Bees have long been held to be prophetic—messengers to another realm. Photographs by Alice Zoo for The New Yorker

When reading a couple of days ago that there could be such thing as too many beekeepers, the surprise was sufficient to make me go back through all earlier posts to see if I was merely forgetting having read this before. There were no previous mentions of too many, and if anything it was reasonable to assume from all my readings on colony collapse disorder that more beekeepers might be part of the solution. And now this article is full of more surprises, including the most fundamental question: Is Beekeeping Wrong?

Gareth John, a natural beekeeper, tending a hive.

Parasites and pesticides have brought chaos to bee colonies throughout the world. Natural beekeepers want to transform our relationship to the hive.

On a hot, pollen-dazed morning this summer, I stopped by the house of Gareth John, a retired agricultural ecologist, who lives on a quiet lane above a river in Oxfordshire, to take a look at his bees. In British beekeeping circles, John, who has a white beard and a sprightly, didactic manner, is well known as a “natural beekeeper,” although he acknowledged right off the bat that this was a problematic term. “It’s an oxymoron, right?” he said. John cares for perhaps half a million bees, but he does not think of himself as keeping anything. “I wouldn’t call myself a dog-keeper,” he said. “But I have a dog.” Continue reading →