What I learned about the beekeeping industry that may shock you.
Honey is sold as this amazing, miracle of nature. It can heal a wound, protect a cut from infection as well as soothe a sore throat, but what is not shared on the label or cute marketing messages is that the added ingredients will kill you, just like they are killing the honeybee.
Most beekeepers in your city are causing unimaginable harm to the local pollinator population and eco system in their community. These seemingly nice folks are trying to turn a quick profit with their honeybees and will stop at nothing to get you to buy their honey.
These local beekeepers may or may not know the damage they are causing to their own honeybees and those in their community. Honeybees forage up to 7 miles each day if needed. Sure, your yard may be organic and natural, but 80% of the rest of the county is most certainly not.
Why are local beekeepers the bad guys here when the media makes them out to be the victims?
Example of poor, poor evil conventional beekeepers:
This guy got over $70,000 USD in donations to help him keep killing bees. We are so naive in America. If the media says its so, it must bee. LOL.
Thousands of bees are dying in Murchison. No-one knows why
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/100789676/thousands-of-bees-dying-in-murchison-from-suspected-poisoning
Um, yes, we know why honey. Maybe if you would share the truth or actually do some real reporter like work, you would discover the truth. Conventional beekeepers are con men and women who are killing off the one species that humans cannot live without, honeybees.
I am sure that some of these beekeepers are innocent and unaware that they are the ones responsible for the collapse of so many native and honeybee populations in the US. Right from the beginning of their new beekeeper journey, they are taught conventional beekeeping practices that weaken the immune systems of their bees and hive.
Once the hive is sick from these poor beekeeping practices, they will attract more predators, mites, diseases and other deadly threats. The conventional beekeeper will usually call their local bee club or store that sells a "quick fix" and apply some toxic chemical to their own bees and hive to try and remedy the situation that they caused!
This is a toxic cycle that keeps beekeepers going back to the store for more products to fix the problem. I personally interviewed a man with 100's of bee boxes that had to be burned and could not be reused. He tried everything the bee store online suggested he use to save his bees. He lost everything.
They then need to treat their bees with antibiotics, insecticides and other chemicals to try to keep the hive alive. All of those chemicals remain the honey you buy from your local grocery story.
They then cry wolf to the local news media who is always in need of a feel good or feel sad for someone story. This feeds the drama and lies to the masses who are totally clueless about the real issue.
The media, big ag, big honey producers are selling the public a sob story of lies, deceit and utter destruction of the very insect that 75% of humans on earth depend on for healthy foods to survive on. They are breeding artificially weakened Queens and Drones, then shipping them off to their early death to turn a quick profit.
The Buy Local Honey propaganda has made local beekeepers out to be heroes, even celebrities in some rights. If you look a little closer, you will see the truth of the matter is shocking.
**Did you know that con-ventional beekeepers are responsible for over 62% losses in honeybee populations in the USA last year? **
Why are con-ventional beekeepers so bad at beekeeping?
They are taught by local university, schools, clubs and online sources how to keep bees with the use of toxic chemicals that ensure these beekeepers will have to keep coming back to the store to buy more supplies, medicine, pesticides, antibiotics and more unsavory products. All of this is taught under the guise that these chemicals are the saving grace for honey bees and their keepers. These brainwashed beekeepers keep coming back for more. If their colony of bees die off, they just hop right back on the internet and buy some new ones.
Conventional beekeepers are doing it all wrong and ass backwards. They harvest all of their hives honey right before Winter, leaving nothing for their honeybees to survive on during the long winter months. They then take this honey and other items from the hive and sell it at huge profit at local farmers markets. What do the bees eat all Winter long? GMO Corn Syrup of course! No wonder they are dying off!
These beekeepers then will take their honeybees out on the open road, visiting one farm after the next. They are paid a great deal of money to truck their bees all over the country going to one farm, then the next and the next and the next. These are not bee friendly farms, btw, these are farms that use bee killing pesticides on their trees, plants and flowers. Sounds crazy and dumb huh? Why would any beekeeper want to expose their honeybees to toxic pesticides? Low IQ maybe?
INCOMPETENT BEEKEEPERS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR A SHARP DECLINE IN HONEYBEE POPULATIONS.
<a href="http://slideplayer.com/slide/3461284/"
The list of horrible things that conventional beekeepers do to their own bees is disgusting.
I know for one thing, I will never buy local honey again.
Looking to earn a quick buck, and some sympathy...
So many are hoping on the Save the Bees bandwagon with greedy intent. The Flow hive is a terrible idea for bees. Bees do not want to be forced to make their honeycomb with plastic, fake comb. Nor is it wise to turn on a faucet and suck all the honey out of the hive.
Humans have this stupid mentality that everything on this earth is for them to plunder. I think some patriarchal brainwashing religion started that whole notion. Everything within the earth has been treated this way, from logging and clear cutting, to mining every, last drop out of the earth, we all think that it is our sole purpose to string the earth bare as if we have unlimited resources.
If you must buy honey, for the love of everything that is left sacred in this world, make sure it is from a treatment free beekeeper OR USDA certified organic.
Yes, honey is medicine. No, not the honey in most cities. If your lucky enough to live in a rural area, without conventional farming practices or homeowners who are pesticide users, then, maybe you will find the rarest of honey that is truly healing medicine. Just remember to leave most of the honey for the bees.
Why Do Treatment Free Beekeeping?
The answer is simply a philosophy that goes something like this ~ any time you treat your hive for any kind of pest or disease you are selecting for bees that cannot take care of that pest or disease without your help. By continuing on the path of using treatments you end up breeding stronger pests and diseases resistant to treatments, instead of breeding better bees resistant to pests and disease.
Learn about the Good Beekeepers of the Biodynamic and Treatment Free worlds here.
I support treatment free, Biodynamic, Organic and Natural beekeepers.