The Hive Environment

Regardless of what type of hive you use, you really might want to pay close attention to the hive environment.

What I'm referring to is the inside of the hive when we are not looking.  What are the variables in a successful nest and hive?  What are they in an unsuccessful situation?

The hive environment has been a focus of study and consideration for about as long as people have been beekeepers. There are many books that have been written about it or that touch on it among other topics.  Some authors have made it more of a central topic while others perhaps somewhat less.

Emile Warre, the author of "Beekeeping For all" and the designer of the "People's Hive" is extremely focused on the inner environment and sustaining an environment as close to "natural" as possible being the most important aspect of beekeeping.

Michael Bush, author of "The Practical Beekeeper", often refers to the inner environment of the hive as a micro-ecology that hosts more than just bees inside the hive and the necessary interactions of all things within the hive.

Magazines such as "Bee Culture" have been publishing scientific research articles investigating hive environmental variables such as a recent one on how heat is conducted inside the wax nest by bees.

The venerable Lorenzo Langstroth, designer of the popular hive that bears his name and author of "The Hive and the Honeybee" was one of the first to observe and make note of how bees maintain a specific set space in between combs in the nest for them to move about.

I guess what I'm really getting at here is that with all the attention that hives get in regard to how well they do in honey production or portability or having nestled top bars or spaced apart frames,  perhaps when beekeepers are deciding to get into beekeeping, they might want to closely consider what is going on inside the hive as much, if not perhaps more, than what goes on about the hive.

There has been an ongoing "snarkiness", perhaps a bit of a rivalry, among beekeepers who consider themselves as "natural" beekeepers and those who we might refer to as conventional beekeepers.

Those who refer to themselves as natural beekeepers often place the conditions of the inner hive environment as a higher priority than they think the more conventional beekeepers do. 

Conventional beekeepers often think of natural beekeepers as careless and irresponsible.  Not to say that either group is necessarily right, just rather being judgmental and critical of each other.

As the president of a beekeeping club,  I enjoy a great amount of conversation and shared experiences with many beekeepers.   I get to hear a lot of what beekeepers think of things in general and of things they observe about other beekeepers.

I can tell you from first hand experience that both natural and conventional beekeepers care for their bees as much as any other and that they just see things differently.  When it comes to paying attention to the hive environment, it seems that there are those who seem to hold the idea that the beekeeper has a responsibility as a steward to provide for the bees whatever they might need to be alive and healthy.

Another point of view sees it that they have a responsibility to the bees to try to allow the bees to do what they do best as they have via natural selection for millions of years and that intervening in that process does more damage to them.

Both groups of thinkers are highly concerned about the health and well being of the bees, they just don't agree on how to go about it.   I have my own views on it and I tend to fall into the Natural beekeeping side of it but I have learned not to be judgmental of how any other beekeeper handles their bees as long as they are working toward keeping bees healthy and alive.

What I can do though, is to encourage all beekeepers to learn as much as they can about bee biology and behavior.  I can advocate that they do put some thought into what is going on inside the hive environment and I can offer to help them whenever I am asked to help if i am able to.

How much do you know about what's going on inside your hives?