Chemical Free Hives

Technically, it could be called treatment free, because I don't use chemicals such as antibiotics, fungicides and miticides to treat or prevent disease and parasites. I believe that it is best to allow the bees to develop natural defense mechanisms for coping with disease and parasites on their own. The only way this can happen is through natural selection, where bees that have no defense mechanisms die, and those that do live to reproduce. Use of chemicals as disease intervention is a temporary postponement of this inevitability. Most large commercial beekeepers find this approach untenable for business survival. I currently lose 50% of my hives each year. Hopefully this heavy loss will diminish as the bees develop some resistance , but I anticipate that it will always be at least 30%.

Close, but not exactly. Bees can travel up to 5 miles. To be organic, you must be sure that there are no chemicals within a 5-mile radius that the bees may come in contact with and bring home to the hive. Since I can't control what happens in the 5-mile radius, all I can do is control what I put into the hive. It is true that contamination can be carried home to the hives by the bees, but much of the contamination in the hives today is caused by the beekeepers themselves fighting disease and parasites. At least I can prevent beekeeper-sourced contamination.

• The beehive boxes are made of pine, the tops and bottoms are made of cedar or plywood. The frame that surrounds the comb is pine.
• Much of my older comb is 100% beeswax. Starting three years ago I stopped using commercially available beeswax foundation within the movable frame as a guide for the bees to build their comb. Now I use food grade plastic foundation coated with beeswax from my own hives. I would prefer to use 100% beeswax foundation but now almost all of the commercially available beeswax is contaminated with low levels of the miticides fluvalinate and coumaphos (used by most beekeepers to control Varroa destructor). Food grade plastic coated with my own bees wax is the best alternative to keep my hives chemical free. The picture to the right shows a sheet of plastic foundation that the bees are starting to build their comb on.
• I feed some table sugar to hives if necessary. The sugar is desolved in water and supplied when there is not honey to keep the hive alive.
• I feed protein supplement to weak hives if necessary. The protein is supplied as food for brood to strengthen hives when pollen is not available. It is made up mostly of brewers yeast, bee pollen that I collect during the summer, soy powder with other nutrients much like a sports power bar.
• I use smoke if necessary when opening the hives to calm the bees. I usually burn pine shavings in my smoker.

Honeybees can suffer from a number of bacterial diseases, viral diseases, fugal diseases, and parasites. With the discovery of antibiotics and chemicals that can kill or limit the spread of these disease causing organisms and parasites, beekeepers started to use these chemicals to help their hives survive them. The government prohibits the use of unapproved chemicals, and allows approved chemical use only as labeled in an effort to prevent the contamination of honey, most beekeepers follow these laws. Many of the chemicals used to prevent and treat various diseases have been used for many years, and the disease causing organisms are becoming resistant to the chemicals. This resistance has lead to heavier doses and the use of more toxic and difficult to use chemicals. With rapid global transportation, bee diseases and parasites that were once limited to one specific region of the world, and in some cases one specific species of bee, are being spread across much of the world. When these new diseases first arrive to a new region, they devastate the bee populations because the resident bees have no natural resistance. Just as the native peoples of the new world were wracked by disease when Europeans first came to the new world, the honeybees are devastated when one of these new diseases arrives. At least four new honeybee diseases have arrived in the United States since 1984. Each time a new disease arrives, the commercial beekeepers struggle to survive with the use of more and or new chemicals to fight off the diseases. I believe that this treadmill of using more and new chemicals to keep beehives alive is self defeating and introduces unhealthy contaminates to honey, bees wax and other hive products. Below is a list of some of the bee diseases and the chemicals many beekeepers use to treat them.