For more than 30 years, two sectors that people actively try to pit against each other—bees and oilseed rape—have coexisted perfectly on our conventional farm. Not everything is just black and white; there is always a golden mean.

In the Liepāja region, within the Durbe municipality, we manage 560 hectares of land. We are both a classic grain farm growing wheat and oilseed rape, and a highly unusual farm. We have been cultivating grass seeds for 30 years and have grown peas on at least 10% of our total area for 25 years. Furthermore, for the last three years, we have also been growing large areas of phacelia—a purple nectar plant that bees love.

Given that we started growing grass seeds and clover, we needed pollinators, which is why we also started beekeeping. We grow oilseed rape ourselves, which we spray with insecticides when necessary (to control harmful insect populations), and there is a 25-hectare field of our neighbour's oilseed rape just 200 metres away. And if the bees happen to be next to the oilseed rape, we do not move the colonies away because we know that nothing threatens them, contrary to the myth cultivated in the public domain. We have excellent relations with our neighbour; we know that he follows all the rules and, if necessary, carries out spraying at night when there are no bees in the field.