Telegraph article

Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph today published an article on Natural Beekeeping which you can read on-line here. The article was written by Jean Vernon who has been a member of YABeeP since 2009 when we first started. It features Heidi Herman, the Natural Beekeeping Trust and the Sun Hive, all of which YABeeP fully supports. Some of us were lucky enough to attend the conference Heidi arranged last year and meet her and visit the Trusts's wonderful apiary.

John & Gareth enjoy Heidi's bees
(yes, that is an occupied Sun Hive)

We expect that there will be several negative comments from some dyed-in-the-wool conventional beek's so I would encourage all natural beekeepers to leave a Comment in support on the Telegraph's webpage. To do this if you don't have a Telegraph account you need to first register by clicking on the 'Register with the Telegraph' link just under the text of the article - it's free.

Bees Flying - is it a problem?
The recent unseasonal warm weather over and since Christmas has meant our bees have often been out flying. This has been a concern to many who are aware that 'conventional' wisdom suggests it is worrying if the bees have broken winter cluster. This 'worry' however, ignores the fact that bees have been doing this for millions of years; it's not unnatural for some winters to have warm spells.

I have been advising our members not to worry and leave your colonies well alone; resist the 'conventional' pressure to feed - rest assured that the bees know what they are doing. Even a peep through the window could add stress to the bees at this time of year.

A Sun Hive with a
supered honey box

Whilst this is easy for me to say I recognise it can be hard to do, especially for those under pressure from others who are shovelling sugar in their hives by the Kilo. For a little reassurance see this post by Heidi on the Natural Beekeeping Trust's website. I love her approach that we "can only hope and trust that the bees, unlike us, know what they are doing ".

After all, are we such experts in bee behaviour? I'm certainly not. We must abandon our human instinct to worry and think that we should be interfering; our 'we know best' attitude. I agree with Heidi, we must learn to trust our bees!

Hopefully see you at our 9th February meeting.


Robin Morris

YABeeP