Natural Beekeeping International Forum

[luk_lak]

Hello,

Anybody here uses or used it? What is it and will it contaminate the honey and wax? Does it fall under "treatment free beekeeping"?

I want to purchase wax for cosmetics from hives treated with it and pondering the health consequences.

I'm reading on various sites (just Google the name) claims like below but I can't find what is in it.

[luk_lak]

Really nobody heard about it or used it?

No comments for few days

[hannah donovan]

hi luk luk... i am totally new so not heard of it, but going to conventional beekeeping class tonight, so will ask.. but i do know that most people use icing sugar for the bees to groom themselves, so look on thier website nd check the ingredients to see whats in it..

[hannah donovan]

Hi luk lak
i have just e-mailed the company as i loked at their website and could not see any ingredients.. just thier caims on it being totally natural..so i have written to ask what is actually in it..

[luk_lak]

They said the same to me...

I'll try to avoid any treatment if possible. Maybe just encourage natural grooming behaviour with sprinkling with dusting sugar.

[trekmate]

Hive Clean Ingredients: Water, Saccharose, Citric acid, Oxalic acid, Formic acid, Propolis extract and essentil oils.
From http://www.mrbees.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4&Itemid=15

For me, Citric, Oxalic & Formic acids are all natural, but wouldn't appear in a hive in the concentrations you would be creating. Essential oils do not appear in a hive, but are a concentrate of something natural.

Horse $h1t is natural - I wouldn't put that in my hives either....

[hannah donovan]

here is the reply
he ingredients for HiveClean are:- Water, Saccharose, Citric acid, Oxalic acid, Formic acid, Propolis Extract, Div. Essential oils. That is taken exactly as written on the product information sheet.

[luk_lak]

Thanks for the info trekmate.

I knew they are hiding something.

[Smorning]

I agree with trekmate however I would like to raise the following points for discussion.

Any intervention by a beekeeper constitutes a treatment that obviously includes adding foriegn agents even if organic into the hive or our management techniques (splitting, drone culling etc). Although a lot of natural beekeepers use sugar dusting this cannot be considered naturally occurring in a hive any more that horse dung ! If you want to go treatment free it's a numbers game, to be sustainable you need to obtain resistance by breeding from survivor stock over many years. As most TBHs are populated from swarms you may be lucky if this was from a feral or mite resistant colony, but it's more likely to have come from a managed hive and will most probably have impaired resistance.

With a few hives I think it's a risk to do nothing at all but it's up to the individual beekeeper to make his/her own decision, nothing is right or wrong you have to decide yourself. If you decide to treat or apply certain management techniques using organic products and working with the bees is preferable.

Most urban beekeepers cannot easily let the bees be totally intervention free, I'm lucky I can let my bees swarm as I live in the countryside, those in a city cannot do so without upsetting the neighbours as the saying goes all beekeeping is local

[trekmate]

[Smorning]

Trekmate it's becoming a mutual appreciation society as I agree totally

Ps: the hives you made for me are going great guns this year hope your keeping well

[trekmate]