Why I Stopped Treating for Varroa
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Before I took over my first hive in 2006, I joined the local beekeeping association to get some hands on experience. I also did a beginner’s beekeeping course to learn the theory. At the time it was generally believed all the feral or wild colonies of honey bees had been wiped out by varroa and without beekeepers treating bees they would die out.
For the first few years I treated with Apiguard – trays of a thymol based gel. The bees absolutely hated it. As soon as the treatments went on the hives you could hear the contented hum of the hive change to an angry buzz. I learnt to stay away from the hives whilst the treatments were on because the bees would be tetchy and likely to sting.
I attended a couple of integrated pest management days and a talk on oxalic acid really concerned me. If we needed to protect ourselves so carefully before using oxalic acid, why were we using it on the hives? Treating for varroa seemed a bit contradictory. Bees were facing a lot of problems, stress we were told was making those problems worse, and yet we were stressing the bees with the treatments we were using. The more I learnt about honeybees the more uncomfortable I felt putting chemicals into the hives. I had also heard a view that maybe beekeepers are breeding weaker bees by propping up weak colonies which would have died out under natural selection.