Wilding the honeybee
The wilding of honeybees is, we believe, extremely important for the future sustainability of the honeybee. Over the last decade, scientists, bee researchers and bee enthusiasts have been documenting the survival of wild living, unmanaged bees.. something that was, and still is, considered as impossible by many beekeepers. Yet the evidence now clearly shows that there are sustainable and flourishing wild living bee populations in many locations. The reasons seem to be local genetics that promote hygienic behavioural traits. These behavioural traits allow the bees to deal with varroa mites and other issues and thus survive perfectly well.
​It is the Apis mellifera mellifera (or AMM) that show these behavioral traits and are therefore the perfect bees to exist in the wild situation…a situation that of course they are already adapted to, as they are the local honey bee of north western Europe.
Our theory is that in many areas these bees have always remained present in the wild in an unmanaged state and in numbers large enough to be able to genetically hold their own against the out of place, inferior imported farmed bees used in modern beekeeping practice.
These wild living bees may not any longer be 100% AMM, but the AMM genetics are still dominant enough for these bees to exhibit the typical hygienic behavior. Many other behavioural traits also aid their presence in the unmanaged wild state wich means that they can cope with mites and propagate rapidly enough to maintain a wild population.
​The wilding of honeybees increases the chances of a genetic backstop via larger numbers of these local bees in their environment. It's the large amount of drones that make the difference. They are simply better and fitter and have greater numbers than the drones of imported beekeepers bees …this is natural selection.
Wilding Bees means we are promoting natural selection rather than the human interference via bee manipulation and queen rearing within the beekeeping industry as a solution to honey bee survival in the long term. We offer suitable hives for the already wild living bee population enabling a larger and therefore sustainable wild bee population. Natural cavities are now disappearing rapidly for all species due to the depletion of veteran trees by the agricultural and biofuel industries.
Providing species appropriate hiving for the wild living bee population is something we promote, encourage and actively do as a way of creating this genetic backstop.
From 2017 we have been establishing three wilding projects here in La Creuse to assist the local AMM tilted bees find enough nesting sites to have a sustainable population. These clusters of Custos Apium hives are set up around known long living bee colonies usually in tree cavities, although one group is based around a long abandoned Apiary.
As the years pass we follow the progress of these bee ‘Families’ as they regenerate, repopulate and take up residence in newly placed hives.
Our aim is to keep a wild living sustainable bee population viable for as long as possible.
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