Fort Knox, or our “gold” reserve
An article about the beginnings of the Fort Knox Project, the idea of a shared reserve of bees, and the problems faced by beekeepers trying to run apiaries without treating varroosis.
Where does the name Fort Knox come from?
Fort Knox is a United States Army base in Kentucky. In addition to being home to the school and research centre of the armoured forces, it also houses one of the largest gold reserves in the world. It is said to be one of the most heavily guarded places on our planet.
And what does that have to do with bees? More on that in a moment.
The problem of the solitary beekeeper
Natural beekeeping, especially its most radical branch — beekeeping in which no methods of fighting varroosis are used — faces a number of problems when trying to reach the awareness of beekeepers. Many accusations are made against it: from barbaric assumptions, irrationality and naivety to complete economic unprofitability and the need to keep starting over from scratch. Anyone who sees a long-term need to give up all methods of controlling mites, whether “hard chemistry” or “natural” methods, encounters a whole range of issues they must face.
First of all, such a beekeeper is alone. Help is not available from anywhere. Neighbours will almost certainly not support him; more likely they would want to burn down his apiary — threats like this are common — or secretly fumigate his bees with Apivarol so that diseases do not spread to their colonies. That argument is absurd, but this text is not about dealing with it. Drones from colonies not adapted to the threat posed by varroosis are flying everywhere around him. A beekeeper who does not want to treat his bees is, in ninety-nine percent of cases, an amateur with two, five or even thirty colonies. This is a genetic drop in a sea of flying maladaptation. On top of that, the beekeeper is only about to begin his own selection, so his bees are not noticeably better adapted to dealing with the mite. If he manages to get through the first stage of selection, maintaining that adaptation under such conditions will be almost impossible. If he manages to develop something over several years and then a crisis hits his small apiary — even one not caused by bee diseases, but for example by poisoning by an irresponsible farmer — then the last several years of selection are lost. Everything has to start again from scratch. Again from bees on 5.4 mm cells. Again from bees genetically completely unadapted to coping with the mite. The hopelessness of this situation is so great that most amateurs have little chance of dealing with the problem.
The idea of a shared bee base
And this is how the idea of cooperation within our association was born. To have a chance for the future of bees without treatment, we need access to several dozen, and preferably over a hundred, colonies. We need to spread them over a large area in order to avoid local threats that could undo years of our work, although we must also try to distribute promising genetic material locally as much as possible, to increase the probability of appropriate queen mating.
After several ideas that were far from perfect, such as mutual financial assistance for buying bees, a project called Fort Knox was created. The idea came from our colleague Marcin from the “Wolne Pszczoły” Association. The project is based on cashless mutual assistance: passing swarms or packages to one another, or nucs if we use the same type of hives, in order to make up for one’s own losses. The idea is brilliant in its simplicity.
Assumptions of the pilot project
Today we have launched a pilot project for the 2016 season. The pilot covers a limited number of people and a modest number of declared colonies. The initial assumptions have been prepared — a little more about that below — but during the first year of testing we want to work out the right rules and, over time, expand our activity. Who knows, perhaps even beyond the members of “Wolne Pszczoły”. Today, based on a very small group of beekeepers who have declared their willingness to take part in the project, and guided by mutual trust, we want to learn from our own experience what potential problems may arise within the cooperation. On that basis, we will then develop a proper, final version of the project rules — so that everyone knows what they can count on and also what they contribute to achieving the future goal.
What are the assumptions of cooperation?
Each participant declares a certain number of bee colonies for the shared base. From that moment on, they become, in a sense, our common property, although each person cares for their own bees in accordance with the principles of natural beekeeping. The basic principles of management are to be: no chemical interference and natural selection. According to the assumption, every year the state of the shared base will be assessed, and the bees that have managed to survive will be propagated to restore the state according to the declarations of individual participants. Those who have declared more colonies will probably have to give more bees to others in better years, but they can also count on broader support from others to replace their own losses if something goes wrong.
We are starting the pilot project “Fort Knox” today, although each of us has prepared bee colonies for wintering differently, and not all of us have fully met the assumptions of the project — mainly because the dry August made sugar feeding necessary for practically everyone. For now, we simply have to test these assumptions in practice.
What will such a project give us?
First of all, together we expand the base of selected bees. To some extent, we all become less dependent on local crises — as mentioned above, not necessarily related to bee diseases. Colleagues with very small apiaries, where the probability of losing everything is higher, have a chance not to start from scratch, but from the point where the whole Fort Knox community happens to be at a given moment. We also all benefit from the continuous enrichment of the genetic diversity of bees, which is locally narrowed in the course of selection. By undertaking this cooperation, we hope to encourage others as well to take a shared risk for a just cause — a risk that, as the idea develops, may simply become smaller.
From the moment we begin, none of us is alone anymore. If the project gets going and proves itself, then over time obtaining bees that have not been subjected to chemical treatments will no longer be impossible. Fort Knox will become the reserve of our “gold” — healthy bees with an ever greater chance in the struggle against varroosis!