Jennifer Berry's Views on Natural Beekeeping

In August, Jennifer Berry spoke to our bee club on the topic of Natural Beekeeping.  I had a hard time with her talk and didn't post about it, but I wanted to now before I get distracted with other things.

Jennifer Berry is Keith Delaplane's right hand person and a very good beekeeper with tons of scientific knowledge.  I think Jennifer Berry is so entertaining - she could be a stand-up comic quite successfully and so she's really fun to listen to, but this talk had me ready to jump out of my chair.

I should also say that when I was in college centuries ago one of my favorite courses (I was a philosophy major) was logic.  I loved logical reasoning and fallacies and really found it interesting to solve logic problems - my logic textbook was the only college text that I kept after college.  

So when Jennifer started with a fallacy of logic, I had a difficult time.  The fallacy is called the straw man fallacy.

"Explanation

A straw man argument is one that misrepresents a position in order to make it appear weaker than it actually is, refutes this misrepresentation of the position, and then concludes that the real position has been refuted. This, of course, is a fallacy, because the position that has been claimed to be refuted is different to that which has actually been refuted; the real target of the argument is untouched by it."

What Jennifer said was that we don't keep bees naturally, do we?  After all, bees live in trees, not in boxes; bees get to choose where they live, but we choose where our bees live;  bees in nature requeen when they need to, but we decide when to requeen and give them a queen that is not their own;  wax foundation is not natural, bees are not native to the United States so even having them here is not natural, etc.  

All of this was to prove that we don't keep bees naturally so practicing natural beekeeping is not possible.  This is the straw man fallacy because while all of those things may be true, none of them have anything to do with whether you use treatment or not in your beehives.  They are not related. 

Proving that we don't start out with a natural situation does not mean that you therefore can't succeed at keeping bees without treatment.

She followed this by encouraging people first: not to believe everything you read on the Internet - probably a good piece of advice - and second:  to know what you are wanting when you purchase a queen.  Are you looking for a queen with hygienic behavior?  Are you wanting a queen who produces good winter bees?  What are you looking for in a queen?  Ask the breeder what he/she looks for in a queen that he/she produces.

Those two pieces of information were valuable and helpful to all beekeepers.

She went on to talk about the use of IPM, including screened bottom boards, freezing drone brood, all the usual suspects, ending with using chemicals, but she had lost me by then because I was so upset by her message to our many new beekeepers in the club that they can't keep bees naturally because, well, it just isn't possible since we don't start out in a natural way.

IPM and the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Meeting

Tonight the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers' meeting centered on IPM (Integrated Pest Management). Jennifer Berry from the University of Georgia's entomology program talked to us about studies she is involved in about the varroa mite.

Although she did discuss some chemicals, I am not planning to use chemicals in my hive, so I won't report about that part of her talk. She did talk about research showing that the screened bottom board is essential to effective IPM. At UGA the screened bottom board stays open on the hive all winter long. She discussed three non-chemical ways to manage the varroa mite (all in conjunction with the screened bottom board):

1. Using hygenic stock such as the Minnesota Hygienic bee or the bees raised in N Georgia by the Purvis Brothers Apiary

2. Killing drone brood. The drones are in the capped state longer than house bees and so the varroa mite likes to lay her eggs in drone cells because the mite has a greater chance to grow up. So you put drone foundation in a frame in the hive and when the cells are capped, remove the frame and put it in the freezer. This kills the drone larvae (and thus the mite can't grow). Put the dead drone frame back in the hive and the bees clean it out and start again.

3. Doing the powdered sugar shake (as I did this year). Take a flour sifter (now why didn't I think of that?) and sift the powdered sugar over the brood box. Put a sticky board under the SBB to catch the varroa which fall as the bees groom each other and the mites fall off. Then you can count the fallen mites to get an idea of how many mites are in your hive. If you do a powdered sugar shake every 10 days for a month, you should significantly lower the mite count.

I asked her about small cell bees and she said that the UGA lab is just beginning a study on small cell. One major beekeeper, Bill Owens, in Georgia has all of his hives regressed to small cell and she talked about his successes. With 800 hives, he has only lost 3 hives this year and not to varroa.

On the other hand, she mentioned that while Dee Lusby is going around talking a lot about small cell, she didn't feel convinced because she noted that Dee lives in Arizona and all the bees there are African honeybees - which have a shorter developmental cycle anyway and are varroa resistant. Jennifer's point was that the bees that Lusby has regressed to small cell would be small and varroa resistant because of their genetic heritage (African) and that the cell size didn't make a difference. She also talked about how long it takes to regress bees and how hard it is.

Jennifer is sampling honeycomb which Cindy Bee finds in her bee removal business. So far the "wild" comb is about 5 mm and doesn't support the theory that bees in the wild naturally build 4.9 mm comb. If you'll scroll down this link, you'll find a short write-up about both Cindy Bee and Jennifer Berry.

In spite of all of this, I am ordering small cell foundation this winter to begin regressing in the spring.