Fort Knox – who are we?

We are amateur beekeepers who want to run apiaries without chemical pressure and jointly support the selection of bees able to live independently.

Where did the problem come from?

The twenty-first-century world is full of threats to insects. Forage resources are steadily becoming poorer, the climate is changing, and air, soil and water are being polluted by industry and agriculture. Today, however, the greatest threat to honey bees (Apis mellifera) is the honey bee mite (Varroa destructor). It is currently the number one problem in beekeeping and is directly or indirectly responsible for the death of most bee colonies. The use of so-called “chemistry” against the mite has accumulated problems for bees on many levels and has made many pathogens more virulent — pathogens that bees once coped with without major difficulty.

Unfortunately, it is we — people, including beekeepers — who have brought bees to their current problems. But the history of recent decades shows that we are not able to solve all of these problems on behalf of bees. We should therefore adopt apiary management methods that allow bees to cope on their own. At least if we want them to become self-sufficient again.

We are amateur beekeepers who believe that nature is able to cope with most problems by itself, if only we allow it to act. Our role as beekeepers is therefore to let the principles of nature into our apiaries and under the hive roofs. We do not want to use toxic or biocidal agents to solve the problems of bees, because these agents are in fact responsible for the difficulties bees face today, or at least for their scale. The use of toxins and biocidal substances in apiaries only postpones the problems of beekeeping to future generations. Above all, these substances pollute and impoverish the hive environment, and they also disturb the adaptive processes of bees, while at the same time contributing to the increased virulence of pathogens. In the long term, all this systematically reduces the ability of insects to live independently without so-called “care” from beekeepers. With every decade, it becomes harder for bees to survive without treatments and cures. We have found ourselves in a vicious circle of chemicalisation. Continuing these very choices causes bee problems to accumulate, while on the other hand, without so-called “chemistry”, bees die.

Why Fort Knox?

Our amateur project “Fort Knox” and mutual cooperation in the selection of local bees — bees adapted to their environment and, above all, resistant to parasites and pathogens — is our response to these problems.

We believe that only by giving up chemical treatments in apiaries and leaving bees to natural selection can they develop mechanisms that will allow them to survive their encounter with the honey bee mite. But the process itself is difficult and costly. Very few people are able to go through it alone.

Cooperation instead of solitary selection

We are people who believe that cooperation makes it possible to achieve more than working alone. The effect of our shared effort is much greater than the sum of individually borne hardships. Together we work for the common good, share the risk and share the joy of living bees.

We are beekeepers who run very different apiaries. Among us there are those who enjoy two or three hives in a garden, and there are also those who have several dozen colonies and whose beekeeping ambition drives them to keep developing and not to stop at their current level. We have different types of hives and use different solutions. Some of us cannot imagine old, heavy, insulated Warsaw hives at their apiary sites, while others do not like single-wall hives with screened bottom boards and plastic covers. But all of us want to practise beekeeping without so-called “chemistry” and believe in close cooperation for the common good. That is why we give to one another, but we also have expectations of one another. We all also believe that natural selection is able to solve the problems of bees in the long term and provide us in the future with the kind of beekeeping we have always wanted to practise.

Who are we today?

Today we still have not gone beyond the framework of an amateur project. There are only a few to a dozen or so of us. We come from two circles of beekeepers applying bee-friendly beekeeping principles: the Natural Beekeeping Association “Wolne Pszczoły” — “Free Bees” (www.wolnepszczoly.org, website in Polish) and the “Bractwo Pszczele” — “Bee Brotherhood” group (www.bractwopszczele.pl, website in Polish). We hope, however, that Project “Fort Knox” will bring together and integrate more and more beekeeping circles and individual beekeepers who, like us, do not want to use toxins and who, like us, would like to keep in their own apiaries bees capable of surviving without “chemical help”.

We invite you to learn about the assumptions of the Project and to cooperate with us. Together we can do more.