Beekeepers are incredibly firm when it comes to their values. Every one has an opinion regarding commercialized versus natural beekeeping, disease prevention, Honey B Healthy formula, smoke treatments and a variety of other caretaking principles and practices.

No matter where within the collection of practices a beekeeper falls, it is without question that they all have the same leading concern: survival of the hive. A close second may be annual honey production, but that too is within a tightly woven relationship with the latter. Survival of the colony will depend on stress levels of all kinds. Chilly weather and rain will keep the foraging bees inside the hive and away from nectar collection, slowly wearing away at collected nutritional reserves. Pests such as mice, beetles, or the infamous varroa mite send bees into panicked states where a decision must be made to fight or flight. When the option is made to flee, it is less likely that they will collectively swarm, and more plausible that they will simply break up the hive. These are only the beginning of the hive’s worries and are seen in both captured and wild colonies.

A small collection of dead bees, captured in a cluster on top of a Langstroth hive. They all died from natural causes and presumably, knowing of their upcoming death, left the hive so that their sisters would not have to exude energy to carry their weight outside the hive.

With captured hives, beekeepers can eliminate some of the colony’s stress depending on the shape and style of hive we choose. This is yet another value that you can’t miss hearing from hundreds of opinionated beeks, many of which (myself included,) find themselves defending early on in their self-appointed beekeeper status. One viewpoint on the style of hive we choose says that the standard plastic frames found in most Langstroth hives is unsuitable for bees giving that we consistently see them trying to build away from it and neglecting to follow the suggested hexagonal starting points that are built into the plastic. During Week 5, Susan Knilans suggested  that the plastic creates a communication barrier for the bees because of its unnatural division of the comb.

Despite reading about honeybees for the past few years of my life, I still consider myself extremely unfamiliar with the complex culture of beekeeping. For example, I was entirely surprised to hear this idea from Knilans. It has not occurred to me that the bees didn’t just not-like plastic but it was interfering with how they completed their work. I was quickly overcome with alarm, and sudden waves of guilt as I realized that my research had fallen just short of this theory of bee communication and my ignorance was going to cause them their greatest stress. I knew their dances and their biological advancements that created unmatchable colony communication, but my anthropogenic state has been so adapted to living among plastic that I assumed the bees would be eager to adapt to it as well.

An example of a plastic frame. The contrast you can see is between the black plastic with pre-molded hexagonal shapes, and the yellow comb that the bees have built over it. With all types of hives, bees will begin building their comb structure in the middle of the foundation and work outwards.

But adapt to it they have! For decades, beekeepers have used plastic as a way to control the direction of comb and create an easier sight for them to check brood development and honey collection. It’s entirely fact when natural beekeeper purists claim that beekeeping was invented with human’s benefit in mind. Without the linear rectangular columns, bees would form comb in a rounded shape, not following any more guidelines than what might exist within the hollow of a tree. But despite that they have adapted to it and in some cases it has benefitted their gene pool (I refer to the size reduction of bees back to their original, smaller size—a strategy I am sure to discuss in another blog entry); the singular colony will face insurmountable stress far before any beneficial change.

The exterior of my first Langstroth hive with plastic foundation on the interior. This hive encompasses many of the traits that makes me queasy of beekeeping while ironically being the most standard design and set up that American beekeepers use these days. This hive uses plastic, has limited ventilation, and the colony was commercially purchased from two timezones away and will have to adjust to their new climate.

I can confidently say now that I know absolutely nothing at all, and more often than not, I may as well be faking what little I do know! This kind of realization comes to remind me when I am abruptly questioned by ideas that I had not had the resources to come to before. Hearing Knilans words on plastic frames put me into one of these states. What was I supposed to do now knowing that the kind of beekeeping I was about to embark on was possibly harming the colony before they could even adjust to nature’s own stressors?

After a while, I internally subsided some of my new guilt and thought about the pros and cons of what I was doing. I was able to articulately define my position and humbly admit that some of the work that I was about to be embarking on was flawed and unavoidably unsustainable. Like every other beekeeper I have had the privilege of working with, I was quickly beginning to build my own opinions and facing that number one concern of “hive survival” that all of us fret over a few times each month. I had to admit that although there are sustainable and more natural ways to care for bees, I did not have the resources or the power this year to change the life my colony was bound to lead in their first year at this new location.

As someone who is personally very hard on my own being and admittedly holds myself to unfair standards, I can vulnerably say that I felt morally crushed and disappointed in this oversight. But, discouragement and I have never held a steady relationship and I soon left that self-derogatory mind sight to find solutions to my less than perfect hive operation. It has resulted in blunt honesty when I am asked to speak about this process and a new way for me to embrace beekeeping and accept that I am still a beginner (and always an outsider) when it comes to hive life.

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Later this week, I will write on the exact changes that I have made for the set up of my two colonies based on my new knowledge and what differences I could predict to see in the future. These new changes will all be completed and will go into affect starting on Friday.