I thought today about the politics surrounding beekeeping. By politics, I don’t mean the laws, regulations, and such you may be navigating when going to keep bees in a suburban area. I’m talking about the many voices you hear in the beekeeping community. And unfortunately many are sharing conflicting advice.
I’ve heard one person advocate the use of no insulation, while another is encouraging their followers to use polystyrene hives for the added insulation value. I’ve heard one person say treating is the way to go, another horrified at the thought. And on and on I could go.
If you look a little ways outside the educational beekeeping community, and venture into the entertainment beekeeping content, you’ll notice some people showing how absolutely gentle honey bees are, working them without a suit, dressed just as though they were getting ready to go grocery shopping, and another showing an Africanized hive, with bees attempting to sting the camera. It can get confusing at times.
At first, in my beekeeping journey, I thought there had to be clear answers. I thought that if I searched hard enough, I would come upon some fail safe way to keep bees, or some study showing conclusive proof that what I was about to do for the bees was the right approach to take.
But the more I looked, the more conflicting advice I came across. And finally, I had to decide to move forward and make my own decision and reap the rewards or suffer the consequences of my decision.
Today, I want to share what has been helpful to me in trying to make sense of this ever changing world of beekeeping. Instead of asking, “How can I raise a queen?” I’ve come to ask, “How long does it take for a queen cell to be capped, hatch, etc?” You see the difference? One approach is mimicking what someone else has done. And sometimes that works. But sometimes the person giving advice has a different climate, or different situation than the person trying to implement it. Other times, the person speaks as an authority figure, but doesn’t actually know themselves. Once you understand how the colony functions, you’ll have a much better idea if a particular set of advice is applicable to your particular situation. Once you understand how bees overwinter, you can intelligently navigate the different hive choices. Sometimes we need a quick answer, but above all, get to know your bees, on an individual level as well as on a level of the organism. In this way, you will have the best chance of understanding what is best for your colony and apiary.