Brinkmanship and risk management

The E.H. Thorne's weekly advertising newsletter — on 'showing honey' — dropped into my inbox this morning, another reminder of something else I'm not going to get round to this year. This time last week it was 'preparing for the heather', cataloguing all the things I should have done back in June (!) to get my colonies ready for the late-summer heather bonanza.

“Young queens, strong colonies etc”.

I took two hives to the heather on that Wednesday, having done precisely none of those things I should have done in June 😞.

One of the reasons I won't be showing any honey this autumn is that it's been a modest year for honey.

And, by modest, I mean poor.

I'm neither surprised nor disappointed. My focus has been on increasing my stocks from the 2–3 that I brought here from the West coast (one of which attempted — unsurprisingly unsuccessfully — to supersede in March 🤦, so should perhaps be discounted). I've 'traded' honey for bees, and been reasonably successful with the latter, to say nothing of having a lot of fun rearing queens.

So, with more colonies, next year should be better {{1}}.

On Sunday, I went to check my hives on the hill. One had 'marked time', studiously avoiding the super, whereas the other had — in the five days it had been there — almost completely drawn out the foundation and busily started filling it. The smell was wonderful. By the time you read this, that colony will have a second super.

Despite failing to do any of the recommended preparation, the more productive colony had — admittedly largely by chance — been managed in a way that meant it was better able to exploit a nectar flow when it started.

Brinkmanship

All of which got me thinking about colony strength, honey production, swarm control and — in a roundabout way — late-season queen mating.

These things all involve a degree of brinkmanship, which can be defined as:

The policy or practise of pushing a dangerous situation to the brink of disaster, in order to achieve the most advantageous outcome.

In a diplomatic or political context it usually means forcing the other side to concede by creating the impression that you are willing to use extreme methods. It dates back to the Eisenhower presidency, and the threat of nuclear retaliation by US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

More generally, the term can be applied to situations that, although not dangerous in geopolitical terms, might constitute a 'local' disaster … like losing a huge prime swarm (and so missing out on the summer nectar flow), or failing to get some late-season queens mated.

These sorts of 'local' disasters are all too familiar to many beekeepers {{2}}.

Achieving an advantageous outcome (e.g. a big honey crop) involves a degree of brinkmanship and the employment of appropriate risk management.

It might not feel like that, but that's what you should be doing.

If you get it right, it feels great.

If you get it wrong, remember that “next year should be better”. It's a valuable learning experience and, although it might feel like a disaster, it's only a beekeeping disaster, and doesn't really register in geopolitical terms 😉.

So, let's look at a couple of examples of beekeeping brinkmanship, the benefits and the associated risk management needed.