The media has featured honeybee health more than usual lately, largely because of colony-collapse disorder. Tests on honey show that some beekeepers routinely treat colonies with antibiotics. The worldwide spread of Varroa has forced beekeepers to dose hives with acaricides. Relatively recently in the history of beekeeping, bee disease bureaucracies were set up at public expense. This small selection of bee health phenomena justifies the question: is modern framed-hive beekeeping, spanning little more than a century out of some three millennia of beekeeping, laying the foundations for its own demise? In case it is, I describe here a bee-friendly way of keeping bees that is arguably healthier as well as being more sustainable in the broadest sense of the term. I hope to encourage readers to experiment with it - as I am doing alongside my framed hives - and to form a network to exchange experience.
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