Organic Beekeeping Newsletter

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An Introduction to Organic Beekeeping

For many years now, allopathic philosophy has been applied to the practices of beekeeping. As a people, we are adopting new paradigms to live by.

In choosing Organic Beekeeping, we make a conscious choice to keep our honey and pollen harvests uncontaminated, improve the overall condition of our bees and bee colonies and to work within the Laws of Nature.

Most Organic Beekeepers are new to beekeeping. We are (at least in the united States of America) a distinctly new generation of beekeepers. In producing this newsletter, we will keep this in mind, but if questions arise, please post them to the message board at
http://www.thehealingpath.com/messageboard
or email: OrganicBeekeeping@TheHealingPath.com

We are currently involved in several projects in our research for the Art of Organic Beekeeping. In this issue (Spring 2000), we will cover our use of essential oils and how to feed this to the bees. I would also, at this time, like to thank Jim Amrine and Bob Noel for his internet publication of information on the use of essential oils as this was the foundation we began with.

Our colonies are currently being fed a wintergreen syrup made from 1 part water:1 part sugar...in this syrup for every 5# of sugar used 30-35 drops of wintergreen essential oil is added.

This mixture is fed beginning in the late summer/early fall, immediatly after the sourwood honey flow ends (Sorrel tree). Once this nectar flow has ceased, there is the concern of protecting the hives from robber bees. To remedy this, we have opted to feed the bees within the hives above the brood chambers. The fall feeding in continued until some time in November or when the bees lose interest in the syrup and stay clustered below.

The feeding is resumed for spring in Jan/Feb, again depending upon the climate and expressed interest of the bees. The spring feeding continues until the nectar flow begins.

There are two possibilities which are preferable to the above plan:

• 1) Feeding the bees heavily enough in the fall that the spring feeding is not necessary -- The advantage of this is the chance of early spring swarming is greatly reduced.
• 2) Feeding the bees honey rather than sugar syrup. In this case, the ratio of wintergreen oil would be 20-25 drops per gallon of honey. This can be done in years when nectar flow and honey production have been strong.

Until next time, peace and bee well

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