From the founders
When colonies die at the rate they did in the last couple of winters, beekeepers go looking for what they did wrong - and the forums fill up with people relitigating debates they've been having for twenty years.
We've been mostly quiet on these arguments publicly. Partly because the research is genuinely mixed in places. Partly because we know our position is a strong one, and we wanted to make sure we were giving each side a fair read first.
This week, we stopped sitting out.
— The Primal Bee Team
The three debates the forums still can't settle
Most of the standard winter advice in beekeeping is a workaround for a hive design problem.
Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
The clearest example is moisture - for 40 years, every North American beekeeping book has told you the same thing: add an upper entrance, use a quilt box, give the moisture somewhere to escape so it doesn't drip on the cluster.
It's good advice, but it also doesn't take into account that a Langstroth box leaks heat. Bees in a tree cavity don't need a quilt box. Their ceiling holds heat well enough that the moisture stays as vapor, migrates to cooler walls, or bees consume it in the dead of winter when they need water and can't fly out to find it.
So, in short: a generation of beekeepers learned a management practice (vent the top) that's really compensating for a design constraint (the box leaks heat).
Once we noticed that pattern, we started seeing it everywhere: the chemical treatment debate, the wood-vs-polystyrene debate, even half of what we tell beginners about feeding. Essentially, most of beekeeping practice is bees adapting to housing instead of housing adapting to bees.
Our full piece this week walks through three of the loudest debates in the forums — varroa, winter moisture, and wood vs. polystyrene — with the research, our stance, and enough information for you to make up your own mind.
🌎 Your neighbor's backyard hive is saving the planet.
🚨 Turns out adding more rooftop hives may actually be hurting wild bees.
👑 When Queen Elizabeth died, the royal beekeeper had to formally tell the bees.
🐝 🤓 The Boone-area startup behind those solar-farm bees has a chief beekeeping officer.
We're showing you a few painted Primal Bee hives we spotted in our Facebook group this month.
Painted yours? We want to see it!
Drop a photo in the Primal Bee Facebook group or tag us — we're collecting them for next month's gallery! 🐝
Until next time
If you've been on the forums this spring trying to make sense of any of this, hit reply and tell us what you've been reading. We’ll help you make sense of it all.
Happy beekeeping,
The Primal Bee Team 🐝