Ethical Beekeeping

@Villacarmenbees, We keep our bees in safe and sustainable hives for their benefit and that of the environment and our main focus is not the commercial production of honey, but more focused on conservation and  learning. Plus it’s a great way of relaxing and bringing the family together.

OUR BEES

We believe that our bees enhance biodiversity and help to pollinate a wide range of plants that are important to a healthy environment and a sustainable society. We do not clip the wings of our queens and we do not intervene in the removal of queens since it´s our firm belief that the Bees know best and thus we prefer to let nature take its course. FYI – Our eldest queen is almost 3 years old and still in favour with her “subjects”.

Our HONEY

We do not commercially farm our bees or produce huge amounts of honey. We only remove honey from our bees when it is a genuine surplus. By doing this, we ensure the bees always have more than enough nutritious food to sustain the hive, whilst also providing the bees with the room they need to continue expanding their colony.

A LITTLE HELP WHEN NEEDED

We appreciate that large commercial operations have different economies of scale. We know that just 20 hives can be very demanding. But, because we do not have hundreds of hives, we can afford the time and expense to enhance the wellbeing of those hives in our care. New colonies and swarms will occasionally require a little help and we will feed struggling colonies with sugar and other substitutes if they have been unable to produce sufficient honey for themselves. This sometimes happens when weather conditions have been poor or when we rescue a swarm later in the season and they struggle to establish a self-sustaining colony before their food becomes scarce. Living in Spain, we do get long periods of drought and when this happens we will provide additional nutrition for our bees. However, this also means that there will be no honey produced for consumption at that time.   NB: The Bees welfare is our primary concern (Remember everyone and everything will need help at some stage in life and we have to take responsibility for helping where we can in all walks of life)

NO CHEMICALS

For the most part we try to avoid chemical treatment of pests and diseases wherever possible; preferring to use natural treatments. Occasionally we may need to use chemical methods to initially treat a rescued swarm which has high levels of infestation and this would be done not only for the wellbeing of that colony, but also for neighboring colonies and those in the wider area.

Contact Us

Email: thequeenbee@villacarmenbees.com