LfB is a biannual international symposium of natural beekeepers and like minded souls. Previously held in the Netherlands and Berlin, this year it was Britain’s turn to host. Lockdown had interrupted the usual schedule and after 4 years there was a real party atmosphere as old acquaintances reconnected and new participants were caught up in the excitement and enthusiasm. It was very like a swarm taking off and finding a new home!
Everyone left smiling
The event was organised by the Natural Beekeeping Trust at Sheepdrove Organic Farm’s striking timber framed conference centre near Hungerford. There were about 150 attendees, and about 15 OxNatBees members jumped on the chance to network with other natural beekeepers from far and wide.
This was preceded by two other nearby bee related events. The day before the conference, Filipe Salbany led a group of 50 people – some LfB attendees and some scientists from the recent COLOSS meeting in Oxford – round nearby Blenheim Forest to teach beelining, forest craft and to look at actual bee nests in trees. So all in all there were 5 consecutive days of Intensive Bee Stuff – this area was the temporary global epicentre of natural beekeeping.
Programme and talks
There was some last minute disruption due to Covid and MC Jonathan had to do some on-the-fly juggling – we were on Plan E by the time things settled. This just added to the fun though, because no one wanted to just sit in front of some talking heads for an hour at a time. The general scheme was more, shorter talks to mix things up and keep the momentum going.
There were too many talks to describe them all, and I have covered some subjects in previous posts, so I am going to cherry-pick some points that leapt out at me.
Free living bees in cities: Dr Jovana Bila Dubalc described her experience in Belgrade, Serbia, where she has found loads of free living colonies in buildings there. This Carniolan population is genetically distinct from the nearby bees kept in hives (partly because the beekeepers tend to buy inbred bees from breeders). This was a common theme in the more scientific presentations – “we tested their DNA blah blah” – it’s now so routine to analyse DNA and distinguish subtle details that people take it for granted. This is an immense change from a decade ago, when denialists could hide behind uncertainty.
Swarms and nests in Belgrade – an indication of colony density in other cities?
As an ecologist she wasn’t too interested in honeybees until a retiring beekeeper gave her a notebook with decades of notes about where he’d picked up swarms around town. This made her wonder “where are they coming from?” and she began reading about honeybees, which was very confusing because, as she put it, the way we keep bees is so different to how they live in the wild, don’t we want them to be healthy?
She would go to where a swarm had been recorded in the notebook and search for its mother colony, but this required learning to talk to the public – who were very suspicious of “government scientists” whom they imagined might force them to do expensive building work (bees are a protected species there) or punish them because the colony had died. She sensed these urban people were transformed by their interactions with nature through bees.
Queens: One presenter described how she trained in America, then started keeping bees in Rwanda. She tried to source local queens but the question didn’t make sense to local beekeepers, who replied, how can you have a queen separate from a colony? They are indivisible.
Gareth John’s talk on understanding the true essence of what is present was so popular he has published it in full, It was very noticeable that during this talk, the hall went absolutely silent, lacking even a shuffle of feet.
Swarm numbers: Filipe Salbany mentioned that in South Africa, apiaries with hundreds of hives used to be routinely populated with their own swarms, of which they would produce hundreds. Over the last few years the number of swarms has dropped dramatically and beekeepers see almost none now. No one knows why – pesticides? This was particularly interesting to me as the number of swarms in Oxfordshire seems to have dropped a lot in the last few years, but we’ve had odd weather in the same period.
Rapid adaptation: Filipe also mentioned that in South Africa, A.m. capensis adapted to varroa in 3-5 years. But he was mainly talking about the Blenheim bees, with e.g. striking videos of guard bees shimmering to disrupt hornet attacks – a behaviour previously only seen in Asian bees.
Pesticides: Britain is trying to reintroduce neonics back into the environment. Sign this petition!
The audience listened attentively
People
There were people from Europe, America and Australia with tales of their particular circumstances.
I discussed comb changes with Rob, who runs hives in Napa Valley. He doesn’t use chemicals in his hives but the local grape growers spray enormous amounts of fungicides etc around so even his natural wax builds up residues. So whereas I find old, black brood comb is healthy, he has to change his. Beekeeping is very area-specific.
Grim news from Australia, where there is a real panic about varroa. Jon from Oz and Kaz from Tasmania gave us a first hand accounts of how the authorities are killing thousands of colonies on the mainland in a scorched earth approach, wrecking businesses and crippling pollination-dependent agriculture. People are reacting completely hysterically: Kaz told us of one lady at her Tasmanian bee club killing her own 7 colonies. (Tasmania is 240 kilometers off the coast of Australia). We all agreed the mites are too widespread to contain now (and I’ve since heard some beekeepers are still moving colonies around despite the threat of fines and imprisonment) – the authorities obviously need to accept the inevitable and change strategy. There’s a good situational summary here.
On a personal note, I was particularly moved to meet Robin Morris. He founded YarBeep, one of the original British natural beekeeping groups and websites, and was one of the people who inspired me a decade ago. I’m sure others had similar encounters.
Lunch: much talking with random neighbours from all over the world
I was very struck by just how much fun people had. In particular, isolated natural beekeepers seemed relieved to finally be able to talk openly about their practises with like-minded souls.
Hives
Māris Ķirsis crafted this spectacular Latvian log hive. Walls are about 20cm thick. Huge internal cavity and a large access hatch at rear – this is a production hive
The most striking – and enormous – were log types: the Rocket hive on its tripod, and the two huge, ornate ones shipped in from Latvia. Thus the phrase “hive envy”. Mārcis Bauze-Krastiņš gave a talk on these, and you can read more about them on their Facebook page here.
There are three major makers of log hives in Europe and they were all here: Māris Ķirsis (Latvia), Mick Vespuji (Ireland) and Matt Somerville (UK).
The Latvian hives were ground standing but they equally famous for the ones they hoist up trees, to avoid snow blocking entrances etc. They use a curved metal bracket so the hive is held a little way out from the tree, which I think helps protect against bears. Other interesting design features are narrow vertical slit entrances: these protect against hornets and despite small apparent size, provide sufficient ventilation (click on the picture for more detail). There is no landing board and they believe this helps health because sick bees exiting the hive fall right out and cannot return. I also got the impression their comb is built warm way, whereas further south in Britain and Ireland the bees in log hives tend to build comb cold way.
Several unusual hives and accessories were on display to prompt discussion on design.
From left to right:
Bee Portals from Bach Woodworks – developed with Filipe Salbany, these are designed to cover 1″ holes in hive walls and provide multiple defendable entrances and improved ventilation.
Modified National from Bach Woodworks shows how even a thin walled, draughty National can be made into a well insulated home for bees. This one is fitted with multiple coloured bee portals.
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- Modified National. Bee Portal entrances
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- Narrower, heavily insulated cavity; deeper cavity formed from 2 boxes
The “Hempcrete hive” from bee.house – moulded from a hemp-lime matrix, features a cylindrical inner cavity, very heavy. Very stable internal environment.
Skeps – still one of the warmest, most apicentric hives and made of sustainable materials.
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- Wild skeps
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- Clombed skep for weather protection
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- After weaving, these protruding strips are usually cut off
The Pallet Hive was designed by Jonathan of the Natural Beekeeping Trust during lockdown as a way of recycling old wooden pallets into a hive which would suit bees. Build instructions / images are here.
The Modified Layens from justbeeecohives.com takes the basic Layens concept of a deep horizontal hive and adds insulation. Justbeeecohives also make the hexagonal Eco Tree Hive, an extremely well insulated but light hive designed to be mounted in trees – much more easily than a heavy log hive.
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- Modified Layens from justbeeecohives.com
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- Simon Kellam shows Modified Layens’ construction
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- Hexagonal Eco Tree Hive from justbeeecohives.com
Click to enlarge
The insulation display compared the technical specs of different sustainable materials. Quite a lot of attendees ae keen tinkerers and hive builders, and insulation is just as relevant to Ziv and Rajai in Israel / Palestine, as Erkki in Finland.
Denouement
Filipe checks out the wild colony. Image (c) Jane Denby
As the conference drew to a close, the sun broke through the clouds and everyone bundled into the woods outside, where a wild bee nest had been spotted. Filipe gave a demonstration of how to climb safely to investigate such nests. These bees didn’t take any notice of him at their nest entrance. Then people went to see some conventionally run hives on the edge of the estate, but they began stinging as folk got within 100 metres.
People are already talking about LfB 2025…
With many thanks to Jonathan, Simon, Heidi and Joanna at the Natural Beekeeping Trust for organising this marvellous event.
Oxfordshire Natural Beekeeping Group 
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