Yeah, lots of questionable assertions made there by author and/or interviewees, eg:
> “I don’t think anybody contests that free-living bees have a better, easier life,”
This feels wrong - supplemental feed, internal space that grows and shrinks with their colony size, well insulated & single-entrance (easier to defend) home, a mesh base they can push their detritus through, pest / predator control, etc.
The bit about wild colonies:
> The bees lived in smaller groups, relatively far apart, which made it harder for varroa to spread. They swarmed every year, which broke the reproductive cycle of the mites. (If a colony swarms, the nest is left without bee larvae, which is where varroa mites take hold.)
The relatively far apart thing isn't a natural consequence of wild colonies, unless there just isn't food to sustain them. (If there is, then bee / nest population would increase.)
Swarming every year isn't guaranteed - I suspect even new 'wild' queens don't get itchy feet until their second birthday.
But even if they do, swarming doesn't mean there aren't larvae in the original nest. A normal swarm process means the original colony is without an egg-laying queen for maybe 10-14 days. However, assuming the departing queen was laying up until departure, you've got ~8 days of larvae in that nest, and that means a further ~13 days those exist as pupae (which I understand are also vulnerable to varroa). At that point your new queen's progeny are already into their larvae stage.
I do get the pastoral idyll being painted by some of the people involved here, but I'm unconvinced.
Where I feel they do have a point is that traditional beekeepers are meddling too much with systems that are more complex than one might think. At the start of the article, they mention the routine clipping of queens' wings to prevent swarming. And then, at the end, they mention that queens used to "last" several years, whereas nowadays they are rejected by the hive after only 1-2 years. Maybe there was some natural selection going on there which beekeepers are hindering by preventing the bees from swarming?
> “I don’t think anybody contests that free-living bees have a better, easier life,”
This feels wrong - supplemental feed, internal space that grows and shrinks with their colony size, well insulated & single-entrance (easier to defend) home, a mesh base they can push their detritus through, pest / predator control, etc.
The bit about wild colonies:
> The bees lived in smaller groups, relatively far apart, which made it harder for varroa to spread. They swarmed every year, which broke the reproductive cycle of the mites. (If a colony swarms, the nest is left without bee larvae, which is where varroa mites take hold.)
The relatively far apart thing isn't a natural consequence of wild colonies, unless there just isn't food to sustain them. (If there is, then bee / nest population would increase.)
Swarming every year isn't guaranteed - I suspect even new 'wild' queens don't get itchy feet until their second birthday.
But even if they do, swarming doesn't mean there aren't larvae in the original nest. A normal swarm process means the original colony is without an egg-laying queen for maybe 10-14 days. However, assuming the departing queen was laying up until departure, you've got ~8 days of larvae in that nest, and that means a further ~13 days those exist as pupae (which I understand are also vulnerable to varroa). At that point your new queen's progeny are already into their larvae stage.
I do get the pastoral idyll being painted by some of the people involved here, but I'm unconvinced.