I remember last year reading in The Barefoot Beekeeper book by Phil Chandler about honey bees being in great trouble thanks to the overuse of pesticides and thanks to the bee unfriendly conventional beekeeping practice. Since I am interested in living on a farm as a self-sufficient homesteader I quickly realised that without bees there will be no food. They are way too important to just ignore this fact!
So I looked into this so called Natural Beekeeping in Top Bar Hives (TBH) which is bee friendly. I have built 2 TBHs last year and bought one colony and caught one prime swarm. My beekeeping journey had begun!
But am I a beekeeper really? The word "beekeeper" in my opinion has a very negative connotation, mainly focusing on honey production, making money from pollinating mono crop fields and bee unfriendly manipulation. I just can't call myself a beekeeper!
So what am I then? I'm not in it for the honey or money from pollination, nor from selling nucleus hives nor Queens.
Some people call themselves Bee Guardians. They mainly focus on preserving the bees, both honey bees and solitary bees. Just like me.
Words are very important for us humans and words bring energy with them. Energy which can bring you up or down. Words like idiot and darling will create different effect in a person when spoken to them, no?
The same can be applied to calling oneself a Beekeeper or Bee Guardian.
Bee Guardian has a clear purpose; creating a bee friendly environment both in the hive and in the environment. Bee Guardian does not rob bees off honey and then feed them with sugar syrup. Bees are to live as natural as possible in any given locality. We live in a era of large pesticide laden mono-crop agriculture so talking about bee friendly natural ecosystem based on healthy biodiversity is part of a fairy tale these days.
But Bee Guardian does plant for bees constantly to enrich their diet.
So next time someone asks me are you a beekeeper I will say with a smile on my face "No, Im not :) I am a Bee Guardian :) "
What are you?
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