For hundreds of years, bees and beekeepers have worked together with a minimum of fuss and muss. Even after L.L. Langstroth developed his much-lauded hive system, things went along reasonably.

Things started to fall apart when beekeeping started to be viewed as just another agribusiness. When that happens, watch out: you get factory hog and beef farms, shortcuts in production methods and a swift decline in the quality of the end product. Farmers start grasping for a solution. Any solution.

That happened around the early-70′s here in North America. Honey production began to decline (likely caused by increased use of pesticides in the fields that the bees worked) and beekeepers started asking what they could do. Before very long, beekeepers were routinely feeding refined sugar to their bees (cheaper than letting them keep more of their own honey), routinely treating the hives with an antibiotic (Fumagilin), fumigating the hives with formic acid twice a year and who knows what else.

Guess what? The bees are disappearing. They’re dying like never before and the industry is screaming for new chemicals to spray in their hives. They can’t see the solution right in front of them. Well, they might be able to, but many have been at this for so long that they can’t possibly imagine keeping bees without the “help” of the likes of Bayer Cropscience, Syngenta and Monsanto.

We don’t allow any agrichemicals anywhere near our bees. If a parasite (varroa or tracheal mites) or bacterial infection (american or european foulrood or nosema) get so out of hand that the hive can’t handle it, then we don’t want them in our yards. Fighting off an infection or invader will cause losses, but the survivors will be stronger for it.

We do keep one, natural, treatment in our back pockets in case of extreme emergencies: powdered sugar. The most common pest in a hive is a tiny mite calle Varroa destructor. In most cases, the hive is quite able to handle a certain load of varroa. The mites themselves aren’t the real problem, the problem is what happens after they arrive: the mites attach themselves to the backs of the bees, eating their blood. This so weakens the bee that they become susceptible to any number of infections that they spread throughout the hive. The cleaner bees try to make sure that it doesn’t happen. They’ve been seen pulling the mites form their sisters’ backs, they’ve also been known to evict drone bees (the males are larger and a jucier target for the mites) that have become laden with them.

In extreme cases, we can dust the hive with powdered sugar. It sounds and looks silly, but it really does work. The sugar makes the backs of the bees slippery and the mites have a hrd time holding on. The vas majority of them fall off the bees and right out the bottom of the hive. The bees eat the leftover sugar and things go on as normal.

Natural or not, we don’t do it unless we have to. It’s not a harsh chemical, but it’s still not something that the bees would normally bring into the hive on their own.

Probably the single most important thing that we do to maintain our bees is to not take all of their honey. You wouldn’t believe what many commercial operations feed their hives: high fructose corn syrup. It’s especially bad in the migratory sector where the bees work a crop for a certain period, then any honey that they have made is pulled for sale and the hive feeders are pumped full of corn syrup before they leave.

Needless to say, corn syrup ain’t honey. Honey is full of enzymes, trace minerals and vitamins. Everything that the bees need to live. Corn syrup is just sugar. The bees eat it, but it doesn’t do anything for them except to fill their stomachs.

When we harvest honey, we never take everything. Honey is food that the bees have put away for lean times, not just winter. In the middle of summer, during a long dry spell, flowers can stop producing nectar. This is what’s known as a “dearth”. If the bees don’t have enough honey stored to get through the dearth, they could run into trouble. Never mind what happens if they run out over the winter. If that happens, they starve.

• Chemical treatments: Conventional beekeepers are trapped on a chemical treadmill. Industry “wisdom” calls for a very busy treatment regimen. It’s an awful lot of extra work and disruption for the hive and none of it is necessary.