# So glad to find this TF section



## EuroBee (Mar 20, 2021)

I am very new to internet forums, never having used facebook (nor will). Mention of TF seems to be greeted with a raft of pure bile and the thoughts that, although I have been TF all my beekeeping life, I must be some sort of freak!
I apologizes to those that have read my profile, but I wanted to introduce myself to those in the TF section:

I am a beekeeper for over 40 years both in France and now Wales UK.
In France I kept bees in the Vosges Mountains in the local traditional skep way and then Layens hives (eventually with supers on top). In Wales my bees are in the Hafren Forest on the Cambrian Mountains in 14x12 British Nationals with shallow supers. The similarities? Neither locations are true mountains (but don't tell the locals!). The local bees? Very similar.
When Varroa hit us in France we had very bad losses, not just in the apiaries, but in the wild as well.
We had no choice when we were hit. There was no medication available. The bigger the hive, the worse the problems, so we went back to skeps, we increased the number of colonies we captured and removed as many stresses from the bees as possible. This seemed to work to the extent that we had far less losses than when the bees were in hives.
In the wild the bees recovered within 10 years or so and as we only took our bees from the forest, we found we survived at home as well.
We started keeping the bees in the skeps till they got to the 2nd year. This showed us which swarms would be worth keeping and once transferred was a better line that seemed to prolong the colony till at least a new queen was reared and the hive became what we called 'honey production'. With the addition of the supers on top of the Layens, we stopped interfering with the 'nest' and the bees did even better.
When treatment became available we gambled and we did not change. We found we did not need to.
So the process was: Capture swarm, house in skep for one winter, transfer to hive in 2nd year (bees kept in forest some way from production areas.).
In the end we had almost twice the number of hives than before varroa to collect the same amount of product. But this was of little consequence as the bees were free!
When we moved to the UK we were worried. 'No wild bees!' seemed to be the accepted belief. What could we do if this was the case? We did not want 'lost' swarms from people that had imported non-local bees. These would die as they had not survived in the wild and would at least require treatment and feeding.
So before we moved we set up skeps in trees in the Hafren Forest in Wales. VERY worried! We did not go back for 3 weeks as we were dreading the worst. But on our very first check of the skeps, we had bees! They looked so similar to the ones we were used to in France that we just knew they were not lost bees. These were local bees.
2 years later we started our production hives. All the while filling skeps for future expansion. This year we have 40+ collectors in the trees. I have no reason to think they will not be filled again.
Beeks I talk to have one question - what about swarms? My answer is the same - what about them? You can not prevent a colony in a tree from swarming, why attempt to stop it from a skep? Yes, I do 'tip checks' on hives and move QCs to keep numbers up, but never think I can change the nature of a bee! And without the brood breaks, varroa takes its toll.
Yes, each individual hive makes far less honey than a commercial, treating, swarm preventing operation BUT we spend NO money on replacing dead colonies, buying queens, packages, treatment, feeding etc. So for the same amount of product, you just need more hive boxes - the one thing that lasts a lifetime (unless you move country!). Financially we think we have something that works for us and certainly takes very little 'management' time.
In short, we have spent time building equipment, putting up swarm boxes and collecting product etc. But we have almost zero on-costs.
Many people seem to think that making money from bees is a hard thing to do. Maybe this is because they are spending money with one aim - getting large honey crops from each hive. This is akin to intensive farming of all kinds. You get to the stage where you have to support the animal with medication, feed and management to enable them to survive. Even with this 'support' (or because of it), many die and then people spend large amounts of money replacing them - no wonder there is little profit. We find that bees will survive without this input if left to their own devices and left to expand at their own rate.
Last thing for this long introduction. We make more actual money pound for pound from wax than honey, so the more hives we have the more wax. Also our wax is far more valuable when turned into something - candles being the lowest profit but a good outlet for anything not sold in other ways. I now own a cosmetics company that supplies high end fashion brands in Paris and London. This was started by my father-in-law, before I was even born. When he handed it over to me he said "just don't let the bees die". So far, so good!


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## username00101 (Apr 17, 2019)

Great post. Thank you for sharing.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

eurobee
At least two differences from you and me. One is ambition, I don't want to have a job and two half or more of my swarms could be from managed hives. However, I just have bees with no money invested and so it is profit and not loss on anything I do get.
Cheers
gww


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

EuroBee, nice introduction. May the bee gods continue to smile favourably upon you.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Welcome to the TF subforum, EuroBee. Glad to have you a part of the cohort, and I will look forward to your contributions to the discussions here on TF beekeeping.

Russ


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

EuroBee said:


> Beeks I talk to have one question - what about swarms? My answer is the same - what about them?


So I thought about this one a bit.

Really, what we are talking about here is "swarm-based" primitive beekeeping.
It is not per-se TF (or otherwise).
It can go either way or anywhere in between.

But inherently the "swarm-based" primitive way is indifferent of the treatment philosophy.
What it is really about - low cost/low maintenance approach.

I have been doing the same to a degree.
Clearly, the low cost is very much true and why I am doing the same (and will continue doing it).

The inconsistencies/complications are:

lack of dependability and planning ahead - you are really dependent on the existing population status - bees around you crash and you crash too (bees don't swarm and you are screwed)
revolving replacement of the losses via the re-occupation are commonly accounted as "sustainability" (which is not entirely true, if at all true).
the so called presence of the swarming "feral bees" is commonly confused with the presence of swarming commercial bees - but one does not care - you catch the swarms and exploit them all the same (no difference whatsoever where the bees came from).

All in all - you mostly care about the abundance of the flying swarms in the vicinity (the swarm sources are irrelevant), catching them and exploiting to your needs. Not chemically treating is a way to ensure you get the cleanest possible product out of the enterprise - which can be confirmed by testing if really needed. Clean outputs are a very attractive point and no questions to argue about.

So it is a fine business model (for sure low cost).
It just some people may get wrong context out of it (i.e. catching "feral bees" in the suburbia, etc, etc).

Heck, I can do the same and harvest tons of clean wax (which I have been doing already) - all based on the exploitation of the escaped commercial bees swarms. This is only sustainable for as long as the locals keep buying the bees - so I can catch some of them escaped. It works, but it should be called for what it is - "swarm-based" primitive beekeeping (TF or not TF - up to the operator; it is not inherently TF). And some people will argue it is NOT even beekeeping... Whatever, I don't care of such semantics too much.

Anyway, something to talk about.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Greg
Incase you do not get an answer, I was thinking his meaning was that he did not manage bee in a way to stop swarming as well as getting his bees from swarms. This would have an impact on pest or at least does in the arnet forrest.
Cheers
gww


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## EuroBee (Mar 20, 2021)

No. Sorry for the confusion.
I was talking about the swarms from the skeps mainly.
Some people are adamant that skep hives are illegal and encourage nuisance swarms.
I keep the caught swarms in skeps for one winter only. Checked just 3 times. This is just that way we coped when varroa hit. Think of it as a kind of quarantine/survival test. Commercial, exotic etc. swarms don't survive this test.
In the next spring the ones alive will be hived. I 'tip check' hived colonies, but do not check every frame searching for cups etc.- I have too many hives to do this! This is not 100% effective I am sure, but I am not OCD on stopping swarms like some. Also, I am sure I recapture a fair % of the swarms and don't mind some replenishing the forests at all.


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## Bovis (Feb 21, 2021)

Hello, I would be fascinated to hear about the design and methods you use for your trapping skeps, if you are willing to share them. I haven't ever seen anyone fix a skep to a tree, it sounds very interesting.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Sort like so I guess:


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