Category Archives: Varroa

Infernal contradictions

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Synopsis : The manufacturer’s instructions for miticide use are often poorly worded, confusing or contradictory. Many beekeepers already struggle to control Varroa and this makes things worse.

Introduction

How many beekeepers read the documentation that accompanies the miticides they use for Varroa control? How many understand what all the terms – including the pharmacological ones – mean?

Posology anyone?

What about the phrase “Withdrawal period”? 

Can all miticides containing the same active ingredient be used in the same way? If not, why not?

What about repeat usage? Can you repeat a treatment (if needed) if the instructions do not explicitly state that repeat treatments are not allowed? 1 Or can you only administer a second application if the instructions explicitly state that it is allowed?

And if a you are allowed to apply a second treatment, can you administer a third? What about treating in November and the following January? Two different calendar years, but well under one year apart.

Don’t expect any answers to these or related questions in this post 😉 .

Out, damn'd mite ...

Out, damn’d mite …

The intention here is to highlight the slightly shambolic nature of the documentation that accompanies (and sometimes does not accompany, but which you are probably expected to read!) the miticides approved for use in the UK. I don’t have time to cover all the miticides in a single post so will restrict this post 2 to two containing formic acid and one that contains oxalic acid.

And … while we’re at it … which are the legally binding instructions? Those in teensy-weensy lettering on the purchased product or the ones listed in the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) database?

MAQS and FormicPro

MAQS (Mite Away Quick Strips) and FormicPro are very similar products.

Actually, they are so similar that it’s rather difficult to tell them apart.

MAQS

The packaging is similar – a cardboard box or plastic tub filled with sachets, each containing two strips impregnated with formic acid (and some other stuff – but what isn’t specified). Even the price is similar; two doses (by which they mean sufficient to treat two hives, or one hive twice, cost an eye-watering 3 £16.50. I’ve not checked other suppliers, but Thorne’s list the 2, 10 and 30 dose boxes of MAQS and FormicPro at identical price points 4.

FormicPro

If you bother to read the online documentation (which you should) you will see that both are marketed by NOD Apiary Ireland Limited, and that each strip contains 68.2 g of formic acid. Even the description of the individual gel strips is very similar:

Brown, semi-rigid to soft gel strip covered in a biodegradable laminated paper, which maintains form (FormicPro).

Each strip is an off-white to caramel coloured gel wrapped in white laminated biodegradable paper (MAQS).

So, we have the same active ingredient, formulated in the same way, packaged in a similar manner, with identical diagrams for how to apply two strips to the brood box. The temperature range recommended for use is identical and both have similar warnings about queen damage.

The same but different

But, although MAQS and FormicPro appear to be essentially the same, from a practical beekeeping standpoint they are very different.

MAQS can be used with honey supers on the hive but FormicPro cannot.

Of course, pedantically, that’s not exactly true.

You could use them ’any-damned-way’ you please, but you would probably be breaking the rules.

You are allowed to use MAQS when there are honey supers present, but you are not allowed to use FormicPro – in all other regards an identical product – when there are honey supers on the hive. 

Here are the relevant words from the online SPC’s (Summary of Product Characteristics) 5:

Supers with honey must be removed from the hive prior to product application. See Section 4.5. Honey stored in super(s) put on for the treatment period must be removed and not used for human consumption. Spent strips must be removed before supers intended for harvest are placed on the hive (FormicPro – section 4.11 ‘Withdrawal period’).

The strips may be applied during honey flow; put on honey supers if honey flow is anticipated, to allow adequate space for colony expansion (MAQS – section 4.5 ‘Special precautions for use’).

There is one other difference as well … you can buy FormicPro whereas MAQS appears to be out of stock from all the suppliers I’ve checked.

Perhaps it has been withdrawn already by the manufacturer … ?

This is going to confuse a lot of beekeepers who have come to value MAQS as a short-term and effective treatment for Varroa management during the season.

Many will continue to use FormicPro in the same way that they used MAQS … which could be problematic if they are visited by a Seasonal Bee Inspector.

Summary of Product Characteristics (SPC)

Any miticides you purchase should be accompanied by a set of instructions – on the outside of the box, or the foil packet or wherever. These are often like ’ant tracks’ – illegibly small printing, almost impossible to read without the use of a binocular microscope 6.

Api-Bioxal … where’s my microscope?

Importantly, the packet will also carry a lot number and a use by date – you need to keep records of the former for several years 7 after use. I almost always forget to write this into my notes, but I always photograph the packet so have a dated copy on my ‘phone.

Use the VMD search facility to avoid the budgie treatments

If you want to review the official documentation for the miticide you need to visit the Veterinary Medicines Directorate Product Information Database. With a bit of rummaging around (Hint .. the search facility is your friend 8 ) you can usually find at least two official documents for each authorised product:

A document prefixed SPC (the Summary of Product Characteristics).

A document prefixed QRD (for Quality Review of Documents), which is the Product Literature; essentially the labelling and text that is supplied when you purchase the product.

If you read these you will find a large amount of duplication. These documents are periodically revised – the MAQS and FormicPro paperwork is all dated June 2022, with MAQS being first authorised in 2013 and FormicPro in 2021.

Discrepancies and confusion

Aside from the ‘biggy’ (not being allowed to use FormicPro when there are supers on the hive) there are other discrepancies or confusing text in these documents.

I’ve already listed one example …

The MAQS SPC indicates the ability to use the product when supers are present under section 4.5 ’Special precautions for use’.

In contrast, the FormicPro SPC indicates that the product cannot be used when honey supers are present under section 4.11 ’Withdrawal period’, though they do refer to section 4.5 (where, perplexingly, only empty honey supers are mentioned).

Section 4.5 seems to me to be the logical place to mention the ever-so-slightly-critical matter of not being allowed to use FormicPro when there are honey supers present.

Does anyone proof read or sanity check these documents?

If so, why don’t they ever define the term withdrawal period?

If you do a search online for ’withdrawal period’ there are all sorts of things about hormonal birth control and legal contract cancellations, but you need to scroll down to the penultimate item on the first page to get the relevant meaning:

The time that must elapse between the last administration of a veterinary medicine and the slaughter or production of food from that animal, to ensure that the food does not contain levels of the medicine that exceed the maximum residue limit.

And that’s from the European Medicines Agency; it wasn’t until somewhere on the third page of results I could find anything from the VMD 9.

Helpful? Not 🙁 .

Of course, there’s an argument that if you’re applying the ‘medicine’ then you should understand all the paperwork and seek further advice if needed.

But I suspect many do not.

More vagueness

Whilst very specific in places e.g. duration of treatment, maximum temperature for use 29.5°C (Really? Does that 0.5°C make a difference? How many domestic thermometers are that accurate?), the documentation also carries other contradictory or vague instructions.

Both MAQS and FormicPro contain the following words under Section 4.4 (‘Special warnings for each target species ‘) of the SPC

Use according to local treatment recommendations, if available.

Who makes these local treatment recommendations? Are they legally binding? Can you just invent them? What can they cover or not cover? Could the local treatment recommendations state “Use five strips for a month”?

And what about disposal of the used, unused and waste products? Here you will find instructions in two separate places in the SPC.

When removed, dispose of by composting (FormicPro, Section 4.9 “Administration”).

The strips do not need to be removed from the hive after the application period of 7 days as the honey bees dispose of the spent strips. If they are removed, dispose of by composting (MAQS, Section 4.9 “Administration”).

And, confusingly …

Any unused veterinary medicinal product or waste materials derived from such veterinary medicinal products should be disposed of in accordance with local requirements (MAQS and FormicPro Section 6.6 ‘Special precautions for disposal’)

So can they be composted, or do ‘local requirements’ take precedence?

I can’t even be bothered to comment on section 4.6 ‘Adverse reactions’ which helpfully define very common, common, uncommon, rare etc events, but then only apply them to one adverse reaction, despite listing many others.

Grrrrr.

I’ve spent a career trying to make sense of badly worded, confusing, verbose, self-contradictory documents (until the arrival of ChatGPT this was the norm for both student essays and University administrative paperwork) but some of these instructions still baffle me.

Api-Bioxal

The active ingredient in Api-Bioxal is oxalic acid (OA). I’ve discussed this extensively in previous posts. There are several other miticides listed on the VMD database that have OA as the active ingredient; Oxuvar, VarroMed (which also contains formic acid), Dany’s BienenWohl powder/solution and Oxybee. Of these, the last two may not be routinely available in the UK.

I’m going to restrict my (brief) discussion to Api-Bioxal as it’s the only one I’m familiar with and because it highlights a different form of internal infernal contradiction in the official instructions and paperwork.

The Api-Bioxal SPC and instructions clearly state (in section 4.5 ’Special precautions for use’ … or ‘the logical place’ as it should be known) that it should be administered when supers are not present on the hive.

In addition, it also clearly states that the withdrawal period is ‘Zero days’ 10.

Sublimox vaporiser

Sublimox vaporiser … phoretic mites don’t stand a chance

The duration of application for MAQS and FormicPro is seven days and the formic acid permeates the cappings and kills mites in capped cells. In contrast, Api-Bioxal is a single shot treatment … it may (or may not) remain active in the hive for some time after administration, but you essentially apply it and walk away.

Job done 🙂 .

Oxalic acid does not penetrate capped cells and so is only effective if the colony is broodless. The instructions are clear on this point (to their credit).

A single shot used once … or twice?

The instructions describe two approved methods of administering Api-Bioxal. Trickling a 4.2% (w/v) solution made up in 1:1 (‘thin’) syrup onto the visible seams of bees, or vaporising a hive with up to 2.3 g of Api-Bioxal.

Administration by trickling … Up to two treatments per year (winter and/or spring-summer season in brood-free colonies). The treatment should be made in a single administration.

Administration by vaporisation … Maximal dose 2.3g per hive as a single administration. One treatment per year.

I think the ‘single administration’ means that you cannot split a treatment into two e.g. vaporise 1.15 g twice, or trickle 2.5 ml per seam and then repeat it the following day.

What’s odd is that trickling can be conducted twice per year, whereas vaporisation cannot. What about vaporising in December and January? i.e. once in each of two successive years … which could even be on successive days (31/12 and 1/1).

This is odd for two reasons – firstly it seems strange that the same compound can be administered a different number of times depending upon the route of administration.

Well, OK, perhaps it’s really bad for the colony to be vaporised? In that case it would be understandable, though some explanation of the point would help.

The good old days … trickle treating colonies before Api-Bioxal

Trickling and vaporising do cause differential damage to colonies, but it is trickling that does more damage. Trickled OA damages open brood and studies from the LASI group in Sussex showed that colonies trickle-treated when brood was present were subsequently weaker than those that were vaporised (Al Toufailia et al., 2015).

Conversely, several studies of repeated vaporisation have shown that it is well tolerated by the colony.

So, in this instance the instructions are at odds with my understanding 11 of the current science.

Zero days

If the withdrawal period for Api-Bioxal is zero days (it is), can you add a stack of supers to the colony the day after vaporising or trickle treating a colony?

I think you can 12.

Which is a little odd as the oxalic acid remains active in the colony for several days after it is added. If you apply Api-Bioxal and then monitor mite drop on a daily basis over about a week it often peaks a day or two after it is administered, but goes on at a reducing rate for ~5-6 days. Whilst it could just be taking its time killing the mites 13, I think it is more likely that residual activity remains for several days.

Perhaps the wording in the instructions on ‘honey flow’ precludes this, but you can certainly add supers before a honey flow and I’d argue that the wording isn’t completely clear cut.

Licensing

I know almost nothing about the licensing of veterinary medicines. My understanding is that a license is applied for, supported by evidence of efficacy, toxicity etc. and that it is restricted in terms of the range of methods used to apply the miticide.

Therefore, if the manufacturer only applies for a license for trickling or vaporisation, then that’s what they get (if approved). Varromed (an OA solution) can be administered by trickling and spraying. When made up for spraying the OA solution has a long shelf life as there is no sugar present.

But that’s not an option for Api-Bioxal 🙁 .

Beekeepers are restricted in what they can (legally) do by what the manufacturer sought a licence for, even if there are better ways of administering the active compound, or even if the scientific evidence (sometimes preceding licensing, and certainly preceding updates of the documentation) indicates that – for example – repeat administration is both safe and effective.

Trying to make sense of it all

In Scotland a Working Group has been established to try and resolve some of these discrepancies and provide better advice to beekeepers on the use of the currently licensed miticides.

The Working Group involves representatives from a variety of interested parties including an acronym salad comprising SASA, VMD, BFA, FSS, SBA, SRUC, SEPA, APHA, DEFRA, DAERA, NBU and some academics and ex-academics with a particular interest in honey bee health.

I have written a lot about Varroa control on this site. In my view it is relatively straightforward to control mite numbers using the currently licensed miticides appropriately. In my experience it is easier to do this in Scotland, where we have lower winter temperatures and a greater chance of an extended broodless period.

However, Scotland – unlike the Midlands where I have also kept bees – offers some additional complications where Varroa control is concerned. Our most important (by £££) nectar source is heather which yields late in the year, too late in some years to subsequently protect the winter bees from mites and viruses.

Balancing the needs of the bees (low mites and viruses to overwinter successfully) with those of the beekeeper (hundreds of kilograms of heather honey) requires a careful balancing act and a good understanding of the benefits and limitations of the miticides available.

In turn, this needs good documentation and better advice that is both easily accessible and understandable by beekeepers.

And … to my surprise – and I look forward to it being confirmed or refuted – I’m told that the SPC is the legally binding document with regard to the use or misuse of licensed miticides.

I’ve (had to) read them all now … have you?

References

Al Toufailia, H., Scandian, L., and Ratnieks, F.L.W. (2015) Towards integrated control of varroa: 2) comparing application methods and doses of oxalic acid on the mortality of phoretic Varroa destructor mites and their honey bee hosts. Journal of Apicultural Research 54: 108–120 https://doi.org/10.1080/00218839.2015.1106777. 

Repeated oxalic acid vaporisation

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Synopsis : Does repeated oxalic acid vaporisation of colonies rearing brood work sufficiently well? Is it as useful a strategy as many beekeepers claim?

Introduction

Oxalic acid is a simple chemical. A dicarboxylic acid that forms a white crystalline solid which dissolves readily in water to form a colourless solution. It was originally extracted from wood-sorrels, plants of the genus Oxalis, hence the name. In addition to the wood-sorrels it is present in a wide range of other plants including rhubarb leaves (0.5% oxalic acid 1 ), the berries and sap of Virginia creeper and some fruits, such as starfruit. Additionally, fungi excrete oxalic acid to increase the availability of soil nutrients.

Oxalic acid is inexpensive to produce by a variety of processes and was possibly the first synthesised natural product. About 120,000 tonnes are produced annually and it is mainly used for bleaching wood (and often sold as ‘wood bleach’) and cleaning products – including teeth. It chelates iron and so is used for rust removal and is used as a dye fixative (or mordant 2 ).

Spot the difference ...

Oxalic acid and API-Bioxal … the same but different

It is also, when used properly, devastatingly effective against the ectoparasitic mite Varroa destructor.

And, even more importantly, when used properly it is extremely well-tolerated by honey bees.

Great!

Not so fast …

Unfortunately for beekeepers, some of the commercially available i.e. licensed and approved, oxalic acid-containing treatments either contain unnecessary additives and/or have limitations in their approved modes of administration that reduces their efficiency and use in real world beekeeping situations.

Oxalic acid-containing miticides and their use

A quick search of the UK’s 3 Veterinary Medicines Directorate snappily titled Product Information Database for ‘target species = bees’ and ‘active ingredient = oxalic acid’ yields three products :

  • Varromed (BeeVital GmbH) which is a solution containing formic acid and oxalic acid
  • Oxybee (DANY Bienenwohl GmbH) which is an oxalic acid solution PLUS a separate powder containing essential oils and sugar. As far as I can tell, Oxybee looks to be the same product as Dany’s BienenWohl powder and solution, which – although listed and licensed – I cannot find for sale 4 in the UK
  • API-Bioxal (Chemicals Laif S.P.A) which is purchased as a powder composed of 88% oxalic acid dihydrate together with silica and glucose

I’m going to largely ignore Varromed and Oxybee for the rest of this post. I’m sure they’re perfectly good products but I’ve not used either of them so cannot comment from personal experience.

Keeping your powder dry

More relevant to this post, Oxybee and Varromed are both liquids, and this post is about vaporising (aka sublimating) oxalic acid.

And vaporisation involves using the powdered form of oxalic acid.

Which neatly brings me to the methods of application of oxalic acid-containing treatments to kill mites.

I’m sure there are some weird and wonderful ones, but I’ll be limiting any comments to just three which – from my reading of the instructions – are the only ones approved (and then not for all of the products listed above) : 5

  • Spraying a solution onto the surface of the bee-covered frames
  • Dribbling or trickling a solution onto each seam of bees between the frames
  • Vaporisation or sublimation of powdered oxalic acid by heating it in a metal pan to convert it to a gas. This permeates the hive, settling on all the surfaces – woodwork, comb, bees – and remains active against mites for a period after administration

Broodless is best

Oxalic acid, however it is administered, does not penetrate brood cappings. Therefore all of the approved products are recommended for use when the colony is broodless.

Typically – though not exclusively – this happens in the winter, but the beekeeper can engineer it at other times of the season.

If the colony is broodless you can expect any oxalic acid-containing miticide to reduce the mite population by 90% or more. There are numerous studies that support this level of efficacy and it’s what you should be aiming for to give the colony the best start to the season.

I discussed at length how to determine whether a winter colony is broodless a fortnight ago in Broodless?

This post is a more extensive response to several comments (made to that Broodless? article) that recommended repeated vaporisation of oxalic acid at, either 4, 5 or 7 day intervals.

The idea is that this kills the phoretic mites present when the colony is first treated and the mites subsequently released as brood emerges.

How many repeats?

I’ve seen anything from two to seven recommended online.

I’ll discuss this further below, but I’d note that the very fact that there’s such variation in the recommended repeat treatments – perhaps anything from two, fours days apart to seven at weekly intervals (i.e. spanning anything from 8 days to 49 days) – suggests to me that we don’t know the optimal treatment schedule.

Which is a little weird as, a) Varroa is a globally-distributed problem for beekeepers and is more or less invariant (as is the brood cycle of the host honey bee), and b) repeated treatment regimes have been used for over 20 years.

Which brings me back to a crude comparison of vaporisation vs dribbling, or …

Sublimation vs. trickling

A hive can be sublimated with oxalic acid without opening the hive. The vaporiser alone is introduced through the hive entrance or – in the case of certain models – the vapour is squirted through a hole in the floor, brood box or eke. In contrast, trickling oxalic acid requires the removal of the crownboard.

In the video above I’m using a Sublimox vaporiser. The hive entrance is sealed with foam and the open mesh floor is covered with a tightly fitting slide-in tray. As you can see, very little vapour escapes.

Although oxalic acid is well tolerated by bees, and it has no effect upon sealed brood, a solution of oxalic acid is detrimental to open brood. Therefore, trickled oxalic acid weakens the colony – because the acidity kills some or all of the open brood – and repeated trickling of oxalic acid is likely to compound this (see Al Toufailia et al., 2015). In contrast, repeated oxalic acid vaporisations appear not to be detrimental to the colony (caveat … I’m not aware of any long-term studies of this, or for the impact on the queen).

API-Bioxal approved methods of administration

The instructions for API-Bioxal clearly state that only a single treatment by vaporisation is approved per year. The exact wording is:

Maximal dose 2.3g per hive as a single administration. One treatment per year.

In contrast, when used as a solution for trickling the instructions state:

Up to two treatments per year (winter and/or spring-summer season in brood-free colonies).

This seems nonsensical to me considering what we now know about oxalic acid – remember, API-Bioxal was licensed in the same year (2015) that Al Toufailia et al., demonstrated it was detrimental to open brood, and I’m reasonably sure this had been shown previously (but can’t currently find the reference).

But, it gets worse …

API-Bioxal contains oxalic acid with powdered silica and glucose. I presume the silica is to keep it free-running. I’m not aware that powdered silica kills mites and I’m damned certain that glucose has no miticidal activity 😉 .

Neither of these two additives – which I’ve previously called cutting agents – are there to increase the activity of the oxalic acid … and the presence of the glucose is a real problem when vaporising.

Single use ...

Caramel coated Sublimox vaporiser pan

When glucose is heated to 160°-230°C it caramelises (actually, this happens at 150°C 6 ), coating the inside of the vaporising pan. This needs to be cleaned out afterwards 7. The instructions state:

Cool down and clean the vaporizer after use to remove possible residue (max 6%, around 0.140 g).

However, I don’t want to focus on what I consider to be a very effective but decidedly sub-optimal product … instead I want to discuss whether repeat treatment with oxalic acid actually works when there is brood present.

Why is repeat treatment recommended?

Remember, it’s not recommended or approved by the manufacturers of API-Bioxal or the Veterinary Medicines Directorate. I really should have titled this section ’Why is repeat treatment recommended by those who advocate it?’

But that wouldn’t fit on a single line 😉 .

When you sublimate oxalic acid, the gas cools and the oxalic acid crystals settle out on every surface within the hive – the walls, the frames, the comb, the bees etc.. For this reason, I prefer to vaporise oxalic acid when the colony is not tightly clustered. I want everything to be coated with oxalic acid, and I particularly want every bee to be coated because that’s where most of the mites are.

Unless they’re in capped cells 🙁 .

And if they’re in capped cells, the only way the Varroa (released when the brood emerges) will come into contact with oxalic acid is if it remains present and active within the hive. Unfortunately, it’s unclear to me exactly how long the oxalic acid does remain active, or what accounts for a drop in its activity.

But it does drop.

If you treat a colony with brood present and count the mites that appear on the Varroa tray every day it looks something like this:

Mite drop per day before and after treatment

’Something like’ because it depends upon the phoretic mite levels and the amount and rate of brood uncapping. For example, you often see higher mite drops from 24-48 hours than 0-24 hours after treatment.

I know not why.

The drop in the first 48 hours – presumably almost all phoretic mites – can be very much higher than the drop from day three onwards 8.

The duration of activity after vaporisation

Some studies claim oxalic acid remains active for 2-3 weeks after administration. I’m a little sceptical that it’s effective for that long and my own rather crude observations of post-treatment mite drop (of brooding colonies) suggests it returns to background levels within 5-7 days.

I could rabbit on about this for paragraphs as I’ve given it a reasonable amount of thought, but fortunately the late Pete Little did the experiment and showed that:

The recommended dose for colonies with brood is three or four doses seven days apart, however I found out that this is not effective enough, and treated 7, 6, 5 4, 3, 2 days apart to find out the most effective which is 5.

It therefore makes sense that three treatments at five day intervals should be sufficient. This period comfortably covers a complete capped brood cycle (assuming there is no drone brood in the colony) which is 12 days long.

Repeated oxalic acid vaporisation treatment regime.

If there is drone brood present you would theoretically need four treatments at 5 day intervals to be sure of covering the 15 day capped brood cycle of drones.

But it turns out there are some additional complications to consider.

Dosage

In the UK the recommended i.e. approved, maximum dose of API-Bioxal is 2.3 g by vaporisation. Remember my comments about the other rubbish stuff API-Bioxal contains, 2.3 g of API-Bioxal actually contains a fraction over 2 g of oxalic acid dihydrate.

This is the active ingredient.

When comparing different experiments where some have used ‘plain’ oxalic acid dihydrate and others have used – or will use – API-Bioxal, it’s important to consider the amount of the active ingredient only 9 .

In the US, oxalic acid was registered as an approved treatment for Varroa in 2015. By vaporisation, the approved dosage is 1 g of oxalic acid dihydrate per brood box i.e. half that approved in the UK.

Remember also that a deep Langstroth is 5% larger (by volume) than a National brood box.

And Jennifer Berry and colleagues in the University of Georgia have recently determined whether repeated administration of vaporised oxalic acid to a colony rearing brood is an effective way of controlling and reducing Varroa infestations (Berry et al., 2021).

And the answer is … decidedly underwhelming

Here are the experimental details.

The paper doesn’t state 10 when the experiment was done but they measured honey production in the treated colonies and were definitely brood rearing, so I’m assuming late summer.

Colonies were treated with 1 g / box (double Langstroth deeps) vaporised oxalic acid every five days for a total of 35 days i.e. 7 applications. Mite infestation levels (percent of workers carrying phoretic mites) were measured before and after treatment. Almost 100 colonies were used in the experiment, in three apiaries, randomly split into treated and control groups.

Let’s get the easy bit out of the way first … there was no difference in brood levels, adult bees or food stores at the end of the study. The treated hives were not disadvantaged by being treated … but they didn’t gain an advantage either 🙁 .

Mite levels after treatment normalised to pre-treatment levels (dotted line = no change)

During the experiment the percent mite infestation (PMI) levels in the untreated control colonies increased (as expected) by ~4.4. This is an average and there was quite a bit of variation, but it means that an initial mite infestation level of 4 (average) increased to 8.4 i.e. over 8 mites on every 100 adult workers in the hive.

3% is often considered the cutoff above which treatment is necessary.

Overall, the PMI of treated colonies reduced over the duration of the experiment … but only by 0.7.

From a colony health perspective this is a meaningless reduction.

Seven treatments with the recommended (in the US) dose of oxalic acid stopped the mite levels increasing, but did not reduce them.

Repeated administration of the US-approved oxalic acid dose by vaporisation does not reduce mite levels in a way that seems likely to significantly benefit the colony.

🙁

Dosage, again

I’m not sure the primary data used to justify the US approved 1 g / box dosage. Early studies by Thomas Radetzki (PDF) showed a 95% reduction in mite levels using a dose of 1.4 g. This was a large study involving ~1500 colonies and a dose of 2.8 g was not significantly more effective. I’m quoting the figures for broodless colonies 11.

The Berry results were similar to two smaller previous studies by Jamie Ellis and colleagues (Jack et al., 2020, 2021) who demonstrated that 1 g oxalic acid vaporised three times at weekly intervals was ineffective in controlling mite levels.

However Jack et al., (2021) also applied a similar treatment schedule using different doses of oxalic acid.

Data from Jack et al., 2021 using different repeat doses of oxalic acid

Ignore the intermediate values in panel A, just look at the pretreatment and ‘3 weeks’ mite infestation values.

Mite levels increased in untreated controls and decreased in all treated colonies. However, there was a clear dose response where the more oxalic acid used the greater the impact on the mite levels.

Four grams of oxalic acid reduced the mite infestation rate significantly … from ~5% to ~2% (I’ll return to this). However, the intermediate levels of oxalic acid, whilst reducing mite levels, did not do so significantly from the next closest amount of oxalic acid. For example, 1 g wasn’t significantly more effective than no treatment (as already stated), 2 g was not significantly more effective than 1 g and 4 g was not significantly more effective than 2 g.

But wait … there’s more

I’m familiar with two other studies that look at dose and/or repetition and efficacy (there are more, but this isn’t meant to be an exhaustive review, more a ”Do we know enough?” overview).

Gregoric et al., (2016) published a 12 study that appeared to use combinations of treatments in multiple apiaries. The abstract claims 97% reduction using three 1 g vaporisations, though these are spread over a 57 day period (!) stretching from mid-August to late-November. Mite drop in November following treatment was ~75% (presumably broodless) , but only 10-20% in August. Interestingly I can’t find the figure 97% anywhere in the results …

Finally, Al Toufailia et al., (2015) investigated the dose response to vaporised oxalic acid, showing an 80% reduction in infestation at 0.56 g and 93-98% who using 1.125, 2.25 and 4 g of oxalic acid. All of these studies were determined using broodless colonies.

The Al Toufailia and Jack studies – as well as the Berry study – also reported on adverse effects on the colony. With certain exceptions vaporisation was well tolerated. Some colonies went queenless. Where the queen was caged in late summer to render it broodless (Jack et al.,) some colonies subsequently failed to overwinter successfully (though, look on the bright side, mite levels were reduced 😉 ).

Don’t do that at home … I presume they impacted the production of winter bees.

confused.com

I’m not sure there’s a compelling, peer-reviewed study that definitively shows that repeat treatments of vaporised oxalic acid administered to a brood rearing colony reduces mite levels sufficiently.

Yes, the Jack et al., (2020) showed a significant reduction in the infestation rate (using 4 g three times at seven day intervals), but it was still around 2%.

In late summer, with 20-30,000 bees in the box and 6 frames of brood, that’s still ~600 mites (and potentially more in the capped brood).

In midwinter with about 10,000 workers and much smaller amounts of brood in the hive a 2% infestation rate is still 200 mites.

That’s still a lot of mites for a nearly broodless colony … I treat my colonies when broodless (and assume I’m killing ~90% of the mites present) and am disappointed if there are 45 mites on the Varroa tray. 50 mites on 10,000 workers is an infestation rate of 0.5%.

I’ve waffled on for too long.

All those advocating – or using – repeated oxalic acid vaporisation on brood rearing colonies in late autumn/winter need to think about:

  • dosage … 1 g is clearly too little (at a 5-7 day interval, but what if it was at a 4 day interval?), 2 g is better and 4 g is well-tolerated and certainly more effective
  • frequency … which I suspect is related to dosage. The goal must be to repeat sufficiently frequently that there is never a period when oxalic acid levels fall below a certain amount (and I don’t know what that amount is). 1 g on a daily basis might work well … who knows?
  • duration … you must cover a full capped brood cycle with the repeats
  • adverse effects … inevitable, but can be minimised with a rational treatment schedule

Broodless is best

It really is.

But, if your colonies are never broodless 13 then I wouldn’t be confident that repeat treatment was controlling Varroa levels sufficiently.

I have treated repeatedly with oxalic acid. In the good old days before API-Bioxal appeared. It certainly reduced Varroa levels, but not as well as my chosen Apivar does these days.

Repeated oxalic acid vaporisation is regularly proposed as the solution to Varroa but I’m certainly not confident that the data is there to support this claim.

Take care out there 😉

Notes

In a future post I’ll revisit this … I’ve got a pretty clear idea of how I’d go about demonstrating whether repeated oxalic acid treatments are effective in meaningfully reducing mite levels i.e. sufficient to protect the colony overwinter and through to the following late summer.

References

Al Toufailia, H., Scandian, L. and Ratnieks, F.L.W. (2015) ‘Towards integrated control of varroa: 2) comparing application methods and doses of oxalic acid on the mortality of phoretic Varroa destructor mites and their honey bee hosts’, Journal of Apicultural Research, 54(2), pp. 108–120. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00218839.2015.1106777.
Berry, J.A. et al. (2022) ‘Assessing Repeated Oxalic Acid Vaporization in Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Colonies for Control of the Ectoparasitic Mite Varroa destructor’, Journal of Insect Science, 22(1), p. 15. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/jisesa/ieab089.
Gregorc, A. et al. (2016) ‘Integrated varroa control in honey bee (Apis mellifera carnica) colonies with or without brood’, Journal of Apicultural Research, 55(3), pp. 253–258. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00218839.2016.1222700.
Jack, C.J., van Santen, E. and Ellis, J.D. (2020) ‘Evaluating the Efficacy of Oxalic Acid Vaporization and Brood Interruption in Controlling the Honey Bee Pest Varroa destructor (Acari: Varroidae)’, Journal of Economic Entomology, 113(2), pp. 582–588. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/jee/toz358.
Jack, C.J., van Santen, E. and Ellis, J.D. (2021) ‘Determining the dose of oxalic acid applied via vaporization needed for the control of the honey bee (Apis mellifera) pest Varroa destructor’, Journal of Apicultural Research, 60(3), pp. 414–420. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00218839.2021.1877447.

Winter covers and colony survival

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Synopsis : A recent study shows increased overwinter colony survival of ‘covered’ hives wrapped in Correx and with insulation under the roof. What provides the most benefit, and are the results as clear cut as they seem?

Introduction

A recent talk by Andrew Abrahams to the Scottish Native Honey Bee Society coincided with me catching up my 1 backlog of scientific papers on honey bees. I’d been reading a paper on the benefits of wrapping hives in the winter and Andrew commented that he did exactly that to fend off the worst of the wet weather. Andrew lives on the island of Colonsay about 75 km south of me and we both ‘benefit’ from the damp Atlantic climate.

The paper extolled the virtues of ‘covered’ hives and the data the researchers present looks, at first glance, compelling.

For example, <5% of covered hives perished overwinter in contrast to >27% of the uncovered control hives.

Wow!

Why doesn’t everyone wrap their hives?

However, a closer look at the paper raises a number of questions about what is actually benefitting (or killing) the colonies.

Nevertheless, the results are interesting. I think the paper poses rather more questions than it answers, but I do think the results show the benefits of hive insulation and these are worth discussing.

Bees don’t hibernate

Hibernation is a physiological state in which the metabolic processes of the body are significantly reduced. The animal becomes torpid, exhibiting a reduced heart rate, low body temperature and reduced breathing. Food reserves e.g. stored fat, are conserved and the animal waits out the winter until environmental conditions improve.

However, bees don’t hibernate.

Winter cluster 3/1/21 3°C (insulation block removed from the crownboard)

If you lift the lift the roof from a hive on a cold midwinter day you’ll find the bees clustered tightly together. But, look closely and you’ll see that the bees are moving. Remove the crownboard and some bees will probably fly.

The cluster conserves warmth and there is a temperature gradient from the outside – termed the mantle – to the middle (the core).

If chilled below ~5.5°C a bee becomes semi-comatose 2 and unable to warm herself up again. The mantle temperature of the cluster never drops below ~8°C, but the core is maintained at 18-20°C when broodless or ~35°C if they are rearing brood. I’ve discussed the winter cluster in lots more detail a couple of years ago.

The metabolic activity of the clustered winter bees is ‘powered’ by their consumption of the stores they laid down in the autumn. It seems logical to assume that it will take more energy (i.e. stores) to maintain a particular cluster temperature if the ambient temperature is lower.

Therefore, logic would also suggest that the greater the insulation properties of the hive – for a particular difference in ambient to cluster temperature – the less stores would be consumed.

Since winter starvation is bad for bees (!) it makes sense to be thinking about this now, before the temperatures plummet in the winter.

Cedar and poly hives

I’m not aware of many comparative studies of the insulation properties of hives made from the two most frequently used materials – wood and polystyrene. However, Alburaki and Corona (2021) have investigated this and shown a small (but statistically significant) difference in the inner temperature of poly Langstroth hives when compared to wooden ones.

Poly hives were ~0.5°C warmer and, perhaps more importantly, exhibited much less variation in temperature over a 24 hour period.

Temperature and humidity in poly and wood hives

In addition to the slight temperature difference, the humidity within the wooden hives was significantly higher than that of poly.

The hives used in this study were occupied by bees and the temperature and humidity were recorded from sensors placed in a modified frame in the ‘centre of the brood box’. The external ambient temperature averaged 0°C, but fluctuated over a wide range (-10°C to 20°C) during the four month study 3.

Temperature anomalies

Whilst I’m not surprised that the poly hives were marginally warmer, I was surprised how low the internal hive temperatures were. The authors don’t comment on whether the ‘central’ frame was covered with bees, or whether the bees were rearing brood.

The longitudinal temperature traces (not reproduced here – check the paper) don’t help much either as they drop in mid-February when I would expect brood rearing to be really gearing up … Illogical, Captain.

The authors avoid any discussion on why the average internal temperature was at least 5-8°C cooler than the expected temperature of the core of a clustered broodless colony, and ~25°C cooler than a clustered colony that was rearing brood.

My guess is that the frame with the sensors was outside the cluster. For example, perhaps it was in the lower brood box 4 with the bees clustered in the upper box?

We’ll never know, but let’s just accept that poly hives – big surprise 😉 – are better insulated. Therefore the bees should need to use less stores to maintain a particular internal temperature.

And, although Alburaki and Corona (2021) didn’t measure this, it did form part of a recent study by Ashley St. Clair and colleagues from the University of Illinois (St. Clair et al., 2022).

Hive covers reduce food consumption and colony mortality

This section heading repeats the two key points in the title of this second paper.

I’ll first outline what was done and describe these headline claims in more detail. After that I’ll discuss the experiments in a bit more detail and some caveats I have of the methodology and the claims.

I’ll also make clear what the authors mean by a ‘hive cover’.

The study was conducted in central Illinois and involved 43 hives in 8 apiaries. Hives were randomly assigned to ‘covered’ or ‘uncovered’ i.e. control – groups (both were present in every apiary) and the study lasted from mid-November to the end of the following March.

Ambient (blue), covered (black) and control (dashed) hive temperatures

There were no significant differences in internal hive temperature between the two groups and – notably – the temperatures were much higher (15°-34°C) than those recorded by Alburaki and Corona (2021).

All colonies, whether covered or uncovered, got lighter through the winter, but the uncovered colonies lost significantly more weight once brood rearing started February. The authors supplemented all colonies with sugar cakes in February and the control colonies used ~15% more of these additional stores before the study concluded.

I don’t think any of these results are particularly surprising – colonies with additional insulation get lighter more slowly and need less supplemental feeding.

The surprising result was colony survival.

Less than 5% (1/22) of the covered hives perished during the winter but over 27% (6/21) of the control hives didn’t make it through to the following spring.

(Un)acceptable losses

To put these last figures into context the authors quote a BeeI Informed Partnership survey where respondents gave a figure of 23.3% as being ’acceptable’ for winter colony losses.

That seems a depressingly high figure to me.

However, look – and weep – at the percentage losses across the USA in the ’20/’21 winter from that same survey 5.

Bee Informed Partnership 2021 winter colony losses (preliminary data)

This was a sizeable survey involving over 3,300 beekeepers managing 192,000 colonies (~7% of the total hives in the USA).

If hive covers reduce losses to just 5% why does Illinois report winter losses of 47%? 6

Are the losses in this manuscript suspiciously low?

Or, does nobody use hive covers?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I also wasn’t sure when I started reading the paper what the authors meant by a hive ‘cover’ … which is what I’ll discuss next.

Hive covers

The hives used in this study were wooden Langstroths and the hive covers were 4 mm black corrugated polypropylene sleeves.

This is what I call Correx … one of my favourite materials for beekeeping DIY.

These hive covers are available commercially in the USA (and may be here, I’ve not looked). At $33 each (Yikes) they’re not cheap, but how much is a colony worth?

Significantly more than $33.

I’ve not bothered to make the conversion of Langstroth Deep dimensions (always quoted in inches 🙁 ) to metric and then compared the area of Correx to the current sheet price of ~£13 … but I suspect there are savings to be made by the interested DIYer 7.

However, knowing (and loving) Correx, what strikes me is that it seems unlikely to provide much insulation. At only 4 mm thick and enclosing an even thinner air gap, it’s not the first thing I’d think of to reduce heat loss 8.

4 mm Correx sheet

Thermal resistance is the (or a) measure of the insulating properties of materials. It’s measured in the instantly forgettable units of square metre kelvin per watt m2.K/W.

I couldn’t find a figure for 4 mm Correx, but I did manage to find some numbers for air.

A 5 mm air gap – greater than separates the inner and outer walls of a 4 mm Correx hive cover – has a thermal resistance of 0.11 m2.K/W.

Kingspan

It’s not possible to directly compare this with anything meaningful, but there is data available for larger ‘thicknesses’ of air, and other forms of insulation.

An air gap of 100 mm has a thermal resistance of about 0.17 m2.K/W. For comparison, the same thickness of Kingspan (blown phenolic foam wall insulation, available from almost any building site skip) has a thermal resistance of 5, almost 30 times greater.

And, it turns out, St. Clair and colleagues also added a foam insulation board on top of the hive crownboard (or ‘inner cover’ as they call it in the USA). This board was 3.8 cm thick and has somewhat lower thermal resistance than the Kingspan I discussed above.

It might provide less insulation than Kingspan, but it’s a whole lot better than Correx.

This additional insulation is only briefly mentioned in the Materials and Methods and barely gets another mention in the paper.

A pity, as I suspect it’s very important.

Perspex crownboard with integrated 50 mm Kingspan insulation

I’m very familiar with Kingspan insulation for hives. All my colonies have a 5 cm thick block present all year – either placed over the crownboard, built into the crownboard or integrated into the hive roof.

Two variables … and woodpeckers

Unfortunately, St. Clair and colleagues didn’t compare the weight loss and survival of hives ‘covered’ by either wrapping them in Correx or having an insulated roof.

It’s therefore not possible to determine which of these two forms of protection is most beneficial for the hive.

For reasons described above I think the Correx sleeve is unlikely to provide much direct thermal insulation.

However, that doesn’t mean it’s not beneficial.

At the start of this post I explained that Andrew Abrahams wraps his hives for the winter. He appears to use something like black DPM (damp proof membrane).

Hive wrapped in black DPM (to prevent woodpecker damage)

Andrew uses it to keep the rain off the hives … I’ve used exactly the same stuff to prevent woodpecker damage to hives during the winter.

It’s only green woodpeckers (Picus viridis) that damage hives. It’s a learned activity; not all green woodpeckers appear to know that beehives are full of protein-rich goodies in the depths of winter. If they can’t grip on the side of the hive they can’t chisel their way in.

When I lived in the Midlands the hives always needed winter woodpecker protection, but the Fife Yaffles 9 don’t appear to attack hives.

Here on the west coast, and on Colonsay, there are no green woodpeckers … and I know nothing about the hive-eating woodpeckers of Illinois.

So, let’s forget the woodpeckers and return to other benefits that might arise from wrapping the hive in some form of black sheeting during the winter.

Solar gain and tar paper

Solar gain is the increase in thermal energy (or temperature as people other than physicists with freakishly large foreheads call it) of something – like a bee hive – as it absorbs solar radiation.

On sunny days a black DPM-wrapped hive (or one sleeved in a $33 Correx/Coroplast hive ‘cover’) will benefit from solar gain. The black surface will warm up and some of that heat should transfer to the hive.

And – in the USA at least – there’s a long history of wrapping hives for the winter. If you do an internet search for ‘winterizing hives’ or something similar 10 you’ll find loads of descriptions (and videos) on what this involves.

Rather than use DPM, many of these descriptions use ‘tar paper’ … which, here in the UK, we’d call roofing felt 11.

Roofing felt – at least the stuff I have left over from re-roofing sheds – is pretty beastly stuff to work with. However, perhaps importantly, it has a rough matt finish, so is likely to provide significantly more solar gain than a covering of shiny black DPM.

I haven’t wrapped hives in winter since I moved back to Scotland in 2015. However, the comments by Andrew – who shares the similarly warm and damp Atlantic coastal environment – this recent paper and some reading on solar gain are making me wonder whether I should.

Fortunately, I never throw anything away, so should still have the DPM 😉

Winter losses

Illinois has a temperate climate and the ambient temperature during the study was at or below 0°C for about 11 weeks. However, these sorts of temperatures are readily tolerated by overwintering colonies. It seems unlikely that colonies that perished were killed by the cold.

So what did kill them?

Unfortunately there’s no information on this in the paper by St. Clair and colleagues.

Perhaps the authors are saving this for later … ’slicing and dicing’ the results into MPU’s (minimal publishable units) to eke out the maximum number of papers from their funding 12, but I doubt it.

I suspect they either didn’t check, checked but couldn’t determine the cause, or – most likely – determined the cause(s) but that there was no consistent pattern so making it an inconclusive story.

But … it was probably Varroa and mite-transmitted Deformed wing virus (DWV).

It usually is.

Varroa

There were some oddities in their preparation of the colonies and late-season Varroa treatment.

Prior to ‘winterizing’ colonies they treated them with Apivar (early August) and then equalised the strength of the colonies. This involves shuffling brood frames to ensure all the colonies in the study were of broadly the same strength (remember, strong colonies overwinter better).

A follow-up Varroa check in mid-October showed that mite levels were still at 3.5% (i.e. 10.5 phoretic mites/300 bees) and so all colonies were treated with vaporised oxalic acid (OA).

Sublimox vaporiser

Sublimox vaporiser … phoretic mites don’t stand a chance

In early November, mite levels were down to a more acceptable 0.7%. Colonies received a second OA treatment in early January.

For whatever reason, the Apivar treatment appears to have been ineffective.

When colonies are treated for 6-10 weeks with Apivar (e.g. early August to mid-October) mite levels should be reduced by >90%.

Mite infestation levels of 3.5% suggest to me that the Apivar treatment did not work very well. That being the case, the winter bees being reared through August, September and early October would have been exposed to high mite levels, and so acquired high levels of DWV.

OA treatment in mid-October would kill these remaining mites … but the damage had already been done to the ’diutinus’ winter bees.

That’s my guess anyway.

An informed guess, but a guess nevertheless, based upon the data in the paper and my understanding of winter bee production, DWV and rational Varroa management.

In support of this conclusion it’s notable that colonies died from about week 8, suggesting they were running out of winter bees due to their reduced longevity.

If I’m right …

It raises the interesting question of why the losses were predominantly (6 vs 1) of the control colonies?

Unfortunately the authors only provide average mite numbers per apiary, and each apiary contained a mix of covered and control hives. However, based upon the error bars on the graph (Supporting Information Fig S1 [PDF] if you’re following this) I’m assuming there wasn’t a marked difference between covered and control hives.

I’ve run out of informed guesses … I don’t know the answer to the question. There’s insufficient data in the paper.

Let’s briefly revisit hive temperatures

Unusually, I’m going to present the same hive temperature graph shown above to save you scrolling back up the page 13.

Ambient (blue), covered (black) and control (dashed) hive temperatures

There was no overall significant difference in hive temperature between the control and covered colonies. However, after the coldest weeks of the winter (7 and 8 i.e. the end of February), hive temperatures started to rise and the covered colonies were consistently marginally warmer. By this time in the season the colonies should be rearing increasing amounts of brood.

I’ve not presented the hive weight changes. These diverged most significantly from week 8. The control colonies used more stores to maintain a similar (actually – as stated above – marginally lower) temperature. As the authors state:

… covered colonies appeared to be able to maintain normal thermoregulatory temperatures, while consuming significantly less stored food, suggesting that hive covers may reduce the energetic cost of nest thermoregulation.

I should add that there was no difference in colony strength (of those that survived) between covered and control colonies; it’s not as though those marginally warmer temperatures from week 9 resulted in greater brood rearing.

Are lower hive temperatures ever beneficial in winter?

Yes.

Varroa management is much easier if colonies experience a broodless period in the winter.

A single oxalic acid treatment during this broodless period should kill 95% of mites – as all are phoretic – leaving the colony in a very good state for the coming season.

If you treat your colonies early enough to protect the winter bees there will inevitably be some residual mite replication in the late season brood, thereby necessitating the midwinter treatment as well.

I’m therefore a big fan of cold winters. The colony is more likely to be broodless at some point.

I was therefore reassured by the similarity in the temperatures of covered and control colonies from weeks 48 until the cold snap at the end of February. Covered hives should still experience a broodless period.

I’m off for a rummage in the back of the shed to find some rolls of DPM for the winter.

I don’t expect it will increase my winter survival rates (which are pretty good) and I’m not going to conduct a controlled experiment to see if it does.

If I can find the DPM I’ll wrap a few hives to protect them from the winter weather. With luck I should be able to rescue an additional frame or two of unused stores in the spring (I often can anyway). I stack this away safely and then use it when I’m making up nucs for queen mating.

I suspect that the insulation over the crownboard provides more benefit than the hive ‘wrap’. As stated before, all my colonies are insulated like this year round as I’m convinced it benefits the colony, reducing condensation over the cluster and keeping valuable warmth from escaping. However, wrapping the hive for solar gain and/or weather protection is also worth considering.

References

Alburaki, M. and Corona, M. (2022) ‘Polyurethane honey bee hives provide better winter insulation than wooden hives’, Journal of Apicultural Research, 61(2), pp. 190–196. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00218839.2021.1999578.

St. Clair, A.L., Beach, N.J. and Dolezal, A.G. (2022) ‘Honey bee hive covers reduce food consumption and colony mortality during overwintering’, PLOS ONE, 17(4), p. e0266219. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266219.

Feral facts and fallacies

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Synopsis : Are feral colonies recently lost swarms or a self-sustaining ‘wild’ honey bee population? The latter must reproduce faster than they perish. Measuring rates of colony loss and nest occupancy provides a good indicator of the likely origin and independence of feral populations.

Introduction

Most colonies try to swarm every year. Most – not all – but if your colonies are strong and healthy they are likely to swarm. That’s why swarm prevention and subsequent swarm control are such important skills for the tyro beekeeper to master. Without swarm control the majority of the workforce is ‘lost’, the residual colony will be left temporarily queenless and the potential honey crop is probably much reduced.

A small swarm

A small swarm …

It is not difficult to become competent at swarm prevention and control. However, any beekeeper who claims to never lose swarms is probably being ‘economical with the actualité’ as the late Alan Clark once said.

What happens to those ‘lost’ swarms?

Some forward-thinking beekeepers set out bait hives. Any swarms that end up being attracted to these ‘swarm traps’ will eventually find their way back to a managed apiary. Some swarms end up in the church tower where ‘there have always been bees’, according to local parishioners.

Others move into the roof space above the entrance to the local nursery school, causing fascination, irritation and consternation in equal measure. Their fate depends upon whether the head teacher contacts a beekeeper or a pest controller … but their arrival reinforces the importance of swarm control and the use of bait hives.

A bait hive deployed in mid-April in good time for the swarming season ahead

And other swarms disappear over the apiary fence, across the field and into the local woods, eventually establishing a new colony in a suitable hollow tree.

No risk, no reward

Swarming is a risky business. The swarm leaves with the majority of the flying bees and the mated queen. However, it takes more than that to establish a functional colony. They need to draw comb, rear brood and collect sufficient stores to get through the winter.

That’s a tall order and most swarms fail.

Data from Thomas Seeley in The Lives of Bees suggests that only about 23% of swarms survive the winter.

In contrast, the swarmed colony has about an 80% chance of survival. They’ve got drawn comb, stores, eggs and larvae … ‘all’ they need to do is rear a new queen.

And then they’re likely to swarm again the following year 1. In fact, without swarm control, the average number of swarms produced by a colony is two per year – presumably a prime swarm (headed by the old queen) and a cast (headed by a virgin queen).

So, swarming is risky, but those swarms that succeed in establishing a new colony and overwintering can themselves attempt to reproduce again the following year.

That’s the reward.

Where are all these bees?

Even taking account of the exemplary swarm control by the UK’s ~25,000 beekeepers 2 I’m reasonably certain that a lot of swarms are lost every year.

Where do all these bees go?

I’ve been told of lots of churches or schools or trees with resident bees.

Quiet churchyard

A swarm magnet … or just an old church?

However, it’s certainly not every church, or school or hollow tree that’s occupied. Even when there’s a surplus of suitable nest sites, those that are occupied by a colony are the exception, not the rule.

The main reason of course is Varroa.

In the absence of intervention to reduce the mite population, the developing winter bees get parasitised by Varroa, and the resulting high levels of deformed wing virus (DWV) reduces the longevity of these necessarily 3 long-lived bees.

Consequently the winter cluster shrinks in size, from that of a football (early October) to a honeydew melon (late December) to a large orange (early February).

And then it freezes to death during a cold snap 🙁 .

The apiary in winter ...

The apiary in winter …

Numerous studies have shown that untreated colonies, in the absence of any natural resistance or tolerance to Varroa or DWV (though the latter is rarely discussed, and even less frequently tested for), almost always perish within a year or two of Varroa infestation.

Look back at the recent post on Biological control with Varroa for a reminder of the devastation wreaked on an island population of honey bees after the introduction of mites.

Wild? They’re livid feral …

Technically, swarms lost by beekeepers (that become established in the environment) are probably best termed feral colonies.

Originally feral meant simply ‘wild or untamed’, but the more common usage these days means ’animals or plants that have lapsed into a wild form from a domesticated condition’.

Bees aren’t domesticated, but I think feral conveniently encompasses their origin.

However, I’m more than happy to accept that a colony, initially feral, that becomes well-established in the church tower and throws off a swarm or two every year, that requeens every two or three seasons, surviving without intervention or management, must be considered ‘wild’ at some point.

It’s not worth discussing when a colony transitions from feral to wild.

It’s semantics, though I think the distinction between ‘recently arrived from a swarmed managed colony’ and ‘self-sustaining’ is an important one.

Notwithstanding the ravages of Varroa, whether feral or wild, there are colonies in the environment – churches, schools, trees – and probably rather more than many beekeepers are aware of.

The missing bees

Periodically there’s a little flurry of interest in the press about ‘long lost’ or ‘missing’ wild bees discovered in the woods.

Late last summer there were articles in all the newspapers about bees found on Blenheim Estate. The Observer reported this discovery with the headline ”No one knew they existed”: wild heirs of lost British honeybee found at Blenheim.

‘Blenheim bees’ article in the Observer, 7-11-21

As an aside – as this isn’t the real topic for discussion today – there are at least three challenging claims made in that headline; how can you be sure that no-one knew they existed? Is the British honey bee (it is not honeybee) actually lost? How do you know that these bees are their heirs?

Pedantic is my middle name.

But the 2500 hectare Blenheim Estate 4 isn’t the only location with apparently self-sustaining populations of honey bees. There are trees, churches and (I dare say) even nursery schools up and down the country that appear to have a ‘resident’ colony or two of bees.

Periodically they’re observed swarming. Sometimes things seem a bit quiet in the spring, but perhaps it’s too cold for the bees to be flying strongly anyway.

By May there’s a lot of activity so all must be well.

Right?

Perhaps 😉

Citizen science

These wild/feral colonies are infrequent but widely distributed. They are therefore difficult for one person to regularly observe. As a consequence there are several ‘citizen science’ projects monitoring some of these sites. Magnus Peterson regularly reports in The Scottish Beekeeper on the one he coordinates for the University of Strathclyde.

The criticism of these types of studies – certainly not Magnus’s specifically – but any study the largely relies upon infrequent observation by volunteers, is that stuff gets missed. A visit doesn’t happen because it’s raining hard. Or it does happen in heavy rain and no activity is observed and the colony is recorded as dead.

Or worse, recorded as alive, but not flying because of the heavy rain.

With more systematic observation, though not necessarily more frequent, you can have increased certainty that the site that was occupied last autumn is still occupied this spring.

The timing of these observations is important. Three per season is probably the minimum, early, mid and late, but they have to be at particular times of the season – see below.

Crowdfunding

So, let’s assume a colony is found in the autumn and the same hollow tree is occupied in late-April the following year … yippee, the colony is still alive.

Feral – or are they now wild? – bees living successfully with Varroa (at least presumably living with Varroa if they’re almost anywhere in mainland UK).

Perhaps they’ve evolved to have some interesting and useful trait(s) that renders the colony resistant to or tolerant of the dreaded parasitic mites?

These are valuable bees.

They are an important genetic resource.

They must be protected at all costs.

Perhaps it’s time to set up a web colony cam to record their activity? That’s going to cost a pretty penny, so some crowdfunding is needed.

A website is created … a dozen mini-nucs are purchased for the ambitiously planned queen rearing programme and – inevitably – there’s a misquoted article or two in the Guardian.

But hold on …

Are they really the same colony in April that were there the previous autumn?

How can you be sure?

How can you be certain that it’s not an unseasonably early swarm that was missed by the – usually eagle-eyed – local beekeepers? 5

It’s not unusual to find the odd charged queen cell during the first colony inspection of the season. At least, I’ve sometimes found queen cells during that first inspection. I’m sufficiently experienced to not go rummaging about in the boxes too early in the season, and so I am sometimes surprised at how well developed the colony is when I open the box.

Charged queen cell

But what if it had been raining, so I’d postponed the inspection?

On the next warm spring day – well before I was able to return to the apiary – the colony could swarm.

I’ve regularly seen April swarms in Scotland and there are many reports of even earlier swarms on social media every year.

Perhaps the active ‘overwintered’ colony is nothing of the sort.

Maybe it’s just been occupied by a very early swarm?

To be sure it’s the same colony you need to do some genetic testing. If the colony is the same the genetic testing will show identity. If the testing shows significant variation then it’s a different colony.

And, if you combine some genetic testing of overwintered colonies with three carefully-timed visits – late season, very early season and mid-season – to a large number of wild/feral colonies, or likely sites that they would occupy, you can determine their longevity and whether they are a self-sustaining population.

Bee trees

And I wouldn’t have given that long and rambling introduction if there wasn’t a recent scientific paper where they’ve done exactly that (Kohl et al., 2022). I’ll describe it briefly as it’s a nicely written and compelling story. The paper is open access, so you can read it if you want to check my interpretation of the data.

Importantly, I think it provides a very good guide to both the quality and quantity of data that are needed to be sure a population of bees are truly wild and self-sustaining 6 … or just regularly boosted by careless local beekeeping!

Feral colonies are few and far between. It’s hard work walking around the woods looking for hollow trees that may (but probably won’t) contain a colony. You find lots of trees with holes, but they need to lead to a suitably-sized cavity to be of any use to a colony of bees. Binoculars help (the holes are often 15 metres off the ground) … but perhaps there are better ways of doing this?

A bee tree?

Bee-lining – as described by Seeley in Following the Wild Bees – is an effective way of tracking down wild colonies, but needs good weather, good forage and ample time. It works well when locating a few colonies, but probably takes too long if you want 100+ to produce a statistically compelling set of results.

But what if you also wanted to record how many new nest sites are occupied? You would need to know where the empty cavities were before they were occupied. That’s not something you can determine by bee-lining, so you’re back to traipsing around the woods with a pair of binoculars.

Woodpeckers

But in Germany they have some very large woodpeckers.

The black woodpecker (Dryocopus martius) is a crow-sized bird that excavates correspondingly large holes for nest sites in old-growth forests. The average volume of a black woodpecker nest is about 10 litres, smaller than optimal for a swarm, but appreciably larger than most ‘natural’ tree cavities.

Black woodpecker

Conveniently, there are high-resolution maps of (historical) woodpecker nesting trees in old-growth forests in Swabian Alb, Weilheim-Schongau and the counties of Coburg and Lichtenfels. 98% of these woodpecker nest sites are in large beech trees, most are 10-12 metres above ground and with an entrance of ~10cm diameter (again, not optimal, but better than no nest site for a swarm).

Kohl and colleagues surveyed about 460 of these ‘cavity’ trees three times per season; in July (after the main May/June swarming season) to determine peak occupancy rates, in mid/late September to determine late summer survival and in early/mid April to determine winter survival.

‘Occupancy’ was determined by visual inspection and regular forager activity and/or pollen loads (i.e. they ignored scout bees checking empty cavities). In addition, for some colonies, a dozen or so workers were collected for genetic analysis.

With these data, the mathematical calculation of annual survival rates could be determined, as could the prediction of the annual numbers of swarms needed per colony for the population to be self-sustaining 7. In addition, it was possible to determine the average lifespan of a colony.

There were a bunch of perfectly reasonable assumptions made, based upon the known biology of honey bees – all are listed in the paper.

Yo-yoing colony numbers

The scientists counted colony numbers, but could also determine colony densities per km2. By making observations over a 3-4 year period it was strikingly obvious that the largest number of ‘cavity’ trees were occupied after swarming in summer, but that numbers dropped dramatically overwinter. This ’recurring temporal pattern of population fluctuations’ is very obvious in the major data figure in the paper.

Temporal population fluctuations of feral honey bee colonies in Germany; A) occupancy rates, B) population density

The average maximum occupancy rate and population density was 11% and 0.23 colonies per km2. This ‘dropped massively’ over the winter to just 1.4% and 0.02 colonies per km2.

The majority of nest sites (n = 112) occupied in late summer were unoccupied the following spring, before swarming started. 90% of colonies survived the summer (from July until late September), but only 16% of colonies survived the following winter.

The spring survival rate was calculated as 74% based upon genetic testing of colonies in early spring and mid-summer

Knowing the summer, winter and spring survival rates enables the annual survival rate to be calculated.

This was a sobering 10.6%.

Therefore, to maintain a stable population, each surviving colony would need to produce an average of 8.4 swarms per season.

That’s an unachievable amount of swarming.

The average lifespan of a feral colony in these three German forest regions was just 0.619 years … a little over 32 weeks.

Clearly, these honey bee populations are not self-sustaining.

Are these German forests typical?

There are two other regions where similar quality data exists for wild/feral honey bee populations. These are the Arnot forest in the USA, studied for decades by Thomas Seeley, and Wyperfield National Park in Australia.

There are striking differences between these two regions and the German forests, both in terms of colony lifespan and swarm numbers needed to be self-sustaining.

For the Arnot forest and Wyperfield National Park, lifespan was calculated as 1.34 and 1.53 years respectively (cf. 0.62 years for Germany), with annual survival of ~50% (cf. 11% in Germany). Annual swarm numbers per colony for the population to be self-sustaining was 0.94 and 0.85 for the the Arnot forest and Wyperfield National Park respectively (cf. 8.43 for the German forests).

Other than these obvious differences in the related figures for survival/longevity and ‘swarms needed’ the other significant difference between self-sustaining populations (like the Arnot forest and Wyperfield National Park) is the colony density.

In areas where feral/wild honey bees are self-sustaining the colony density is at least 1 per km2. In contrast, in Germany and a large number of other studied feral populations in other parts of Europe (including Ireland, Spain, Serbia, Poland and other regions of Germany), the colony density is usually much lower, at 0.1-0.2 per km2.

So, these German forests are seemingly typical of honey bee populations that are not self-sustaining. These are regions where the feral population is boosted annually (and is essentially dependent upon) an influx of swarms that become temporarily established in natural nest sites.

Environmental colony density

Where do all these swarms come from?

The average managed honey bee colony density in the areas of Germany studied is 4 per km2, appreciably higher than either the Arnot forest or Wyperfield National Park. Precise figures for these two were not quoted, but in both locations the feral colonies (remember, these were at ~1 per km2) outnumber managed colonies.

It therefore seems very likely that managed colonies from farmland areas surrounding the German forests acts as the source for swarms, and the latter – because of the paucity of suitable nest sites in the arable land (relatively few buildings, few mature trees etc.) – gravitate towards the forests looking for suitable nest sites.

Feral and managed colonies may therefore be spatially separated, though not very widely. In contrast, in urban environments – where nest sites are probably common – it might be expected that feral and managed colonies are intermixed in the environment.

A by-product of the study by Kohl and colleagues is that they could also calculate the difference in the relative attractiveness of woodpecker nests that had previously, or had never, been occupied by bees. When new colonies occupied woodpecker nest sites there was a strong preference of 5 to 15-fold for sites that had previously been occupied by bees.

This, of course, is why it makes sense to include a single old, dark comb in your bait hives.

That seems like a good place to stop …

I think this German study is interesting. It shows the quantity and quality of data needed to make a compelling case that a location has a self-sustaining population of feral/wild honey bees.

Such locations are likely to exhibit colony densities of at least 1 per km2 and to be physically separated from higher density managed colonies. This physical separation could be in the form of simple geographic isolation – just a long way from other apiaries – or something more complex like being surrounded by high hills or water etc.

Self-sustaining wild/feral populations are likely to exhibit >50% annual survival rates, to live for an average of ~1.5 years and to produce about 0.8-0.9 swarms per colony per year 8.

If survival rates are lower, or the life expectancy of a colony is much less, then the number of swarms needed to maintain the population rapidly becomes so high that they are unattainable.

In which case, large numbers of feral/wild colonies cannot be self-sustaining, but instead must be present because the area acts as a ‘sink’ for lost swarms from nearby managed colonies.

This post is already longer than my self-imposed-but-regularly-exceeded 3000 word limit so I’ll save further discussion of the Blenheim bees and other feral colonies for another post.

However, I hope the study shows that a healthy scepticism is perhaps sensible when considering any claims made about self-sustaining feral colonies.

That church tower in which ‘there have always been bees’ may well have had bees in it every year.

But that’s not the same as having the same bees in it.

In fact, with an ~90% attrition rate of feral colonies annually it’s very unlikely to be the same colony in successive years.

Note

In the final stages of completing this post – very, very late at night – I re-discovered an article (Moro et al., 2018) on citizen science and feral colonies that I’ll return to sometime in the future.

References

Kohl, P.L., Rutschmann, B. and Steffan-Dewenter, I. (2022) ‘Population demography of feral honeybee colonies in central European forests’, Royal Society Open Science, 9(8), p. 220565. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.220565.

Moro, A. et al. (2021) ‘Using Citizen Science to Scout Honey Bee Colonies That Naturally Survive Varroa destructor Infestations’, Insects, 12(6), p. 536. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/insects12060536.

 

Contact killer

As the days get shorter and the beekeeping season becomes just a fading (happy) memory, visitor numbers to this site start to dwindle. Still healthy 1, but perhaps only 30% of the numbers in May and June.

This is partly because there seems to be less to do at this time of the season.

No swarming, no queen rearing, no honey to harvest … and for many, no real thoughts of beekeeping.

It’s also undoubtedly because the voracious ‘read all you can’ beginners now have several months beekeeping experience.

Some are likely to think they know it all already 2.

Others may have given up in disgust when their colony swarmed (again) in August and they ended the season dispirited, queenless and honey-less 🙁

Of course, some beekeepers will be aware that, although there are some winter (or late autumn) tasks, there is no rush … there’s a whole winter ahead to deal with these and everything should then be fine until the season starts.

Au contraire as we used to say before Brexit 🙁

The paradox of timing miticide treatments

There remains one critically ‘time sensitive’ task to complete before the bees are ready for the season ahead.

Or, as I shall show shortly, not time sensitive with regard to the calendar, but time sensitive with regard to the state of the colony.

Not feeding … that should already be complete and they should not need topping up (if at all) until brood rearing really starts to ramp up in the early spring.

What needs to be done is to kill the mites – or as many as you can of them – that survive after the late summer/early autumn miticide treatment.

There’s an interesting paradox in miticide treatment …

The earlier you treat for mites once the summer honey has been removed, the more mites are present in the hive at the end of the calendar year. If you think about this – or look at my crudely drawn diagram 3 – it should be obvious why this is:

Mite numbers at the end of the year and the influence of early treatment

If you treat early enough (red line) to protect the winter bees from the ravages of Varroa and viruses, the mites that survive treatment will continue to reproduce in the small amount of brood reared at the end of the season (red arrow).

In contrast, if you treat too late to protect the winter bees (blue line), the surviving mites will have nowhere to reproduce as brood rearing will have stopped (blue arrow).

And there will be surviving mites.

None of the approved miticides 4 will kill more than 95% of mites in the hive 5.

Survivors

So, to start next season with the minimal mite load, you really need to kill as many of these surviving mites as possible.

The usual choice for a ‘midwinter’ mite treatment is oxalic acid. This can be trickled or vaporised and, under optimal conditions, kills 90-95% of the mites. You only need to administer it once and it is reasonably well tolerated by the bees 6

Let’s assume there are 200 mites remaining in your colony after the late summer miticide treatment and the last little flurry of mite hanky panky reproduction in the final round or two of brood reared by the colony.

If you can kill 90% of these mites with a single OA treatment there will only be 20 mites remaining at the beginning of the following season.

But can you kill 90% of them?

Oxalic acid is only effective against phoretic mites. Any mites lurking in capped brood cells will escape treatment. Therefore, if some, most or all of those 200 mites are in capped cells there will be significantly more remaining at the start of the following season.

During the active brood rearing season it has been determined that ~10% of mites are phoretic at any one time. Unfortunately, I’m not aware of any similar studies for the proportion of mites that are phoretic outside the spring and summer.

So, in the absence of any hard data let’s do some arbitrary arm waving calculations … 😉

The graph below shows the numbers of mites surviving a 90% 7 oxalic acid treatment where the percentage of phoretic mites ranges from 100% to 10% i.e. a range covering everything from a totally broodless colony to one with excess brood in all stages for the mites to parasitise.

Total mite numbers surviving OA treatment depends upon the proportion that are phoretic when treated

Unremarkably … the greater the percentage of mites that are phoretic, the fewer mites are left in the hive after the oxalic acid treatment.

And, equally unremarkably, for a contract contact killer 8 like oxalic acid, it is only when all the mites are phoretic that 90% of the original 200 mites can be killed. As you can see from the graph, if only 50% of the mites are phoretic, 55% of the total number of mites in the hive will survive treatment.

If you look at the 10% phoretic column you will understand why a single oxalic acid treatment in the height of the season – or for that matter dusting with icing sugar (which is even less effective) – has only a very limited impact on the overall mite numbers. If only 10% of the mites are phoretic then a whopping 91% of the mites (182) will survive.

Whopping?

Aren’t these are all quite small numbers?

20, 74, 146?

What’s a handful of mites between friends?

Does it really make a difference whether your hive contains 20 or 74 or 146 mites at the beginning of the following season?

Yes, it does.

It makes an enormous difference.

The mites present in early January will reproduce as brood rearing ramps up in spring. Therefore, at any particular time point in the season – assuming all other things are equal – there will be a significantly higher mite load in a colony that started the year with more mites, than one that started the year with fewer mites.

We know quite a bit about the reproduction of Varroa. For example, we know more progeny are reared when feasting on drone rather than worker pupae (because of the longer duration of pupation). There are a host of additional parameters that influence the reproduction rate of the mite population – the proportions of drone to worker brood, the availability of brood, the duration of the phoretic phase of the life cycle (in turn, likely influenced by the availability of suitably aged nurse bees) and so on …

All of which means that we can predict the number of mites present in a hive during the season based upon the number of mites at the start if we make a series of assumptions of hive strength, time of the season, rate of colony build up etc.

I used to use the BEEHAVE software to do this type of colony modelling. However, recent changes to the programming language 9) means BEEHAVE now barfs a slew of error messages back at me when I use it. Since I’m not keen to try and patch up something that is based on outdated or deprecated libraries I’ve instead been dabbling with Randy Oliver’s Varroa Model which is Excel-based.

Randy Oliver’s Varroa Model

Many of you will know Randy as a regular contributor to the American Bee Journal, a commercial beekeeper and the author of scientificbeekeeping.com.

Modelling mite numbers

Using this mite calculator you can easily predict how mite levels build up over the season.

Assuming there was an excess of brood available throughout the season (there isn’t as I shall explain shortly) you could expect mite numbers to increase 154-fold between January and September.

Unrestricted mite replication – the more you start with the (many) more you get

Therefore, if you started the season with just 20 mites there would be ~3000 in the hive by the time the colony is rearing the winter brood in September.

Conversely, 182 mites in January would multiply to over 28,000 by September 🙁

Of course, there is not an excess of brood available throughout the season. For example, in the early spring brood is limiting. However, we can factor brood availability by modifying the calculations to take account of colony strength and build up, reinfestation rates and the proportion of drone brood being reared in the hive.

All of which has conveniently been included in the Varroa Model … thanks Randy 🙂

Mite numbers in September predicted with Randy’s Varroa Model

These various limitations inevitably restrict mite reproduction and the fold-increase between January and September is ‘only’ about 100. This means that a colony that started the season with 20 mites will contain just over 2,000 by September, whereas a colony that started with 182 mites will end up with over 18,000 by the end of the summer.

18,000 is a lot less than 28,000 … but it’s still a humungous number of mites.

Or, more scientifically, it’s an infestation level that the colony is unlikely to survive. 18,000 mites is probably well over one mite for every two adult bees in the colony. With that level of mites you can expect every pupa to be parasitised.

The colony is doomed.

You can check these numbers if you want. The Varroa model is freely available from scientificbeekeeping.com and is well documented. I used V19 for the calculations above. I also used the model with almost all of the default settings unchanged 10 – specifically this was the colony type Randy designates ‘D’ meaning Default colony in temperate climate, managed to prevent swarming (slight fall brood buildup). The only change I made was to set mite immigration (drifting) to 0.

Are you now convinced of the need to treat in ‘midwinter’?

The ‘midwinter’ mite treatment needs to be applied to minimise the mite levels the colony starts the season with the following year.

However, to be maximally effective, this ‘midwinter’ treatment needs to be applied when all of the mites in the colony are phoretic. That means that winter oxalic acid trickling (or vaporisation) needs to be done when the colony is broodless.

Not when it’s convenient for the beekeeper because s/he is getting over an excess of mince pies and port in the now almost universal holidays between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

‘Midwinter’ is not in the middle of winter … beekeepers should (mis)use the term in the same way they (mis)use phoretic … i.e. not literally.

Brood rearing – if it ever stops (which I’ll return to at the end) – probably restarts around the winter solstice. That means that there will be sealed brood in the colony early in the New Year. I don’t know how much of that brood is likely to be infested, but I do know that any that is infested will inevitably mean that I’ll be killing fewer mites than I could … and therefore that I’ll be risking exposing the colony to much higher mite levels later in the season.

We’re now in mid-November. Almost all beekeepers should have completed their late summer miticide treatment by now. My Apivar strips were removed almost a month ago.

The precise timing of the ‘midwinter’ mite treatment is irrelevant as long as it coincides with a broodless period in the colony.

I therefore monitor brood production in my colony from late October onwards. As soon as the colonies are broodless I treat with oxalic acid.

There is nothing to be gained by waiting until later in the year. A phoretic mite is a phoretic mite … once they’re unable to hide away I’ve got a 95% chance of killing them.

Those are my sort of odds 😉

I’ve previously discussed how to monitor for a broodless period. If you don’t want to open the hive then learn how to read the debris on a Varroa tray. It’s not witchcraft or rocket science.

Biscuit coloured (or a bit darker) cappings indicating brood rearing in this colony

I expect my colonies to be broodless next week. It’s a little later than last season, but we had warm weather through much of the early autumn. If they’re not broodless yet I’ll hold off treatment for a fortnight or so. Past experience has taught me that the colonies (here in Scotland) are almost inevitably broodless for at least 2-3 weeks between late October and mid-December.

And, if your colonies are never broodless in the winter, all of the above still applies … except you have the slightly more difficult task of identifying when there is the minimal level of sealed brood in the colony.

Why the minimal level?

Because, unless there are weird things like multiple mites infesting each cell, it is logical to assume that when the brood level is at a minimum the phoretic mite level will be at a maximum.

Global warming

As we reach the end of a not-altogether-convincing COP26 conference I thought I’d also mention a recent paper by Giles Budge and colleagues in Newcastle.

I have found it is easier to manage mite infestation levels in Scotland than when I lived in the Midlands. I have a lot more flexibility in the timing of the winter treatment now as the colonies are broodless for longer.

With global warming we can expect warmer winters and therefore it’s probable that colonies may have sealed brood for more of the calendar year.

That will make mite management more difficult.

Certainly not impossible though … particularly if you learn now 😉

Notes

A major power outage has meant this was written by candlelight and hot-spotted mobile phone connection. Once power is restored I’ll go back and tidy some of the text and add the keywords. In the meantime I’ll fire up my trusty Ghillie kettle to make another brew 😉

Ghillie kettle