The health of the honey bee has reached a crucial state. The recent loss of thousands of colonies in the UK and abroad is of real concern to beekeepers and non-beekeepers alike.

What to do? Our modern thinking leads us to hope for a magic bullet – something (possibly a splendid new chemical) which will eradicate the varroa mite, or the foulbrood, or the nosema, or the hive beetle, or whatever ills are currently besetting our bees.

But some people feel uneasy. Doesn’t it seem to happen that, hard on the heels of the new wonder cure, comes another bee assailant, or a super-resistant version of the old one? How long can we keep doing this? Surely the only outcome of such an approach must ultimately be annihilation?

A different approach, a more ‘back to basics’ one, would be to consider the way that historically beekeepers have treated bees, particularly in the past 150 years, since the invention of the moveable frame. In our unending quest for more and more production we have incorporated into our husbandry a catalogue of very bee-unfriendly practices. These have become ‘standard’ and have remained unquestioned and unchallenged by all but a few lone voices. We have busied ourselves with such activities as swarm prevention, artificial feeding, brood nest disturbance, rearranging of combs, regulation of cell size, drone culling, artificial queen rearing and long-distance transportation, to name but a few.

Against a background of poisonous sprays, mobile phone masts, GM crops, monoculture crops and modern hybrid flowers, our own practices as beekeepers have added vastly to the stresses and strains imposed on the honey bee. Could it be that, finally, they are saying to us ‘we can’t take any more’?

Before we embark on the sorts of practices listed above, we need to ask ourselves who will be the real beneficiary of our actions, us or the bees. In our role as guardians of these amazing creatures, our time might be better spent in honing our observational skills, especially of the comings and goings at the hive entrance. Although inspection of the hive interior will be necessary at times, the practice of using our senses – sight, hearing and smell – will tell us much about the state of the colony, without recourse to lifting the roof, manipulation and disturbance.

If we view the colony as an organism in its own right, rather than a collection of single components, we will begin to adopt methods of husbandry which foster a true hygiene within the hive, enhancing the bees’ vitality and lowering their susceptibility to disease. We will be considering the bees’ nature and needs, instead of exploiting them for our own gain.