Bee Health

In many apiaries November is the moment you wait for all season in the fight against varroa. Colonies move into broodlessness, the...

Before we go further, a few words on what we are actually dealing with. Nosema disease, also called the spore disease, is one of t...

I am writing this in October, and outside the window is weather that a decade ago would have been an abstraction: sun, a dozen-odd...

Every beekeeper who now and then curses pouring acids and hanging strips dreams of the same thing: a bee that handles varroa on it...

Few topics divide beekeepers like insulation. Some pile thick cushions and mats on the nest, add insulation, fuss over every detai...

Ask yourself a question few people can answer: why does a summer bee live about six weeks, while a winter bee from the same nest,...

You are feeding the colonies up for winter, everything goes smoothly, and then one afternoon a cloud of frenzied bees forms under...

When the colony is strong and alert in summer, guards patrol the entrance and every intruder gets a slap before it enters. But in...

You open a box of stored combs and there it is: webbing, cocoons, tunnels and writhing larvae. Wax the bees worked on for weeks tu...

In the age of open mesh floors, cameras and sensors it is easy to forget that the oldest and cheapest diagnostic tool a beekeeper...

Picture March. You open a hive that has gone silent, and you see a sight every beekeeper of a few seasons knows: a dead cluster we...

People usually think about wintering when it is already too late, that is in November, at the first cold, when you lift the roof a...

How to measure varroa infestation, which treatments to choose and when to treat. Why diagnosis comes first, because every treatment burdens the bees.