Natural Beekeeping Network

[mikebispham]

Hi, I'm new to the Natural Beekeeping Network. My name is Mike Bispham and I live in the UK.

I kept bees for around five years in the early 1990's, building up 6 hives from collected swarms. This was successful at first, but I was then hit by varroa. Told by my local beekeepers association that I must medicate with chemicals, and that there was a policy of destroying ferals that 'harboured' the disease, I gave up in disgust. I had been an organic gardener for around ten years, and understood instinctively that this was no way forward, although I couldn't put in to words why.

I've spent the intervening years watching what I'd feared unfold, figuring out the 'why,' and putting it into words, using a two-handed approach.

The first uses the principles of animal husbandry, with particular reference to breeding practices. It states that you never, ever, breed from sick stocks. Keeping sick bees alive to send their sick genes into future generations is quite simply stupid, and is the main cause of the crisis now facing beekeeping. Animal - and plant - husbandry must do for the genes in its care what nature does in the wild. It must select for fitness to the environment - or pay a price.

This is backed up with an understanding of the mechanisms that operate in nature: 'Natural Selection for the Fittest Genes.' Evolutionary Theory explains how in Nature sick, or 'unadapted' animals die, and their genes cannot go forward. Those that do survive are 'adapted' to the new disease environment, and can thrive, and begin the longer proces of throwing off the parasite completely. Natural Selection keeps species in rude health by ruthlessly culling the sick and weak; and this process must be copied in sound husbandry in order to achieve the same end.

And so now I'm an advocate for a version of 'organic' or 'natural' beekeeping that takes the rather extreme position of saying: we must allow our bees to live or die according to their viability in the local environment. I've called this the 'Evolutionary' approach. In this view, to treat for diseases in any way - by medication, or by any of the many methods involving fiddling in the hives, simply makes future generations dependent upon our being present to do the same in the next generation. It also has the effect of sending the same unadapted genes into the wild, weakening the feral colonies.

The result of these practices has resulted, here in the UK, in beekeeping becoming an unviable business, and ferals becoming non-existent. Despite the concerted attempts of regulators - who do exactly the wrong things - CCD has been unstoppable. This I hope serves as a warning for those who live in other parts of the world, who still have time to locate an clear understanding of what is going wrong, and what is needed for bees to return to rude health.

I believe that much of what the 'regression' movement does, works with the grain of these principles, and that its successes are due to that fact. What you call 'regression' is actually mostly to allow natural selection for the fittest strains. The most important features are: A) that you do not medicate, and B) that you allow weak colonies to die. The result is adapted, disease-resistant bees. I think this is a great achievement.

I hope I'll be able to discuss these ideas here with you, and look forward to your critiques of the theory underlying 'Evolutionary' beekeeping. I look forward too to the day when I can start keeping bees again here in the UK, and I hope I can help keepers in other countries prevent what has happened here.

Sincerely,

Mike Bispham
http://www.suttonjoinery.co.uk/CCD/

[Rupert]

Brilliant, Mike, you have described exactly what we are trying, and succeeding, to do. We are facing quite alot of opposition from conventional beeks, who seem to think that their failed practices are the only way to go.

Will you allow me to put your enlightening post on the Bee Farmers forum? We are enjoying an ongoing disagreement with them.

Oh and welcome to the forum. You will find this a happy place to be.

Rupert
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A cow on the rocks is not a bum steer

[biobee]

[gunther]

Hi mike
funny enough, i also kept bees for 5 years, and gave up in 2007 for the same reasons you mentioned.
out of sheer lazyness, i left one empty hive standing, and last year a feral swarm moved in.
they are now enjoying my non intervention method and i hope, they will soon throw a swarm themselves.

regards guenther

[Norm]

Brilliant first post Mike! I can tell you will fit in well here, we are of similar minds. Welcome by the way.

I agreed with everything you wrote and would like to point you to a post we made in January along similar lines.
http://www.biobees.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2188&highlight=principles+natural+beekeeping
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Just one beekeepers opinion, look at the others!

[GarlyDog]

Hello and welcome!
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Gary

This message was crafted using 99% post consumer electrons.

http://www.HiveCam.com

[FollowMeChaps]

Welcome from me too Mike - you've exactly hit the right spot with your post, welcome aboard and now enjoy your natural beekeeping.
_________________
Robin
As with everything in life your view of the world depends on where you are standing at the time.
North Somerset local sustainable beekeeping group

[mikebispham]

Thanks so much to you all for your great welcomes, and for being receptive to my diagnosis of CCD.

I will try to read through your previous thread on the same topic, as directed by Norm, but at the moment the server is playing up - I'll try again in (my) morning when it'll be less busy.

For now I'm replying to Biobee, who has put forward the view that we must 'help' the bees through the mess we've fostered on them, writing:

"It seems to me that we have to offer them the opportunity - i.e. time - to learn how to deal with their parasite problems by reducing the load to something below danger level, using something like powdered sugar or possibly organic acids (oxalic, formic, lactic). That could be seen as giving them a crutch - I see it as supporting them while they learn."

I know its hard, but I think this is mistaken and I'll try to explain why, by just waffling about some of the more critical aspects of evolution in the context of bees.

First; it is Natural Selection that has, for the past 100 million years, protected the Honeybee. The mechanism is the ruthless elimination of unfit strains, or, if you like, unfit, or 'unadapted' genes. In the wild, the natural world, those strains that cannot survive are immediately eliminated. Period. End. It is those that can survive and reproduce that get to send their viable genes forward to future generations. There are clear winners and losers in the game of life. The gene-pool is thus constantly cleased on non-viable material. This is the sole mechanism that ensures rude health. Every time we interefer with it, with both substances and fiddly methods, we undermine it.

Second, the natural process ensures that those parasites and pathogens (mites, bacteria, viruses etc - we can call these the 'predators') that kill their hosts are also generally quickly eliminated. That means that the process of selection is playing out here too, the predators steadily weakening, coming into a mutually-beneficial balance with their hosts. Now fine-tuning occurs; those hosts that are better able to live with, or eliminate the pathogens will thrive at the expense of those less able, and their genes will become dominant. Eventually the parasite will be thrown off entirely, surviving perhaps only in isolated pockets, perhaps slowly re-circulating as resistance in the host subsides.

This is the 'dance' of predator and prey, or host and parasite - depending on how you want to view things. This is how things have worked in Nature for 10 billion years; and in the Honeybee species for 100 million years. It is how bees have stayed healthly, no doubt undergoing perioding population crashes as new virulent predators have come along from time to time, yet recovering their niche each time.

The recovery time is surprisingly fast. On my website I show how a species that can double its numbers every year can go from a starting population of 1000 to over 4,000,000 in just 12 years. That is an idealised sum, yet in nature things work just as well. Visualise the geography: while the new disease is spreading outward like ripples in a pool, the new resistant population simply rebuildd in the same pattern.

It is easy to see how the practice of systematic medication undermines both these processes. In the first case, weak hosts reproduce, creating similarly weak future generations. In the second case, the medicated bees are simply good food for the evolution of those predators that evolve to make best use of them.

To apply this; we now have both bees that cannot survive without chemicals in most apiaries, (and often don't survive at all) and mites that are superb survivors, adaptors and exploiters of the feast we have laid for them.

To respond then to your plea that we 'help' the bees. What is true for 'systematic medication' is just as true for any other process that enables colonies to survive which wouldn't otherwise do so. And this is true of the kinds of acts you suggest.

What should happen is no help at all - just like Nature. In the ensuing pandemic a percentage - it may be a very high percentage - simply cease to exist. The survivers survive because they are resistant. Now they multiply happily, refilling their niche, each new generation equipped with the genes that convey resistance.

This is evolution in action; fast, effective. What has evolved is relatively minor - it isn't like a whole new species has come into existence, just a new variation in behaviour or something else that confers resistance. But the development of resistance, or adaptation to other environmental changes, _is_ evolution just the same. (Don't let anyone get away with saying 'it will take thousands of years for bees to evolve resistance' - they don't know what they are talking about see my the main Thesis at my website for two examples.)

To my main point: anything at all that interferes with this process risks setting back the recovery.

I think it is a mistake to cast this in terms of the bees 'learning' - it is an inappropriate analogy. They don't live long enough to 'learn', and they are not that clever. We have to cast matters instead in the entirely appropriate scientific terms of adaptation; through the ruthless mechanism of natural selection. Think of all the complex ways nature arranges for the best genes to go foward - the great competition to supply the stuff of the future generations. Out of billions of human sperm, one gets to fertilise the egg. Stags, lions, countless beasts fight for the right to mate with the females, the most powerful, healthiest, fittest, winning. The strongest drones are those that get to mate with the queens. And on and on - nature is highly competetive. Every time we short-circuit that process of selecting the best genes, we weaken the species.

This seems heartless, ruthless, and an abandonment of our 'charges'. But that is just seeing the picture the wrong way. Bees are not patients for us to medicate back to health; they are a biological species which positively requires, and has the absolute right to, the only mechanism that can supply a recovery of health. That is why I use in my theses the words 'Denial of Natural Selection'. It is because natural selection has been denied in both domestic and feral environments (here in the UK) that the population has crashed.

In my view the Honeybee - like all species, has an absolute right to Natural Selection, the sole mechanism that can ensure its future survival.

I know that is a tall order. Its consequences are huge. But it has the merit of being _real_. If we work from an understanding of what really happens in nature, the grand selecting mechanism of the evolutionary process, we can plan to work with the grain of nature. That we must do - it is that we've forgotton how the basic principles of breeding that is the root cause of everything has gone wrong. We are no longer sound breeders _because_ we medicate, _because_ we mollcoddle. We have no right to describe what we do as sound husbandry, or 'natural', or 'organic' or 'biological'... until we remember, and act upon, the principles of sound husbandry. That means not merely allowing the fittest genes to go through to the next generation; but also not interfering in the equally important elimination of unfit genes.

Our acts do need planning; but we have to see how the the great interaction of species and environment functions, in order to be able to understand what the right and wrong moves are. And we can do this. We have to work to spead the understanding, to improve it, to stop the bad stuff, and encourage the right things. Then we can fix it, and return to bee-heaven. We really can.

Thank you for the opportunity to re-think, and re-argue my case. It really, really, helps.

Best,

Mike Bispham

http://www.suttonjoinery.co.uk/CCD/

[biobee]

Mike, thanks for expanding your argument. You appear to be well versed in this subject - what is your background, if I may ask?

You seem to be very sure that CCD is the direct result of medication for varroa - at least, that is how I read your web site. Is this a fair - if perfunctory - summary? If so, what makes you so sure? Not that I necessarily disagree with you, but such certainty must be backed by evidence, not just assertion, I think.

I think a weakness in your argument about natural selection is that varroa has hit the honeybee much harder and faster than anything in nature could have done, because varroa - and bees - have been transported around the world much faster than any pest could have done unassisted by man. This, to my mind, would seem to have reduced the chances quite dramatically of the bees having an opportunity to learn how to handle them.

You might also want to consider what Dave Cushman has to say about foundation and cell size as a factor in the success of varroa.

As to bees not being able to learn, I dispute that wholeheartedly: bees are clearly able to learn the location of their hive; the location of food in relation to their hive (as well as being able to communicate the information); which flowers produce nectar and honey under what weather conditions; how to deal with predators such as hornets (there is an excellent video that demonstrates this example); and much else besides.

Finally, whatever your position about abandoning bees to their fate, the plain fact of the matter is that neither you nor anyone else is in a position to tell beekeepers to abandon all treatments and allow their bees to live or die as they may. I cannot imagine for a moment that you can persuade even a modest number of amateur beekeepers to do so - and certainly no commercial beekeepers would give you the time of day. Breeders of the survivor British bees would be horrified if you tell them to abandon their project and allow the bees that survived Acarapis woodi one hundred years ago to die out from varroa or its associated viruses. So in the real world, it just isn't going to happen.

That leaves us with my proposal: treat minimally - just enough to reduce the parasite load - then the survivor colonies will have a chance to build up resistance to the viruses and perhaps learn how to defeat varroa - or at least learn to live with it. Hive design has a role to play here too: did you know that the reproduction rate of varroa is drastically reduced at temperatures around those found in the brood nest? This is surely an argument to improve the way we house bees, rather than abandon them to their fate.
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[biobee]

I just found the following paragraph in your thesis:

[mikebispham]

BioBee
Mike, thanks for expanding your argument. You appear to be well versed in this subject - what is your background, if I may ask?

Mike
Hi Biobee,

I’ve worked for the past 20 or so years as a joiner (suttonjoinery.co.uk), and have recently completed a degree in modern philosophy. The more relevant part of my background is… around 20 years of being a committed conservationist and student of nature, followed by nearly 20 years of following the calamity of varroa treatment, and thinking, corresponding and writing about it. This has included working closely with a senior biologist specifically on the component of evolution and disease resistance. An estimate would be that I’ve probably spent some 1000-1500 hours worrying at the problem during this time. So I’m no expert in terms of being a trained scientist or ‘trained’ beekeeper – or anything else – I’ve done my homework. And every single biologist and breeder I’ve spoken to has said exactly the same thing – your diagnosis has to be right, because if things were not happening that way, there would be something wrong with evolutionary theory. It is not dogmatic to work from the presumption that evolutionary theory is correct.

BioBee
You seem to be very sure that CCD is the direct result of medication for varroa - at least, that is how I read your web site. Is this a fair - if perfunctory - summary? If so, what makes you so sure? Not that I necessarily disagree with you, but such certainty must be backed by evidence, not just assertion, I think.

Mike
I think I’ve answered the first part if that; as to evidence, I’m finding it daily, if thus far anecdotally, in the testimony of beekeepers I speak with online who are finding that if they stop medicating and allow natural selection to play out, they get, with luck, a few resistant colonies. And then there are the feral colonies. Again the evidence is mostly anecdotal, but most beekeepers agree there are feral colonies. But you are right; my case is theoretical, although based on sound and well-established principles, rather than empirical. One of the things that we must try to do is gather more evidence that given a chance natural selection is playing out successfully, and document it. Perhaps we could set up a working group to look into that?

BioBee
I think a weakness in your argument about natural selection is that varroa has hit the honeybee much harder and faster than anything in nature could have done, because varroa - and bees - have been transported around the world much faster than any pest could have done unassisted by man. This, to my mind, would seem to have reduced the chances quite dramatically of the bees having an opportunity to learn how to handle them.

Mike
Again you speak about bees ‘learning’. (And I’ll deal with that more fully in a moment) We have to get used to the scientific terms; animals ‘adapt’ to changes in their environment through the selection of genes best able to meet new challenges.

You are right to say varroa has been transport far more rapidly than would have occurred in nature. However, think again about my analogy of ripples – while this is much more untidy, it still works at each local level. Wherever there is a viable environment in terms of food and shelter, feral bees will be infected, most colonies will die, the biological niche will be repopulated by resistant colonies.

But again, please, while we discuss these things, bear in mind my central argument; and ask yourself: would things be improved by medicating to the max in the wild as well as in every apiary? What would be the effect of that on the selection process? How would that help the bees adapt?

BioBee
You might also want to consider what Dave Cushman has to say about foundation and cell size as a factor in the success of varroa. <<

Mike
Dave Cushman may well have some good points here. But they don’t take anything away from my thesis.

BioBee
As to bees not being able to learn, I dispute that wholeheartedly: bees are clearly able to learn the location of their hive; the location of food in relation to their hive (as well as being able to communicate the information); which flowers produce nectar and honey under what weather conditions; how to deal with predators such as hornets (there is an excellent video that demonstrates this example); and much else besides.

Mike
I’m afraid I’m going to get philosophical on you here! ‘Learn’ is a vague term. We cannot use it to generalize, for what it means to ‘learn’ in one context will not remain the case in another. To be specific, of course bees can ‘learn’ from each other where the current nectar sources are, and are perhaps capable exhibiting other learned behaviours like the one you mention with hornets. But their ‘learning’ capacity is extremely limited. I doubt very much it plays much of a role in coping with mites. I would expect grooming to be a genetically-inherited behavioural trait.

This is however an interesting point; and I suppose we would have to talk in terms of bee social learning vs genetically inherited behaviours in the same way that we talk about, for example, human intelligence in terms of ‘nature vs nurture’. If you are right, and grooming is a skill that can be passed from bee to bee, then you have a point, and some ‘help’ might be in order. But I think we would want to balance that extremely carefully over the evolutionary arguments. Do we really want to preference strains that need help to learn grooming skills, over those that can do it fast enough without our help?

Can I suggest there is room for discussion here; but say that it will be my intention not to allow that discussion to obscure my main point. Good husbandry involves breeding from healthy stock, and that does not mean stock that has been artificially maintained.

BioBee
Finally, whatever your position about abandoning bees to their fate, the plain fact of the matter is that neither you nor anyone else is in a position to tell beekeepers to abandon all treatments and allow their bees to live or die as they may. <<

Mike
Well now… We can challenge this position in several ways.

First: what give beekeepers the right to cause damage to a wild animal that rightfully belongs to the whole of humanity, and to nature itself? This is a conservation and biodiversity issue, not merely a farming issue. There is a growing view that all of nature should be protected against any threat at all from the activities of humans. Why should the Honeybee be exempted, why should its gene pool be vastly reduced, just to allow a tiny minority of business interests to survive in the short term?

Secondly; it is in beekeepers (and farmers, and conservationists, and the general public, and the Honeybees’…. interests that they recover good health. That is not going to happen by any means other than the ones I have outlines – ask any biologist or evolutionary theorist.

With that said; a scientifically-informed strategy, aided by public funding, would support beekeepers through a transitional period. This could be done locally. It would require the elimination of transported bees, and improvements to the local flora. The first could easily be regulated, the second supported by grants.

What I’m trying to say here is that there is a away forward – it just needs thinking through properly, and will require government support.

BioBee
I cannot imagine for a moment that you can persuade even a modest number of amateur beekeepers to do so - and certainly no commercial beekeepers would give you the time of day.

Mike
A well designed program to recover the health of bees might find more support among commercial beekeepers than you imagine. Especially once they understand clearly they are he cause of their own problems.

BioBee
Breeders of the survivor British bees would be horrified if you tell them to abandon their project and allow the bees that survived Acarapis woodi one hundred years ago to die out from varroa or its associated viruses.

Mike
That is not the proposition. As we’ve seen, a percentage survive, and repopulate. Bee ‘breeders’, to be worthy of the title, must learn sound breeding practice. That is incredibly simple; follow the unbreakable principle: do not breed from sick stock.

I do understand that I’m introducing some huge shocks to the system here. Nice friendly beekeepers, who take care of our friends the Honeybees, turn out to be murdering the species! Nice bee breeders, who replace the bees killed by that nasty mite, turn out to be supply yet more sick bees. Nice pharmaceutical companies, who make the medicine to keep bees well, turn out to be a key part of the problem. The nice regulators and bee inspectors, who stop horrid unhygienic amateurs from spreading the disease, turn out to be enforcing the very regime that is causing it!

But that is what is needed; CCD won’t go away until the role of selection is understood, and acted upon. This is a huge shift of consciousness. It must start with familiarity with the principles of evolutionary theory, natural selection, and sound breeding practice. Then the rest drops into place, and we can see that the other contributory factors are relatively minor by comparison.

But yes, large business interests are threatened by my diagnosis. If you are in the business of messing with bees in ways that are damaging the species, then you will have to shift the way you work to align your practices with Nature. We are not going to allow the species to go on being abused, driven toward extinction, by a minority of vested stakeholders. And we are going to start to stop them by bringing to light the mechanisms at work.

BioBee
So in the real world, it just isn't going to happen.

Mike
We’ll see about that

BioBee
That leaves us with my proposal: treat minimally - just enough to reduce the parasite load - then the survivor colonies will have a chance to build up resistance to the viruses and perhaps learn how to defeat varroa - or at least learn to live with it. Hive design has a role to play here too: did you know that the reproduction rate of varroa is drastically reduced at temperatures around those found in the brood nest? This is surely an argument to improve the way we house bees, rather than abandon them to their fate.


Mike
I think I’ve addressed this now; but will add: it is probable that those varieties of mites that can stand brood nest temperatures have killed their hosts, and died along with them. The mite will adapt to whatever environments we give it – but we cannot give it one in which the host dies! The best designer of comb is the colony that makes up its own mind about what goes where, and then thrives. Period.
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Posted: Tue May 26, 2009 11:59 pm Post subject:

BioBee
I just found the following paragraph in your thesis:

(Mike’s) Quote:
“4.03 Agricultural poisoning

Last on my list of factors deleterious to bee-keeping is poisoning. I have kept this till now, because I feel that while the main problems interrelate, poisoning is entirely separate. It is all too easily over-emphasized by a beekeeping community that has not yet recognized the responsibility of its own practices. It has acted as a focus for anger and blame and generally become a distraction. There can be no argument that pesticide is a deplorable practice and many hives and feral colonies have perished as a result. Yet these incidents are generally isolated cases rather than systematic. “

BioBee
While I agree that many beekeepers are in denial about the role played by their own introduction of chemicals into the hive, I utterly reject the suggestion that the use of pesticides in agriculture has been 'over-emphasized' by beekeepers. The BBKA have, until very recently, rejected the idea that pesticides were even an issue! It has taken a concerted effort over a long period to even persuade them to consider the possibility that it may be an issue, and they still take money from the very companies who manufacture the biggest-selling pesticides in the world.

Mike
I’m absolutely with you on pesticides. My thesis concerns the denial of natural selection, and the failure to replace it by sound breeding practice. Let me reiterate once more: never breed from animals that have to be medicated simply in order to stay alive. At best what you will do is breed more of the same; more likely you will strengthen the pathogens you have medicated for.

[snip]

BioBee
Have you considered that the widespread use until quite recently of pyrethroids - the same chemicals used to treat varroa for the last 16 years in the UK - in agriculture could have accelerated the mites' tolerance for these chemicals: low-level doses coming into the hive and being absorbed into the wax along with the doses applied by beekeepers, exacerbating the problem?

Mike
That is part of the mechanisms I am talking about. You really have to shift your mind-set from one that thinks bees can be treated like mammals in medical terms, toward one that recognizes that evolution is the only viable defender of their health.

BioBee
While I am in no way defending the actions of beekeepers in this matter, which I think have been - at best - misguided, I do think you are in danger of ignoring other influences that may turn out to be just as important.

Mike
Nothing is more important than nature’s selection mechanism. Period. While I agree about other environmental factors, if the bee is denied the mechanism of adaption, it cannot recover.

BioBee
IMO we should continue to ask questions, but avoid dogma.

Mike
I agree. But I’m afraid evolutionary theory trumps beekeeper ‘wisdom.’ The former is sound science; the latter is where the dogmas are to be found, very often offered to buttress the justification for actions that support financial positions. And that is understandable.

Again, thank you for giving me the opportunity to think some more,

All best, Mike

[Rupert]

Fascinating posts from Phil and Mike. From my perspective; as someone new to beekeeping and therefore new to the vast problems that have been foisted upon the bee, no treatment whatsoever seems to be the only way to go.

Counting the mite drop every month has shown me that, hopefully, my bees have adapted to the mite. The first count in October was in the low teens. This went down to single figures before rising to 34 in March. I resisted the urge to sugar dust and by May the count was down to 6. The wild swarm had a count of less than 2.

I will not treat again as all my bees are from clonies that heve been managing themselves for over 11 years. Lucky me.

I appreciate that to not treat and, perhaps, let your bees perish for the greater good of the bee population must be very, very difficult to do. But if you have to treat, they're probably going to perish anyway.
_________________
A cow on the rocks is not a bum steer

[gunther]

Hi Mike
i have to wholehartedly agree with you, and thanks for being here.
what we are doing to the honeybee, we are doing to many other species ,including OUR OWN: medicating to survive and breeding from sick and inferior stock.
you surely know, what the ethical and moral implications of this thesis are, if applied generally and not just on honeybees. (which are truly an indicator species in so many ways)
i would be interested in your take of that wider view, unless that was considered off topic, on a beekeeping forum.

regards guenther

[Brosville]

I think what we're seeing is a "perfect storm", and to isolate just one "cause" is shortsighted. The latest research from Penn State is bearing out what I've long believed - that the burden of "blanket bombing" our crops is effectively waging chemical warfare on every creature on the planet, and that the "cocktail" effect is much underestimated - from memory, tank-mixing neonicotinoids and common fungicides, (which is a common practice) can result in the actions of the neonicotinoids being made several fold more potent.........
In a small island like the UK it is virtually impossible to stop one's bees from having access to such toxins, as such the bees do not have a level playing field when it comes to arguments such as "let the sick die", I have no problem in using non-toxic aids to help them bolster their systems to fight off that with which they'd have happily coped without the chemicals.
This, of course, must be allied to a "clean up agriculture" movement - the present system based on high inputs of fossil fuel derivatives is totally unsustainable - if we can attain a system based around permaculture, and nil use of agrochemicals then I would concur with "survival of the fittest" - in the meantime I'll continue with trying to optimise hive design, and the occasional use of such things as icing sugar with a clear conscience
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[mikebispham]