Or maybe more clearly, how do bees live in nature at all, when my bees get mite treatments, have their nutrition supplemented during dearth’s, and have my knowledgeable care during the year but can’t survive the winter. I’ve been asking this question since I started beekeeping, and I’ve recently got some answers. No no, don’t worry...wild bees are doing just fine out there 😉🐝😉
So the first thing I had to consider is: What about urban honey bee keeping is different than a bee colony in nature? And the first thing that comes to mind is that for both keeping a healthy population of working bees AND for the sanity of my neighbors one of the most major jobs I do in the hives is prevent swarming.
A hive in nature may swarm 2-5 times over the course of a healthy season, while in the course of 2 1/2 years I’ve only had two. This becomes important when we consider Varroa Destructor, and their own mating and spreading patterns. The mites only mate and multiply in capped brood cells
Image from Michigan State Univerisyt - https://research.msu.edu/bees-enemy-has-genetic-weakness/
These swarms in natural hives provide a break in the brood cycle of the colony, which not only causes the continued population of mites to take pause, but can be long enough to cause a reduction in the population, thus keeping the colony from ever experiencing the mite population from ever reaching the numbers regularly seen in domesticated hives.
Secondly, in nature there is about one hive to every square mile. This means that there is a great deal less drifting (a forager returning to the wrong hive, a major way disease and parasites are spread). There is also more time between the collapse of a colony and that colony’s resources being discovered and looted, allowing the parasites and disease time to die instead of being passed right onto the benefiting foragers. To put this into scale for you, the city of Portland is about 6 square miles, and I’m aware there are about 117 domesticated hives, aside from my own.
So...what does this mean going forward? Well, fortunately in my Sustainable Beekeeping class this winter we talked about the necessity for creating my own Nucs as a backup for winter losses. This will provide the opportunity for at least some of the brood interruption that natural hives experience. I will also be looking for space that’s slightly more rural and rustic. Finally we’ll be testing r10 insulation on the hives to mimic the natural protection a wild hive would experience inside a tree.
~ Chris, The Boxing Beekeeper