The Heartland Bee Newsletter
March 2021 (6th edition)
Photo by Shannon Strenth
The Politics of Beekeeping
Florida is a warm, safe harbor for commercial beekeepers to overwinter their hives. The weather is mild and floral resources are plentiful. There is a downside to beekeeping in a tropical paradise, however: Africanized honey bees.
The best management practices with which registered beekeepers are to comply include provisions to stimy the spread of these potentially dangerous honey bees. Those best management practices have been quietly updated, and are more prohibitive than ever:
Colony divisions and splits are to be re-queened with production queens, or cells from a reputable dealer.
Swarm collection is discouraged, unless they can be immediately re-queened.
Weak or empty colonies may attract Africanized honey bees, and should not be kept in an apiary.
Colonies should be re-queened every six months unless using clipped or marked queens.
If a previously installed marked or clipped queen is missing, the hive should be re-queened immediately with known European stock.
One drone stock colony should be provided for every ten colonies.
These demands are substantial for the backyard beekeeper. Queens sourced from reputable European honey bee breeders can be limited in availability. Performing splits and collecting swarms are traditional, extremely affordable, and easily manageable methods to compensate for losses, which are common throughout every tier of the industry.
Queen breeders aren't shielded from the onslaught; it is now recommended that sixty European drone source colonies be housed within a mile of any mating yard. This complicated measure stands in direct opposition of current integrated pest management recommendations, and is nigh impossible to maintain without a rigorous feeding schedule--and that's without mention of the effect of that sort of saturation competing with local, native pollinator populations. It goes almost without saying that demand for European honey bee queens will increase, while supply becomes more constrained. Prices will go up, again. Which is more important: localized stock, or pure European genetics?
While the threat of Africanized honey bees cannot be dismissed, saddling beekeepers with more extreme burdens is not the future for which we hoped. It isn't difficult to imagine future restrictions on all honey bee sales, including packages and nucleus colonies. Is this where beekeeper-funded research has brought us?
