A threshold for varroa infestation would be a good thing to have. It would define the moment for varroa treatments without any doubts, wouldn’t that be nice? You may already notice that I have some issues with this concept. But let’s start from the beginning. There’s no doubt at all that treatments against varroa mites…
When it comes to a definition of bee health, there are a lot of different opinions. Some are very reductive: It’s only varroa you have to look at! Pesticides alone are ruining our colonies’ health! Well, both of these things are important stressors to honey bee health. I’ve written quite a bit about both of…
The Bee Health Compendium is out! What’s that, you may ask. Well, it’s a little eBook, in which I put together the foundation of honey bee health. It’s maybe the compressed version of the Bee Health Course I did almost two years ago. I wrote it with advanced beekeepers and vets in mind, who want…
When we speak about the challenges for bee health, first of all we need to define what “bee health” even means. Health is much more than the absence of diseases. Also for bees, managed honey bee colonies or wild solitary species alike. Very often, people talk about bee health as if it were only treating…
For keeping healthy bees, good practices are essential. On the other hand, there isn’t a 100% guarantee that your colonies will always be healthy only because do everything right. This is the harsh reality I’m afraid. Nonetheless, there are a lot of things we can do to keep honey bee colonies healthy. In the honey…
Most beekeepers have colony losses in winter. This is something that happens even to the best beekeepers. Winter, after all, is the bottleneck for colony survival. However, there are some factors that you can control to keep colony losses as low as possible. First of all, you have to know about the causes for colonies…
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