The Biggest Threat to the Honey Bee

As the saying goes the greatest threat to the honey bee is the beekeeper. A lack of education can lead to schoolboy errors which can end in catastrophe for colonies owned by keepers who lack sufficient experience and knowledge.

Moreover, unusual and changing weather patterns have caught out even experienced keepers employing traditional 'by the book' methods and led to huge numbers of colony losses to starvation as reported by the National Bee Unit this year.

We do not think this is acceptable, and as such we manage our hives a little differently to ensure they do well and do not succumb to this horrible fate which doubtless causes suffering to the bees.

Only our well established and healthy, strong colonies are harvested of surplus honey. That is to say, we don't take all honey then feed back sugar syrup over winter in its stead. Tests on even UK produced honey show that a high percentage is contaminated with sucrose from feeding, management and harvesting practices which are being taught as the 'norm'. This is both misleading customers who believe they are buying pure honey and of course doing a huge disservice to the bees.

We work hard year round to make sure all colonies have sufficient stores built up to get them through. Feeding of sugar tends to only be necessary for new colonies from a caught swarm as they don't always get enough time to build up stores before winter sets in.

Only in exceptional circumstances do we find emergency feeding is required using our management techniques.

This ensures our bees are happy and productive and that the honey we sell never comes at an unacceptable cost to our bees and is genuinely pure.