A couple of days ago I removed a bee colony with four free hanging combs from the corner overhang of a Victorian house. European honeybees don't usually build open free hanging combs (unlike Asian honeybees), but these and all other free hanging combs that I've seen are long and oval rather than round. Bees build combs for practical reason like strength and efficient use of space.....that's why cells are hexagons. If cells were circles....space would be lost between the circles. If cells were square ....strength would be compromised and the weight of the honey would cause the combs to collapse. Bees build oval free hanging combs in nature because the oval shape best distributes weight and harmonizes with gravity.

The idea that beekeeping boxes contribute to the demise of bees sounds ridiculous to me ....because bees are opportunists who build their colonies in cavities of all kinds of shapes. They build their combs to conform to the shape of the cavity in which they inhabit.....whether it be the hollow of an oak tree, the void in wall, or an overturned half wine barrel.

The varoa mite wreaked havoc on honey bees when it arrived in California about 20 years ago. I had started a small bee removal business a few years earlier. During the bee season my phone previously had rung every day, but after the varoa mite arrived....my business dried up to one or two calls each month and then none. People at the time were less educated and sympathetic about bees and didn't know or care about bees unless they had backyard fruit trees that weren't being visited by honeybees.. Nowadays, more people call me for bee removal because they want to save rather than exterminate the bees. Unfortunately, some people think that they are doing nature a huge favor and that someone like myself should work for free. The reality is that nature in our part of the world can get along without honey bees, but we can't.

The European honeybee.....is from Europe. It's an alien to North America just like star thistle and eucalyptus....two of its most despised nectar sources and best honeys. Honeybees are vital for crop production, but North America has its own pollinators....bumblebees and solitary bees, both of which increased in numbers in the late 1980's to fill the void left by the honey bees.

Honey bees provide hobbyists with a connection with nature that brings us more intimately involved with the seasons, weather, and flower bloom. We need honey bees for our own well being as well as to pollinate our crops. Articles point out that nature and our crops need bees, but infrequently mentions that our intimate relationship with bees, honey, and apitherapy goes back to the time of the Egyptians...when they moved bees on barges down the Nile.

We certainly rely on honey bees for pollination and have abused this relationship. Trucking bees from crop to crop and feeding sugar syrup is like being a traveling salesperson who is constantly on the move, living in crowded hotels in big cities, and dining on a supplements of Hostess ding dongs. Add crop spraying, miticides, and antibiotics.....and you've got a stressful and unhealthy lifestyle that opens the door to all sorts of maladies.

I haven't seen any significant losses in my bees or the volume of my bee removal business.....so until things change in my own backyard I attribute heavy commercial losses to some unknown that has found an opening in a huge population of weakened and susceptible hosts.

The beekeeping box isn't the problem....the problem is our primarily profit focused, short term in the box way of thinking and approach to life.