As far as practical beekeeping is concerned, November is one of the quiet months of the year. It is a time to curl up in front of the fire and do some reading and increasing our knowledge of beekeeping and the floral in your local region.

 

Inspection of hives during the winter

Apart from visiting the hives to check that all is looking good and looking for any activity at the hive entrance it is not advisable to open the hive to see what is happening. We have to trust the bees and leave them alone. In the box-frame method of keeping bees many bee keepers open their hives to administer a varroa control treatment in the form of oxalic acid. I have never used this treatment and by using other more natural methods of varroa control haven't found the need to use it either. Oxalic acid naturally occurs in nature in the leaves of wood sorrel and rhubarb but as an extracted acid is 3000 times stronger than acetic acid. Oxalic acid is used in many household and industrial cleaners and for that reason its use inside a beehive with live bee colony despite only having a small amount of young brood seems totally un-natural.

 

On warm sunny days bees can be observed flying in with pollen which implies there is still some brood activity in the hive. I feel it is important to remember that honey bees are wild insects, i.e. they have not been domesticated like many other food animals. The colonial bees are the result of at least 40 million years of evolution and I tend to favour the approach that they know best how to survive. Ecologically they are highly successful, having adapted to all sorts of climatic conditions from tropical to cold temperate. However, over the past 150 years human activity has caused all sorts of problems for the honey bee which is now widely perceived as being endangered. Globalisation, environmental degradation, communication masts and systemic pesticides such as neonicotinoid made by Bayer Crop Science  and traded under the names of Gaucho, Admire, Merit, Advantage, Confidor, Provado and Winner appear to be the main culprits.

Natural selection and the honey bee

Until beekeepers came along and varroa was imported into the European colonies from Asia, bees lived quite happily in the wild with little interference. Feral colonies were subject to natural selection; the fit and well adapted survived and the less fit died. We benefit in some small measure when we lose a swarm to nature and when we capture a swarm and bring the bees back into our apiary they have both been subject to natural selection. This interchange I believe plays an important role in maintaining the fitness of our managed bees.    There appears to be an increase across most of Europe in the number of feral bee colonies and in my mind this is great news for us and the environment and bad news for the varroa mite. The next challenge will be how to fend off the increasing numbers of Asian Hornets¦ but that is another story for another day.

Disease Resistance

The honey bee has evolved to be a fully social insect; living closely packed together in a colony. To do this successfully they need to overcome the problem of disease and hygiene.

Science still knows very little about the bee's immune system and for this reason organisations like Bayer Crop Science should have greater regulation placed on them before they launch even from their own admission are limited field trials on their pesticides and insecticide that could affect the bees. With millions of years of natural selection behind them, we should expect our bees to be substantially resistant to endemic diseases, i.e. those diseases that have evolved within their own environment. As with most endemic disease it is best not to rely on medication but rather stimulate natural selection by either getting rid of those colonies that suffer from disease or use natural remedies that stimulate the bee's immune system. As I do not support the notion of re-queening, I would prefer the route of natural selection.

Most of the problems the bees are experiencing today are as a direct result of human interference and moving bees around outside their geographical range. Importing queens from New Zealand is as crazy as importing Greek olive oil into Portugal, and yes, people do both. As a result of moving bees around we have introduced bees to diseases they have no immunity to and introduce new diseases that receiving colonies have little or no immunity from. Unfortunately varroa destructor the blood feeding mite introduced from Asia is a little more serious than a dose of Delhi- belly when visiting India. The varroa mites feeding activities are vectoring the viruses as well as upsetting the bee's immune system and just to complicate matters further, new strains of virus have evolved. Most recently a new strain of the gut disease Nosema called Nosema ceranae has evolved but fortunately the bee's immune system seems to be dealing with this virus quite successfully. 

I personally believe that if we removed all methods of varroa control the problem would be solved by natural selection and using natural essential oils like eucalyptus, lavender and tea tree would provide the bee's natural immune system with a boost to get over the viruses impact. After all, the best treatment for Delhi-belly is boiled water, natural live yogurt, a little sea salt and a teaspoon of local honey.

Winter losses

The number of colonies lost each winter is going up and I personally don't believe this is a bad thing. It is unfortunate and disappointing if it happens to you but natural selection is unsympathetic. If you have done your job properly, kept the hive clean, used top-bars so the bees produce their own cone or if using frames change twenty percent every year and buy the purest quality foundation, use essential oil patties, do not feed sugar syrup leaving 30lbs of honey in the hive and performed two drone culls in the Spring and Autumn then if the colony is lost over the winter then I believe that is probably the best outcome for the colony as a whole.