Mr. Joe MOLITOR Board member of FUAL and FUAL coordinator for Bee Together Mr. John PARK Contact person for Bee Together beetogetherlux@gmail.com Board Member of Luxembourg City Beekeepers’ Association Warré top bar hives Mr. Andreas Reichart Trainer for EN Theory Courses

Mr. Marc THIEL m.thiel@sias.lu www.sias.lu Board member of Echternach Beekeepers’ Association Dadant US Mr. Hubert VON DEWITZ vdewitz@pt.lu Interim President, Luxembourg City Beekeepers’ Association Langstroth hives

Which profile describes the type of beekeeping YOU wish to practice?

Beekeeper Friendly Bee Friendly

Bee products If frames are used then this simplifies extracting honey using a centrifuge. The use of a queen excluder separates the brood from the honey, and therefore, the honey cannot contain eggs, larva and cocoons. As the honey supers tend to be half the size of the brood boxes, the honey frames fill up more quickly, and therefore, it is easier to obtain honey from a specific period of time (e.g. spring honey and summer honey).

If top bars are used (not frames) then the honey is extracted by crushing it. As there is no queen excluder, you have to be patient until the pupae have all hatched and the box is completely full of honey. As you have to wait till the box is full of honey (or at least one top bar), your honey is more likely to be multi-floral. That is, there is less control over the type of honey you obtain.

Bee lifecycle The use of a queen excluder is less respectful of the bee's lifecycle as it prevents the queen from going to the top of the hive.

The bees and queen naturally start building comb at the top of the space given to them.

Race of bees Any race of bee is possible. Naturally you will prefer a calmer bee. A purebred Buckfast (artificially inseminated queen) has been bred for this purpose.

Any race of bee is possible though you will favour local bees where the queen has mated with the drones in the area or indigenous bees that have been artificially inseminated (e.g. Carnica, Black, not Buckfast).

Queen You may decide to accept that the queen has a colour dot on her to indicate the year of her birth. You will not accept that the queen has her wings clipped.

Beekeeper Friendly Bee Friendly

Beehive systems

Any beehive system using frames. You can decide whether or not to use a queen excluder, knowing that if you add a honey super on top that there is a risk that the queen starts laying in the honey super. You may wish to paint it in silver to reflect the sun so that the brood boxes do not get too hot.

You will favour intervening in the hive as little as possible, relying instead on your senses to determine the health and happiness of your bees. You will favour leaving the wood natural or painting it with linseed oil.

Equipment material

You may wish to consider one of these: Favouring natural materials; Favouring wood from sustainably managed forests; Avoiding metal, such as nails, frame separators;

Feeding When needed, I will feed my bees sugar candy and sugar syrup.

You may wish to consider one of these: - not feeding my bees at all - feed my bees with fermented honey (difficult to obtain) - feed my bees with organic or non-organic sugar candy and sugar syrup, particularly for small colonies and colonies that start late in the season (e.g. June)

Bee Diseases and Pests

You will treat for Varroa as you consider your bees an investment.

You may treat for Varroa. You accept that your bees might die and that you may need to spend 100 to 125 EUR to replace them. You will probably not accept cutting out the drone cells as a means of reducing the number of Varroa.

Swarming You will favour creating artificial swarms to prevent swarming.

You will favour letting the hive swarm and if you are lucky, you will capture it.

Land If you are sharing land with other beekeepers, do you share the same philosophy and the same or similar beekeeping practices?

Same, plus You will favour being in an area where pesticide and herbicide usage is low or non-existent (e.g. organic farming practices). A list of farmers, including beekeepers, producing organic food can be found here. If you are sharing land with other beekeepers, do you share the same philosophy and the same or similar beekeeping practices?

Beekeeper Friendly Bee Friendly

Land authorisation

Please refer to page 9 and 10 in this document that gives some information on the relevant regulations for having bees within a city / village and links to find the correct contact person for the commune if you intend to keep bees in the countryside: http://www.slideshare.net/BeeTogetherLux/bee-social-bee-prepared-event-w-bee-together-2015-01-13 In the case of the countryside, the contact person will send you the form to be completed.

Same