Being a septuagenarian and having been a beekeeper on and off for over 60 years I have seen the changes in the world both good and bad. I have seen the countryside change from flowering hay meadows to billiard table top over grazed fields. Corn fields with their attendant flowering weeds changed to chemically managed mono-crops. Hedgerows laid and managed with an abundance of flowering shrubs have become annually machine cropped bristle rows, where biennial flowering shrubs like hawthorn never have a second year growth to flower.
Worst of all I have seen beekeeping following some of those same trends. Beekeeping is now carried out in an almost religion based way. An established hierarchy setting down the true ways, not based on the bees' need but the beekeepers' return, with chemicals that pollute, recycled wax that contaminates.
Top bar hives along with other ways such as sun hives offer a gentler way. We have a duty to our bees, we must look at our bees as our salvation not another prize in our greed.
Beekeepers must be in the forefront of change for nature, not mere puppets in some commercial enterprise.