# killing the bees



## mare (Aug 31, 2006)

talked to a beekeeper from my home town yesterday. his wife said that he was out vacumming up the bees and the bull was watching him, and i replied "oh no did the cows knock the hive over?"

oh no he is killing them so we can harvest the honey.

i asked dont you try and winter them over?

he comes on and says there is no profit in doing that--its cheaper to re-buy in the spring. and you lose 100#'s honey.

i have been thinking about this off and on today and it makes me sad. part of the reason i am raising bees is to try and create a better bee population----i know my couple hives arent really going to make a difference but it just seems so greedy that they would kill the bees so they dont have to let them have any honey for survival.

how many beekeepers practice this????


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## Energy Rebel (Jan 22, 2011)

Hopefully not many.
Greed is surely one of the most destructive and infectious diseases known to man, isn't it?


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## tom j (Apr 3, 2009)

from what I understand this is more common then you think ,, if you think there way ,,, say it takes 30 pounds of honey (( I know it takes more )) for a hive to winter ,, ok so at the store they are selling honey for $3.50 a pound ((( yea I know more like $4 a pound )) but lets say $3.50 a pound .. you have $105.00 in honey that is going to feed the bees , over winter ,, and a 3 pound box in the spring is $75 ,,, It just cost $30 not to kill the hive off in the fall ..


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

One of our local beekeepers got tired of losing two-thirds or more of his bees every winter. Lost 23 of 27 several years ago and finally quit trying. Now he harvests all the honey and re-nukes in the spring from a source about 25 miles away.

Martin


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## stormwalker (Oct 27, 2004)

Achh!
But, why was he losing so many?


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

In years gone by that is how they harvested all the honey from skeps. But back then they slected skeps with good traits and strong to over winter to get next years start from.

I supect that this pratiac will come to a halt in the near future when the price of a package or nuc cost out weighs the the money collected from the honey.

Some people have no idea on how to make a deterition on why their bees don't over winter.


 Al


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## k9 (Feb 6, 2008)

Ah greed, we see it everywhere. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. 1 Timothy 6:10


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

As Al wrote, often there is no idea why there is a big die-off. We could blame our up and down winters of the past 4 or 5 years but then every beekeeper in the area would be affected rather than just a few. Maybe the conventional "white boxes" are contributing to it. In late fall and early spring, used to go past one wintering area and there would be 30-40 white hives. That beekeeper reached deep into his pockets last year and switched 100% to unpainted top bar hives. So far, he's the only one around here who has done so. 

Martin


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## brody (Feb 19, 2009)

how very sad


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## emdeengee (Apr 20, 2010)

wow. How stupid this "beekeeper" is . Over the last few years hundreds of millions of bees have died causing world wide shortages and problems and yet he deliberately kills his hives? wow.


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## Michael W. Smith (Jun 2, 2002)

That's about like killing a chicken after you get it's first egg or killing a cow after you first milk it. "It will cost me too much to feed it tomorrow. So I'll just kill them and throw them away."

Provided your bees make it through the winter, your hive is going to be so much stronger and bigger than a package you install.

What did they kill the bees with? I suppose some kind of poison that would poison the honey too?!?


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## marytx (Dec 4, 2002)

I've never heard of it. The only reason I've known someone to kill a hive on purpose is because they had become Africanized and were too close to the neighbors. We didn't even kill ours when they became Africanized. We just requeened.

To kill them all so you don't have to leave them a little honey? That doesn't sound right.


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

Michael W. Smith said:


> That's about like killing a chicken after you get it's first egg or killing a cow after you first milk it. "It will cost me too much to feed it tomorrow. So I'll just kill them and throw them away."


Yes, but you don't have to feed 6 months worth of eggs back to the chicken or 6 months worth of milk to the cow in order to keep them alive. Nor does an egg farmer have to keep every rooster chick or a dairy farmer have to keep every bull calf. 



> What did they kill the bees with? I suppose some kind of poison that would poison the honey too?!?


Bees are sucked out by vacuum just like a shop-vac. Doesn't affect the honey in any way. 

Martin


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## mare (Aug 31, 2006)

Paquebot said:


> Yes, but you don't have to feed 6 months worth of eggs back to the chicken or 6 months worth of milk to the cow in order to keep them alive. Nor does an egg farmer have to keep every rooster chick or a dairy farmer have to keep every bull calf.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


it still just seems inherently wrong and smacks of being bad stewards of bees. make all the excuses you want Martin i just cant agree with it or anybody that does it. 

most people go into it knowing that that is what it takes to help them survive but then the greed kicks in.


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

Greed isn't the reason, either. Even the moderator of this forum is raising his bees for a profit. Nobody is getting paid by some super secret fund to raise bees at a loss. Nor are there any government subsidies. Beekeeping is a business and neither you nor I can be forced into operating a business at a loss. Besides, were it not for the honey, I could do without honeybees. Anything that I need pollinated is more capable of being done so by native bees.

Martin


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## mare (Aug 31, 2006)

when some one can tell you they are killing the bees because there is more profit--that is GREED.


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

You win! Every beekeeper who sells honey is doing it for greed. Those who don't are those who eventually sell all of the equipment for 10Â¢ on the dollar to all of those other greedy individuals who are looking to make a profit by keeping bees. As Tom and Al have both pointed out, both are becoming more common than you think. By _both_, I mean keeping bees for a profit and re-nuking every spring with new bees. You've now been exposed to both facts. 

Martin


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## mare (Aug 31, 2006)

every beekeeper who is killing off the bees for all the honey is greedy. as far as selling honey for money but giving them what they need to survive--that IS NOT greed. and it sure sounds like the people that are letting the bees have what they need to survive are still making money. so whats your point??? i guess your logic is lost on me.


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

There is no logic involved other than what you claim is greed and beekeepers claim is common sense. Where's the logic of selling off herds of cattle in Texas? Is it just because someone is too greedy to spend more money than they are worth to have water hauled in? Where's the logic of trying to save weak swarms? Is it just because someone is too greedy to spend more money feeding and medicating them than they are worth? As already pointed out, it's a lot more common than you think and it's a good reason why there are a lot of people involved in nukes and packages. 

In the end, the logic that I fail to see is why you fault me for reporting what is a common practice. Tom already explained the monetary angle and I reported why my beekeeping friend does it. "Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts!"

Martin


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## mare (Aug 31, 2006)

see--i am not talking about "weak" hives. and i think some one already said something about the practice coming to a halt in the future when bees are too spendy to just keep replacing when a person doesnt have to. hopefully the beekeepers that are doing this are way outnumbered by the ones that arent (and i believe they are). i am not faulting you for "reporting what is common practice" i am faulting you for agreeing with something you "think" is common practice. you really seem to be a very condescending person--why is that? you can reply to this and have the last word (which you really seem to need) i am done wasting time with you.


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## gone-a-milkin (Mar 4, 2007)

FWIW, I know a local beekeeper who will come and collect 'used' bees at the end of the season and over-winter them himself.
Sort of like a rescue mission? Not really, he just figured they are worth the cost to feed them and he never has to buy any.
He sort of swaps hives with people. (I dont keep bees so IDK exactly how he does it.)

Farming is a business and unless the cost of buying new outweighs feeding for winter, the practice will continue.


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

Yes, it may come to a halt in the future but that means that it does take place now. If it didn't exist, it could not come to a halt! What you need to do is not take out your anger at your fellow HT friends but to your neighboring beekeeper who is one of many who practice it. Becoming angry at me isn't going to stop him from doing it. In fact, you and I have one thing very much in common that nobody will admit to. That is, we both know a beekeeper who does it. Since you are angry at me because I know one, then perhaps I should be angry at you because you know one? Same difference. In my case, I found the answer to be that the beekeeper got tired of losing such a big percentage of his swarms. The beekeeper involved in your case was one of those which Tom described. If one wants to just have a hobby hive, nothing wrong with that. (If I could, I'd have one.) If one wants to have 500 hives and spend 4 days a week selling honey at farmers markets, nothing wrong with that. But if someone says that I must have X number of hives and maintain them at a loss, there's going to be 0 number of swarms ASAP!

Martin


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

One year at ANR week at Michigan State I was able to talk to some bee keepers from Denmark. they could not understand why American bee keepers left honey in the hives for the bees to over winter on. They harvested every drop of honey from the hives then bought sugar to feed them for winter. 
Unlike America they had protection from imports and the honey was at that time about $10.00 a pound. Sugar was going for less than a dollar a pound. 

Once it was explained to them that our honey at that time was worth less than a dollar a pound at a whole saler they better under stood the leaving of honey to over winter. 
But that brought on a new puzzle. Why did the American goverment allow the import of honey much of it from China with contamition in it when American bee keepers could supply the honey needed in this country or could ramp up production to do so.

People do what people do and nothing short of it costing more to kill off the bees will change that. I would suspect that once the replacement cost was more than the honey was worth you would see used equipment for sale.


 Al


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## mare (Aug 31, 2006)

Paquebot said:


> Yes, it may come to a halt in the future but that means that it does take place now. If it didn't exist, it could not come to a halt! What you need to do is not take out your anger at your fellow HT friends but to your neighboring beekeeper who is one of many who practice it. Becoming angry at me isn't going to stop him from doing it. In fact, you and I have one thing very much in common that nobody will admit to. That is, we both know a beekeeper who does it. Since you are angry at me because I know one, then perhaps I should be angry at you because you know one? Same difference. In my case, I found the answer to be that the beekeeper got tired of losing such a big percentage of his swarms. The beekeeper involved in your case was one of those which Tom described. If one wants to just have a hobby hive, nothing wrong with that. (If I could, I'd have one.) If one wants to have 500 hives and spend 4 days a week selling honey at farmers markets, nothing wrong with that. But if someone says that I must have X number of hives and maintain them at a loss, there's going to be 0 number of swarms ASAP!
> 
> Martin


i am not angry with you that you know a beekeeper that does that--i am not really angry at you (might of been kinda crabby yesterday). i guess my problem is that these people that do this arent operating at a loss--they just want more and if killing the bees is the way to get it that is what they are gonna do--to me that says bad bussiness. it sounds like they can be fed sugar water to build up their winter stores but instead of doing that just kill them off. i guess if i were in a bussiness that i kept losing and couldnt figure out why i would feel i was in the wrong bussiness. i guess a big part of me feels that killing the bees is messing with nature. but i guess that is acceptable to alot of people. but yet we wonder why things are the way they are. sorry if i got too excited.


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

Mare, right now a lot of beekeepers have been asking themselves the same questions on ethics and trying to figure a way around it. Colony collapse and mite problems are so common in some areas that it's frustrating them enough just to have their bees survive the summer. North American beekeepers can't produce enough honey to supply the public demand and having it wasted on what seems like a suicidal venture means that it must be obtained elsewhere. Visit this forum 6 months from now and view the posts about how many work hard to keep their swarms alive all winter and find nothing but a pile of dead bees. From a humane viewpoint, I'd think that sudden death now is better than prolonged suffering resulting in the same end. That's the standard for higher life such as pets and farm animals. I see no reason why it should be any different for lower life forms.

Martin


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## tom j (Apr 3, 2009)

I do not think Hes saying that he is agreeing about killing the hive ,, he say's that this is why they are doing it , and as you know if there's a way to make more money doing one thing diffident , with less work ,, some will do it that way , just to come out $5 ahead .. And they don't care who or what pays the price , as long as it's not them and they get $5 a head in the deal ...


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## stormwalker (Oct 27, 2004)

I would be so happy to take one of those hives marked for destruction!
I don't have a hive because of the Ortho people around me. 
I can't, in good conscience, have healthy bees try to survive the idiots around me.


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