gentle beekeeping.
I have two honeybee colonies here in my herb garden in central North Berwick.
They are a wonder to watch, and I feel a sense of priviledge to glimpse inside their world.
I’d like to tell you a bit more about my approach to sustainable beekeeping.
It’s not about the size of the honey crop - although I do think pure untreated (raw) honey is a fantastic medicine and one of nature’s ultimate delights - but for me it’s as much about the other benefits we get from working alongside honeybees.
The therapeutic grounding experience of the honeybee’s hum.
The call to action to enhance our local greenspaces for all pollinators.
The awe, marvel and wonder of a honeybee colony.
Connection and awareness of the seasons and changing weather patterns.
Appreciation for balance in the natural world, and our role in healing the human disruption.
Sustainable beekeeping approach
Plant diversity = biodiversity
Everything we implement in our garden aims to enhance biodiversity.
From the series of three small ponds which create a network of habitat and year-round water life-line, to the block of native trees and our boundary hedgerows, the plant species selected for pollinators and which offer forage across the seasons, and the commitment to UK native plants.
Planting for pollinators is about more than wildflower patches, it’s the trees, the bushes, the winter forage and the hedgerows. We need to protect and value this patchwork of habitats, and more than that, we need to add to it. Gardens are perfect to do this, and everyone can take little steps to make our gardens more wildlife friendly. Check out Buglife’s B-Line project for inspiration, information and ideas.
When we make gardens for pollinators, we are supporting all the organisms in the food web … so it all starts with the plants.
Harvesting
Our honey is multi-floral, meaning we take a single harvest in any year.
A multi-floral honey contains everything the bees collect from the Spring into the early Autumn, to the benefit of the honey consumer and the bees alike. It’s a very different to the process of harvesting varietal honeys - such as Manuka, Clover or Heather honey - which are made up of only one kind of nectar.
The trouble with varietals is we don’t know what each plant nectar means to the bee; to the bee, honey is not just sugar, but every cell in the hive’s stores is a balance of varying levels of carbohydrates, antioxidants, proteins and beneficial phytochemicals. When the bees forage, they stock up on what the hive needs to eat a balanced diet, it is a very complex pantry they keep in there!
As a result, a multi-floral honey benefits people as well, because the surplus which we harvest contains the best mix of vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals.
One of the biggest ways you can support native pollinators is to choose not to consume honey which has been intensively farmed, choose multi-floral honey, and only use beeswax which is the by-product of ethical harvesting - it costs a hive 8kg of honey to build 1kg of wax, which is a lot of nectar to convert for your short-lived candle!
The only beeswax we harvest is from the cappings removed during the honey harvest, never the foundation or comb. This is considered a sustainable harvest as it is only the incidental part of the honey harvesting process and therefore doesn’t become an undue burden on the bees.
We never harvest propolis, pollen or royal jelly.
All are very destructive to the hives, and costly in precious nectar resources to replenish. Making a hive Queen-less in order to produce and harvest royal jelly is distressing to the bees - it has been said you can hear the bees make a noise called ‘keening’; without the Queen the hive feels insecure.
Our beekeeping approach is to work alongside the hive to observe their behaviour, and take only what is truly a surplus for that colony in a given year.
Density
There is well-founded concern from scientists and experienced beekeepers that the increase in the popularity of keeping honeybees, combined with a lack of pollinator-friendly spaces, could be threatening populations of the UK’s wild pollinator species. Moths, butterflies, bumblebees, wasps, and hoverflies are all competing in the same few patches of forage.
In 2020, Kew Gardens published a report called the 'State of the World’s Plant and Fungi’, which warned “Campaigns encouraging people to save bees have resulted in an unsustainable proliferation in urban beekeeping. This approach only saves one species of bee, the honeybee, with no regard for how honeybees interact with other, native species.” (p55) One of the aims of the Kew report was to assess the amount of plant life (forage) in a typical urban setting and how many beehives that could reasonably be expected to support.
“We estimated that a square kilometre of urban landscape in the UK could support seven-and-a-half hives.”
For context, in some places in London there are over 50 honeybee hives in one square kilometre.
Proactively, the Honeybee Sanctuary is looking to spread out, and not only move the bees to other places but take our approach to landscape (field, garden, woodland) management there too. To enhance and revitalise more potential habitat and forage for pollinators generally.
Our aim is to keep two home garden hives, and locate 3 to an out-apiary of several acres, in line with the Kew recommendations. The website Bee Base provides information on the locations of registered beekeepers - considered a fundamental of best practice to control the spread of hive diseases. Changes to the Honeybee Sanctuary’s density and location would be cognisant of other honeybee hives in our local area.
We would like to widen the impact of our positive landscape management and garden design, and use the honeybee hives to engage people - to educate and inspire.
A precious resource
Another way you can contribute to the health of the pollinator ecosystem is to be an informed consumer of bee products.
I strongly promote the use of honey and other hive products with a deeply respectful attitude to consumption, and consider it irresponsible to see honey as a substitution for granulated sugar or for the wax to be burned as a fuel source.
“Honey is a precious commodity to be valued and conserved […] When you understand how bees produce honey, and its role in the medicine of other cultures, you’ll see the true value of honey not as a simple sweetener but as a medicinal food”
— D. COMBS, SWEET REMEDIES: HEALING HERBAL HONEYS. STOREY PUBLISHING, 2019
“Yours is the only honey I buy.
I have been vegan for 25 years, but I know you do it right and I am so glad I can buy honey to support my family’s health which is ethical, local and responsible.”
— GEMMA N., HONEYBEE SANCTUARY CUSTOMER
Make a difference!
Have you ever watched a Willow tree in flower, absolutely covered in bees? It was only when I started keeping honeybees that I noticed what a valuable tree the Willow actually is!
Here are some common trees that bees love:
Pussy Willow - Salix caprea
Lime Tree (Linden) - Tilia cordata
Rowan - Sorbus acuparia
Firethorn - Pyracantha spp.
Hawthorn - Crataegus monogyna
Crab Apple - Malus sylvestris
Serviceberry - Amelanchier spp.
And some flowering perennials which will look great in any garden:
Borage - Borago officinalis
Sage - Salvia spp.
Peppermint - Mentha piperita
Sunflower - Helianthus annuus
Thyme - Thymus vulgaris
Hyssop - Hyssopus officinalis
Goldenrod - Solidago virgaurea
Bee Balm (Bergamot) - Monarda dydima
Meadowsweet - Filipendula ulmaria
Lastly - Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis). An important plant for beekeepers; ‘melissa’ is a Greek word for ‘bee’. Lemon Balm is recorded throughout the history of humans keeping bees as a herb which both attracts and calms bees. Some beekeepers will claim that if you rub the leaves on your hands, bees will not sting them.
Weeds make a difference too…
Did you know, that honeybees are attracted to plants that are blue, yellow or white? Some of the plants which have become to be labelled as weeds are valuable food sources for honeybees and a great many other pollinator species:
White clover - Trifolium repens
Dandelion - Taraxacum officinale
Yarrow - Achillia millefolium
Green alkanet - Pentaglottis sempervirens
So let’s garden organically, select plant species which the bees can feed from (not showy highly bred ornamental flowering cultivars), think of forage for all the seasons, mow less and love weeds!
Water
Part of the process of making honey involves the bees dehydrating it to <18% moisture content. This is why honey stores so well, but in order to use the honey stores in the winter months the bees must re-hydrate it.
As bees don’t store water in the hive, you might see bees flying in the winter, and they are most likely gathering water to feed their winter brood and over-wintering worker bees. It can be difficult to find sources of water, so a pond, a bowl of pebbles, a bird bath with some shells or small rocks, allows them to gather water to use in the winter.
In the summer they also need access to water, as the worker bees will bring back water to the hive to sprinkle over the brood cells which are then fanned to keep the area cool by evaporation. How amazing is that!
Making water available for wildlife in your garden is a small but highly effective step in supporting pollinators throughout the year.
