Historically, we began our relationship with bees when somebody discovered that the taste of honey was worth the pain it cost to harvest. We became honey-hunters, and while there were few of us and many of them, this was sustainable. When somebody discovered that it was possible to offer shelter to honeybees while they made their honey, and then kill them off to raid their stores, we became bee keepers, and while there were few bee keepers and many honeybees, that too was sustainable.

Then someone invented a clever way to house bees that did not require them to be killed, but instead allowed people to manage and control them to some extent, arranging things so as to trick them into producing more honey for their masters than for themselves, and we became bee farmers. And that was sustainable for a while because there were still many of them and although there were also many of us, we could manipulate their reproduction so as to make more of them as we needed.

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In 'The Barefoot Beekeeper', I proposed the following three, simple principles for natural beekeeping:

1. Interference in the natural lives of the bees is kept to a minimum.

2. Nothing is put into the hive that is known to be, or likely to be harmful either to the bees, to us or to the wider environment and nothing is taken out that the bees cannot afford to lose.

3. The bees know what they are doing: our job is to listen to them and provide the optimum conditions for their well-being, both inside and outside the hive.

These principles seem to me to form a solid foundation for our thinking about how we approach bees and beekeeping. As soon as we step beyond those basic principles, we find ourselves in danger of beginning to create a 'book of rules'. And it doesn't take much looking around the world today to see how divisive and destructive those other 'books of rules' have been.

'Natural', 'balanced' or 'sustainable' beekeeping – whatever name we give it – is a process, not a fixed goal. We have to remain flexible and always be on the lookout for ways to improve our approach, so everything in this book is offered in this spirit: indications of what seems to work, with the possibility that there are even better ways yet to be discovered, or – more likely – re-discovered, as there is really nothing new in beekeeping.

Phil Chandler

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