Honeybees have been around for around 120 million years, surviving untold natural trials like ice ages, droughts, temperature fluctuations, and a wide variety of predators. Reflecting on their remarkable persistence over the thousands of millennia, a movement is growing amongst beekeepers to try to support honeybees' intrinsic survival skills. This approach is in contrast to the typical style of beekeeping, which is much more controlling and hands-on.
The goal of "Darwinian beekeeping" is to create optimal conditions for bees to make honey like they would have done without the interference of human intervention. Techniques include fostering smaller hives, spacing hives further apart to prevent the spread of disease, protect the hives from insecticides, using more natural hive building materials to support the production of propolis, and other practices that let the bees live as naturally as possible. The belief is that honeybee populations will then become stronger and more robust and better able to fight off parasites and other challenges.
Our Bee America Apiary fully endorses this enlightened approach to beekeeping and implements such practices for our bees. We hope that over time natural selection will improve our bees' ability to survive and reproduce.
