Beekeeping is a business.
Bottom line is profit.
Australian Honey and Bee Products worth 90 million per year (Dept of Agriculture)
Value to agriculture and economy as a whole (pollination) in the billions.

As with all business, profit is bottom line, everything else secondary.
Profit driven industries involving livestock – animal suffers for sake of profit.

Techniques used not in best interest of bees…. rather…
Constant attempts to increase production in cheapest/easiest ways.
Examples with bees:
– square Langstroth box (ease of transport)
– removable frames invasive techniques (manipulations)
– feeding sugar, queen breeding, artificial insemination
– chemical and antibiotic treatments
– migratory honey cropping
– migratory pollination of monocrops

Negative effects of industry led commercial practices becoming more and more obvious.
Not just with but especially with bees.
World waking up to importance of the European honeybee and all pollinators.
European honeybee – canary in the coal mine – the people are listening and want to take action.
A wave of interest/concern risen in response. (A new wave of consciousness?)
Many exciting movements offering real grass roots solutions.
Permaculture is one.
Another is Bee-Centred Beekeeping (also called natural/apicentric/holistic/bee-friendly)
and it’s this that I am inviting you to be part of today.
Bee-Centred (instead of money/honey centred) beekeeping.

“Money runs the world so that’s just the sad reality.” |

Commercial beekeepers, commercial interests, commercial practices.
Traditional practices evolved over time in line with industry to become commercial practices.
(Human continnuum takes a massive diverging path as a result of industry)

Same practices these days also being taught to hobbyists.

Hobbyists not constrained by commerce, so why use commercial practices?

Beekeeping that is no about money/honey, but about the bee.