Our honey bees are in trouble.
Slow beekeeping is a return to beekeeping craft; beekeepers respect and appreciate honey bees for the little fuzzy miracle workers they are; honey bees make our beautiful plant world possible, honey bees produce one out of three bites we eat, only honey bees can make honey, honey bee venom has healing properties.
Slow Beeks let honey bees make their own wax comb. This takes time. It takes about 5 pounds of honey to make one pound of wax, I rarely use wax foundation because it is now known that field bees bring pesticides back to their hives when they return from foraging because pesticides have been found in bees wax. My apiary is set up between two organic farms on a 55 acre arboretum. It truly is a green sanctuary. The bees in my colony build their own wax; I am a slow beekeeper; I'm not in a hurry for the bees to fill up boxes and boxes of spring honey.
Slow Beeks let their bees create queen bees without using artificial insemination. Bees have been making queens for 27 million years. Left to their own process, they make very fine, very healthy queens. I'm a slow beekeeper; I'm not in a hurry to have more bees so I have more honey to harvest. I keep bees for benefit of the bees first, my community, second, and my honey habit third.
Slow Beeks use less sugar syrup for supplemental feeding. Sugar syrup is an inferior food. My bees are left the majority of their honey stores. After the first year in a new colony's life, there is little need to feed bees sugar syrup unless it's an exceptionally rainy spring and field bees are confined to the hive more than usual. We also collect our own pollen for supplemental feeding in early spring.
Being a Slow Beek is a source of happiness because my bees are healthy and colony winter survival rates are high.
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