. Now, many of you would know that I have a couple of beehives in my garden. It's part of my permaculture system and keeps me happy and connected to nature, and of course, there's also all that that whole beautiful thing about the mythos around the feminine aspect of the bees, you know their supremacy, and just the magic too of seeing the colony operate as a whole being. It is actually a beautiful hobby. I decided at one point, when I was overworking, that I needed to get a hobby rather than just work all the time, and for some reason this dropped into my head - keep honey bees, and i just launched into it. Amazing really. Perhaps Ive been a beekeeper in a past life?
That was about six years ago now, so I'm still a learner beekeeper. I actually have three different kinds of hives. I've got a Kenyan Top Bar hive, which is definitely my favourite, (so much easier to work with as there is no heavy lifting), I've got a Flow Hive and also a more traditional, (shall we say traditional in terms of mainstream) Langstroth Hive, which is a standard box. You'll see them around about the countryside, often painted bright colours with white lids. This style of hive is used by commercial beekeepers and many hobby beekeepers have got into it just because you know, we follow what is, I guess, the norm, and they're also easy to move around you know, in the sense of stacking, if you want to transport them and so on.
So what is going on in the world of the honeybee right now is very, very interesting here in Australia.
I'm on the border of Victoria and New South Wales in Albury, and live in a little residential place in town. Now I'm sure you will have heard of the Varroa mite, it is a pest that damages bee colonies and Australia is the last country to have gotten it. New Zealand was second last and we got it a couple of years ago.
Now the Department of Primary Industries (the DPI), tried to eradicate it so they had a bit of a task force happening for a while. They had beekeepers testing for Varroa in the infected areas and they located it along the coast in New South Wales where it came in via the port apparently. At that time alot of beehives were actually burnt to the ground in an effort to kill the mites. Now, what actually happened, and this is, of course, not all absolutely 100% proven - this is my understanding of what occurred, so let me put that little disclaimer in. My understanding is, and I have seen, you know emails and so on about much of this, that although it was being treated very severely around New South Wales near the port, up Newcastle Way, permission was given for commercial beekeepers to move their hives on trucks to the big orchards like the almond orchards to pollinate them for crops. So ultimately what's happened is that varroa mite has spread probably far more quickly than it would have if those big truckloads of bee boxes had not been sent around. That's just my thought. But it's kind of logical, isn't it? Perhaps a no-brainer.
Anyway, in various places in New South Wales now, many people have lost their hives. Basically, this little varroa mite, it's fairly sizable for a pest that gets on a bee because bees are pretty small. The comparison, I suppose, would be a human having a dinner plate attached to their back and sort of going about the regular business of life. So that's what the bees are dealing with once Varroa mite arrives and infests the hive. What it does is that it weakens the hive.
So the Mama Varroa mite goes in and she lays eggs in the cells where the bee larvae is, in the little cells where the baby bees are developing, and then those baby varroa mites feed on the baby bees - on their fat - I think I have that right.
Anyway, once those baby bees come out, they’ve got blimmin' varroa mites on them and it's on for young and old. Of course, once the bees have got these pesky pests with them, it challenges them. You know, they're physically weakened because the mites are feeding off them and the bees have to deal with that.
Now I know with my hives, my bees are so chilled out they're very relaxed little poppets. In fact one of my neighbours came in and drilled some holes in my Kenyan Top Bar hive last week so that I could adjust it on some new information I had, and we were both wearing our bee suits, but my bees just went about their business. They did not get cranky. They were just like, oh, buzzing around. What's going on here? He's making all these vibrations in our house. But there was no stinging or carrying on. So our bees, mine in particular, are pretty relaxed about what's going on. As long as you're moving slowly and not creating too much of a ruckus, they just get on with their business and let you get on with yours. In a way, this is kind of a problem for us because as this mite does arrive and infest local hives, our bees aren't that aggressive, so they're not going to necessarily attack those mites. So that's that's kind of a breeding issue. But I guess my reason for talking to you about it is this is going to have a massive impact on our our food security, on our crops.
What's happened in the United States is, well, number one, they were losing a huge number of hives through colony collapse initially. They've had it for about 30 years now, so they've got a lot of experience dealing with this pest. Many say we have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes made by other countries, but we may have to wait and see if that is possible.
Many countries like the United States, (although not all) have gone down the treatment with chemicals road to try to eradicate the varroa mite problem. They've actually treated the beehives, the bee colonies, with chemicals. Some are natural-based and some are not. There have Im told, been significant pockets of ‘natural beekeepers’ who have opted out of the chemical approach, and some say thats where the hope for bees actually lies….
One of the interesting things I’ve recently learnt about bees, is that they have this fascinating capacity to drop DNA. So they have a trait within them. It could be any trait, and if it's not used, they will shed that trait. They shed that DNA if it's not useful or used.
Therefore, we could wonder if when honey bees are medicated with miticides that any resistant tendencies to the mites will be dropped given that they are not activated due to the application of the chemical treatments… that the bees could drop protective behaviours and or resistant traits….so that's a bit of a challenge and that's an interesting thing.
Now most of you will know that I'm really into permaculture (you can check out my gardens permaculture plan here) and I prefer to be as chemical free as possible in my garden and my food production in the veggie patch and so on. I’m not mental about it - but I do what I can in that department
So my natural bias is to go without chemicals. But of course, what I do in my garden apiary is potentially going to impact my neighbourhood beekeepers. I have a lovely neighbour who's been a great supporter of me in my learning with beekeeping practices and he has hives, located just diagonally across from where I live. so now I know that he's going to um do some treatment if his hives get varroa which is highly likely at some point so you know that's a big consideration for me so I wanted to go and do some research.
Now a guy by the name of Adrian Iodice whom I have followed on socials for a couple of years. He’s very inspiring. I have heard speak at the Off-Grid Festival in Chiltern, have enrolled in his course, and he runs regular trainings around the country - an interesting guy, and I bought my Kenyan top bar hive kit from him about 7 years or so ago. It’s all made from reclaimed timber, just beautiful, and definitely my favourite hive. Adrian appears to be pretty connected in the bee world and has studied, I believe – biodynamic farming and all that sort of stuff in Europe. He spoke with Les Crowder, who's very well known, has written a best-selling book and is recognised as a world expert in beekeeping with the Kenyan hive. and by the way, you can get plans for those Kenyan top bar hives from Natalie B’s website bee-mindful - they're Les's plans. Anyway, what Im trying to get to is that Adrian was instrumental in Les and Natalie coming out to Australia for the Bee Summit that happened up in Mullumbimby in August. The three of them also travelled all around the place talking about their experiences working with the Kenyan Top Bar hives.
in Texas and not using chemicals to manage their colonies, beehive colony same deal right, and and the success that they've had.
So anyway, I trucked off to Canberra to listen to them speak in the effort to add more information to my current knowledge base in the attempt to have a more rounded view. I attended the workshop held at the Mens Shed and watched Nathalie knock up a Kenyan for us, then a talk at the Canberra Bee Club as well.
The Canberra Bee Club meeting was great, over a hundred beekeepers there if I recall correctly, and what an amazing club, actually. Evidently, one of their members is working, and I think it's government funded, he’s working in an apiary there in Canberra with the whole idea of breeding varroa-resistant queens, you know trying to get a heads up, because one of the things the government has decided is to not import queen bees into the country. So that's kind of, well, is that a good thing, is it a bad thing? There are some places that do actually have resistant queens already, because in other countries... you know, they've had varroa mite for a much longer time. Anyhow, , so I went off to this course and this talk and listened to these people with both 30 and 15 years experience dealing with this. To be frank, it's given me hope, and the confidence to really settle into my decision. It's helped me to make a decision to not use chemicals on my beehives. They did talk about the losses, and there were people within the audience who have actually lost hives, like one lady that I was sitting next to in the audience. She had four beehives on her property and three of them, boom, totally dead. The varroa came in and just knocked them out. She was, of course, completely devastated.
One of the things about beekeepers is, well, we're kind of weirdos, right? Often referred to beeks, you know, as in bee geeks, we just love and are completely fascinated by these incredible beings. So she was really just heartbroken. And there were other people in the audience who've, you know, gone to their bees and they're just completely dead or they've absconded because the mites have got in there and just hammered them. So it's a real thing.
In the US, I believe 80% to 90% of hives were lost to the mite and the expectation or one of the numbers being thrown around is that that's what we can expect to lose up to 90% of our bee colonies in this country. Now that's not all going to happen instantly (I hope!) because... well there's a process, you know, it's moved from Newcastle to Wodonga. All right, that's a bit of distance. It's taken a little bit of time but, you know, it’s spring here, so hives will swarm and the mite will spread. I mean, bees travel for food for up to three kilometres, so they're all popping into each other's space, you know, rubbing shoulders, hanging out on the same flowers. So it'll spread. There's no stopping that now.
So it's going to happen one way or the other.
Temperature does impact it, clearly, from what we've seen in other places in the world. And there are ways to... I mean, my take on the whole chemical thing is there are various options and there's set mechanical things that you can do. There's something called, oh, I won't get into all the terms, but there's things that you can do to assist your hives if they do get varroa.
It's called doing a brood break to sort of try and reduce the ability of the mite to breed. But you can only do that for so long.
There are some implications. For example, if you're going into your hive every couple of weeks, which is what the Department of Primary Industries wants us to do to test for Varroa, you're taking a cup of bees off the brood frames where the nurse bees that look after the babies You take a cup of those bees and you have to throw them into alcohol and basically you're killing them. and you're shaking them in the alcohol, they die, so that you can see how many mites are in that batch of bees. This is a mite count.
If there's a certain number of mites, you then will treat with chemicals.
What they learnt in the US is that if you keep using the same chemicals, and we know this is basic, we've seen it happen in other situations with colds and flus, right, that the the pest or virus becomes resistant to the treatment so they get stronger. The DPI suggested protocol, the one that they're wanting us to use is first one kind (like you can use a more natural based chemical) and then you use a completely chemical one, and swap it around each time. But there are some real downsides. There are quite a few unknowns.
There's been, I believe a big export business from Australia supplying the US with beehives, (bee colonies), used to pollinate their crops because their bees were dying out at such a rate Well, they're not going to be getting that from us anymore because we've now got the mite ourselves. So there's going to be big implications in the US for pollination, for food crops, and we're going to experience that too. Not necessarily immediately, but as it spreads, it'll become a much bigger thing.
The experts that I was listening to were talking about the opportunity to allow this process to happen faster than it would otherwise. So I'll give you an example, and you can research this on Google if you're interested. There's quite a few different examples. Cuba is one country, a poor country, in the tropics, you know, it's a warm environment. They didn't have the money to treat because it costs a lot of money to treat with all these chemicals, you know, follow the money. Who's making money out of this? Definitely not the the home beekeepers and definitely not the commercial beekeepers because it's going to cost a lot of money to treat these hives with chemicals. So in Cuba, they did not treat at all and they had a total collapse of their honey industry. Ten years later, absolutely thriving.
Absolutely thriving. They're stronger than ever before. Their honey production is super high. So the bees themselves, yes, they lost heaps, but those that survived, they actually did that Darwinian thing and adjusted.
Don't mind my puppy in the background having a little play and a bark by herself…
So in the end, in terms of time to recuperate, the time taken to recover was no different than it would have been if they had used the chemical miticides. I learnt about this when I went to a DPI workshop, and they were teaching us how to treat with the chemicals and so on.
Yes, when someone mentioned Cuba, I asked about it, and fundamentally, the timeframe that Cuba came back stronger than ever before and the expected timeframe for us to recoup is not really any different.
Evidently in Cuba, because they didn't treat, they have bees, the species of bees that are stronger than ever before, totally managing, no chemical residue in their system, in the wax in the hives, potentially in the honey, as opposed to having colonies that can't make it without chemical treatment, that ultimately are weakened.
And I know in the US they have something called, colony collapse and also deformed wing disease…
So other viruses, can get a hold in the hive when it is weakened.
We are all living beings, right? Once our strength goes down, once our immunity is lowered, we become... well we're weakened, and then other viruses can infect us and pop up almost as though out of nowhere when we're weakened.
So there's a big thing going on.
Now, do not be fooled into buying crap honey either.
It's bananas.
Alot of the honey that you buy in the supermarket, for example, is actually not Australian. They might say it’s Australian or there's some international honey in it, but there's a lot of honey from places like China and places where they're treating with chemicals and they're putting it into honey and saying it's Australian honey, selling it in our supermarkets.
Some of it is nothing more than bloody sugar water…sugar water based honey, it's a completely different thing to real raw pure honey that you'll get from a regular beekeeper.
You know, your old mate up the road who's got a couple of hives in his backyard and sells a bit of honey on the side to his neighbours. That's the gear you want. I know locally here in Harris Farms for anybody who's local to where I live, and I'm sure they do it in places like Sydney and Melbourne too. A local commercial beekeeper sells his honey there. It's a great price. Like, seriously. My honey hobby is quite expensive. It's not a cheap hobby, really. It costs you time, sweat, and it costs you money... you know, your equipment and so on. So, yeah, if you're going to buy honey, and it is a medicine, it's a medicine. It's not just for slapping over your toast and smashing it down like it's, you know, jam. it is actually a real medicine.
The way I think about the honey is, and it'll last forever, so if you can get your hands on some honey, like if you can buy a couple of kilos and put it away in your cupboard, I would definitely be doing that i'd be doing that sooner rather than later because as this varroa might spreads throughout the country your local, even if it's not with you now in your area, you might grab a couple of kilos, put it away, and if it's sealed properly it'll be fine. It'll last for years. I mean they get it out of the pyramids it's still fine.
The way I think about it in terms of it being a healing medicine, and one of the things I actually like to do is when I extract my honey, I tend to do it by the frame, especially when I'm using my Kenyan hive and taking honey from there.
I'll extract it by the frame. So that one frame of honey that's made, that's all put down in one particular time frame. So all of the flowers that are in flower, the plants that are in flower at that time, that's a particular medicinal treatment. You know, three months later, we've got different flowers. And so the essence or the healing properties within that honey is going to be different to the other frame. So I do tend to extract by the frame. It's very time-consuming. It's a little bit geeky. But I, and and any of you who've used flower essences will understand, that different plants have different healing properties. We know that. Western medicine is based on that. And when you use a flower essence, sorry, I've gone off on a totally huge tangent here. i was going to just talk about what was going on the downside, but now I'm talking about the good stuff.
Yeah, so if you've used flower essences, you will know that like the soul essence of the plant, it has a healing property for us when we use it and on many levels;
- soul level
- emotional
- mental
- physical
So it makes perfect sense to me, having studied and worked with flower essences for decades, that when honey is created by the bees in a set period of time, those flowers and the honey that comes from that pollen is a particular medicine.
So one of the things that I do is that I trust when somebody has a particular jar of honey, that's the medicine for them.
And I'll often, you know, really trust my intuition when I'm selecting a jar to give to somebody.
It's a really beautiful, very soulful practice.
So there are big things afoot.
Now, it's not going to happen overnight, but you know if you start hearing more about bees and pests, you'll know what it's about.
It's deeply concerning. The experts that I listened to in Canberra a few weeks ago, they, well, Les Crowder, he was actually saying that he sees that we have the possibility of rebounding from this very quickly. So if all of our beekeepers made a decision to not treat with chemicals, that yes we would have hives collapse very quickly, but we would also, because of all the wild colonies in the bush, and we do have a lot of them, there’d be a massive crash, but those that survive the onslaught of varroa, will do what they naturally do. Those that survive will get on top of it, and they will swarm in the springtime and they will, you know, expand out again. Then beekeepers like myself, we can, you know, in three, possibly five years, we can go and collect those swarms and start afresh.
Now, I'm trusting that is not going to happen - Im hopeful. It might. It might not. I'm just going to go with, I'm going to do what I need to do, trust my inner tuition and do those mechanical things that I can do and trust the bees to deal with this situation.
And that's what happens in nature. That's the truth of things. Very, very difficult because we are so attached and love our bees so much, but my feeling is that if we interrupt this process too much with chemicals, that we could be extending the problem for a much longer time and we could weaken our possibilities of a good, strong comeback.
Now, I previously mentioned Cuba, and there are other countries apart from Cuba where they've had extreme success with their honey industries and the bees in general.
So coming back with non-chemical treatments, just mechanical interventions, and trusting the bees to do their natural thing. So yeah, just so that you know what's going on.
Now I used to sell a bit of honey, not much, and I’d sometimes give gift my visitors when I felt that it was appropriate to do that.
I don't have a big store of honey or anything. So if I'm fortunate enough to get some this year, I'll probably be popping it away for medicinal purposes, you know, for the family, and just in case it's needed down the track. We'll see how the season goes. But it's a big deal, a really big deal, and I would expect that in due course, as this rolls out, that the cost of food is going to go up again because the implications are significant. I mean, honeybees are not the only pollinators. We've got our natural bees, flies are pollinators, there are other creatures, but we've used the honeybees a lot for pollination in these larger monoculture sort of crops like, you know, the almonds and so on.
So watch this space. Have your antenna up, and if you are wondering what can you do to help this situation, there;s something that I heard when I was at the talk at the Canberra Bee Club. Great group of people, by the way. One lovely gentleman standing up the back had brought this tray of holy basil in, some plants that he'd grown. and he actually said, “We can all support the bees, even if we lose our colonies”. The general public can support the bees in getting through this situation through nutrition.
And how do we do that? We grow plants that flower, that they can get food, good, broad quality food from. So if you have a veranda with pots on it, if you have a garden where you can plant some flowers, do that, because the more accessible, good quality nutrition that is available to the bees, the stronger they'll be. And especially in the winter, I've actually, been into the local nursery and then also to Bunnings and had a look at what's flowering.
You could also do a Google search to see what flowers in the winter because that's the hardest time for the bees. Late winter, mid to late winter and even early spring can be difficult times for the bees to find food and they get hungry. When they're hungry they get a little cranky and you know their immunity is down, they're struggling a little so things in your garden like grevilleas are great and planting herbs i fabulous, think about that lovely man in Canberra who brought in the holy basil and gifted it to people at the meeting..
Plant heaps of herbs, they love basil, they love oregano, they love rosemary and lavender. Those things are so easy to grow. And certain shrubs and trees, but definitely the grevilleas, wattle too. So there's quite a few things that all of us can do. So number one, grow what you can in your garden so that the bees have good food and a plentiful array of it - I don't know if you've seen those those posts on social media where they plant out whole nature strips with wildflowers instead of grass. What a blimmin' great idea. That's my plan. I want to dig out a bit of dirt off one part of my nature strip so i don't have to mow it and I want to plant some grevilleas, winter flowering grevilleas in there and. whatever else proves to be useful so that the bees have got food in that difficult time. And I'm looking to find the right wattles. You know, look at your space you've got. There's heaps of information out there. You might like to check out the Wen Bee Foundation as they have a fabulous list of plants that have got good pollen and good nectar value and it shows the times they flower in relation to your location It’s fabulous.
So... You know, it's like oils ain't oils. Flowers aren't flowers, but any flowers are good flowers when it's winter. So, yeah, the things that you can do, plant some things that are going to flower to feed the bees so they've got good nutrition. Do buy honey that's real, not this imported crap, to support the beekeepers and expect to pay more money for your honey because it's going to become, well real honey could become a little scarce for a while. Real honey, that's where the healing is, and we all know that chemical treatments are not always going to be the answer. Definitely not. We've seen that many, many times over the last few decades.
When we think about, you know, this is how we're going to do it. Short-term pain for long-term gain. So, yeah, I'm thinking outside of the mainstream box a little bit, but it's well considered and, yeah, that's that's how I'm going to approach it and I'm going to trust that I can get through.
But statistically, 80% to 90% losses is what we're going to expect in the longer term. And it's the first couple of years ah that are the toughest.
One of the things that Les Crowder and Natalie B and Adrian Iodice have suggested, is looking at breeding queens and getting knowledgeable about breeding resilient queens. So anybody who does have a beehive that makes it through, or demonstrates the ability to manage the mite, because bees in certain colonies are like attacking them; chopping their heads off and their legs off… So breeding queens from that stock is obviously going to be good. So I've booked myself into a queen breeding course for early December and I hope that it’s not going to be over my head, but I'm going to give it a whirl so that I have a bit more understanding and knowledge. You know, every day is a school day, right?
Little problem, big problem, big learning opportunity. Yeah, so that's what's going on in Bee World at the moment as far as I know.
SO! You can help.
Plant some beautiful flowers
Get some honey in your cupboard, pop it away for medicine…
Get the real stuff and support your local beekeepers, your local commercial beekeepers and even your home hobbyist beekeepers if you've got any around.
Bees are beautiful. Bees are amazing and we definitely do need them.
Supporting our native bees is really, really important. So things like those little native bee houses, you know, with all the... Gosh, I can't remember what they're called. But you'll see them. They're made wood, usually in a house shape and there's all these round holes drilled through little bits of wood, all different sizes. So the different bees, because a lot of those are solitary. They don't hang out in groups like the honey bees or the blue-banded bees. They still need to have homes though, so you could even put one of those up in your garden somewhere to give themsomewhere to live - and when you're providing food for them as well by growing good things in your garden, yeah, there's a lot we can do, and we can just do what we can do right?
I hope that's been interesting for you, and if you've got any questions about any of it, you're welcome to ask them.. All right, take care. Look after yourself - and keep on BEE-ing YOU!