Natural Beekeeping

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People have used honey as medicine for centuries. It is one of nature's best all-around remedies. But not all honey is the same.

Most of honey you can find at supermarkets is processed, usually through pasteurization, which involves intense heating. Heat kills nutrients and good bacteria, so most of store bought honey is good only as a sweetener for your hot tea.

Real remedy may come from your local beekeeper. Unprocessed raw honey. But even here you have to be careful. One of the biggest challenges to any beekeeper is maintaining a healthy beehive and keeping it free from mites. This parasite has the capacity to completely wipe out colonies .Most beekeepers use strong or soft chemicals to treat their colonies . Bees move honey around beehives so there is always a chance, that some chemicals will get in to harvested honey. Also ,there is enough evidence to suggest that chemicals are not healthy for bees - let alone the environment - even if they help the colony to survive in the long run.

A lot of  beekeepers also feed their colonies with sugar syrup to accelerate colony buildups and many times this  ends up with nothing else but fermented sugar syrup mix in their supers instead of pure honey.

So is wild honey, the only real honey? Is there any chance we could produce honey that is similar to wild one?

The answer is ...Yes.. It is not easy, it is time consuming, and definitely not for every beekeeper. The only way to produce such a honey is to follow the rules for  Natural beekeeping. Look no further. You are here.

What is Natural beekeeping ? 

Setting up a beehive and leave alone sounds like the right way.But it is not that easy. 

There is no single definition of Natural beekeeping. 

Natural beekeeping is an approach to beekeeping encouraging minimal manipulation and as hands-off an approach as possible .In other words , let bees do their job and give them just a little help if necessary. But you must help them .They are not an able to survive without our little help.

Other definitions say it is treatment - free beekeeping.

 In our small apiary we keep our bees with treatments they are completely chemical free. Varroa mite control is done mostly mechanically.  Managing drone brood together with brood break can control mites population at safe levels without using chemicals. Applying new technologies, like controlling mites by high temperatures in special heating chambers, lets us go even further and save a thousands lives of unborn drones. 

Choosing right type of bees with  hygienic behavior towards mites, and possibly increased aggression towards mites is another way we go.  Locally-sourced bees are  be more accustomed to the environment  that's why we rear our own queens for our colonies.

If our colonies are short of food we feed them their own honey.

Working  with nature and for nature is the way we go.

And sweet reward is not only sweetener for your hot tea but the real medicine as well.