I am inspired and will do a tree log hive for next year!
E
________________________________
From: oxnatbees-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <oxnatbees-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf
of Oxnatbees <oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 03 September 2019 13:02
To: oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [oxnatbees] Learning from the Bees, Berlin
I got back from this on Sunday night. It wasn't as large as the event last
year, but they did a decent job of broadening peoples' horizons. This is
particularly significant in Germany where even the nonconformist beeks are
legally required to treat for varroa. Or so I thought: apparently the more
subversive of them count, or say they do, the mites dropped and then decide
there are not enough to need to treat.
There was a lot of stuff on tree beekeeping: both the Zeidler techniques of
cutting cavities in living trees; and research on what the environment of
actual hollow trees, and nests in them, actually is. Here Jonathan Powell (one
of the Natural Beekeeping Trust trustees) and Torben Schiffer (a German
researcher - controversial in his home country as he has stood by his research
and criticised conventional beekeepers) were the main speakers. The point here
is that as we re-assess our assumption about how to keep bees, we're learning
some valuable lessons about how to optimise bee homes.
I particularly liked some video Torben had made with an endoscope of how bees
in a natural cavity form living chains below combs. (Obviously they cannot do
this if the space is filled with foundation.) This appears to be partly
defensive, allowing them to instantly mob wasp intruders. It is possible that
they even use it against hornets, balling and cooking them, as has been seen in
Asian honeybees. We thought European honeybees didn't have that trait, but
maybe it is just because our hives didn't allow it.
My visit overlapped the preceding Zeidler workshop, though I used the day as a
tourist and did not attend that, I just popped my head in to say hallo. The
interesting point to me there was how few people were attending, maybe 25 from
across all Europe. It is a real niche interest - you need to be fit to climb
trees, use chainsaws etc and you need access to really big trees.
Near the end of the conference, it became obvious that the German attendees
were fascinated and inspired by Torben. They mobbed him asking questions after
his last lecture, where he wasn't backward in stating what was wrong with
conventional beehives!
I also thought a talk by a Polish chap on what actually IS a typical wild
forest like, particularly interesting. In brief it is not just a dark belt of
continuous trees, it's a network of open ground, ponds, a different tree mix to
the modern day, and 30% dead wood. Separately, I found that my belief that
Germany has lots of wild forest is wrong: it's almost all heavily managed,
young pine trees grown for lumber. The Germans are jealous of British old
growth forests and think we routinely plan things for 500 years / many
generations in the future. On the other hand, unlike many of our cities, Berlin
has a lot of green space and 400 species of wild bee: whereas there are only
~249 across all of Britain. A very different environment.
I'll try to distil some info into a blog post, but I need to be more diplomatic
in what I say there!
Paul
