At the risk of sounding a little alarmist, we shout from the rooftops: The varroa mite is the most serious challenge faced by beekeepers in America today. Honey bees in managed hives are not capable of coping with the viruses these mites spread. It’s not the fault of the bees that they’re struggling.
Human movement of hives caused varroa mites to jump from their original honey bee species to the bees that live in our hives. Nature has only had about a hundred years to try to solve this problem, and nature rarely works that quickly. There are queen breeders who are working hard to identify and strengthen mite-resistance traits in their bees, but they have not yet found the golden gene sequence that makes all honey bees immune to either mites or the viruses they transmit.
Mite monitoring is a part of good beekeeping, no matter how natural or organic the beekeeper’s practice may be. As a natural beekeeper, it’s up to you to choose the right Integrated Pest Management plan that works for you (and your bees!) Anyone trying to become a more natural beekeeper should take time to consider their relationship with Integrated Pest Management.
The formal definition of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is:
"[A] sustainable, science-based, decision-making process that combines biological, cultural, physical and chemical tools to identify, manage and reduce risk from pests and pest management tools and strategies in a way that minimizes overall economic, health and environmental risks." -2018 National IPM Roadmap definition of IPM
A beekeeping-focused way of thinking about IPM is:
Understanding that bees need beekeeper assistance to deal with pests, especially varroa mites, beekeepers should start with a foundation of bees that demonstrate pest-resistance traits if they are available. On top of that, beekeepers should use management techniques and non-chemical interventions to reduce pest pressure on their hives when possible. Regular monitoring of varroa levels gives beekeepers a clear sign if they need to intervene further to help their bees. When turning to chemical miticides (as most beekeepers must still do multiple times per year) these should be selected and used to minimize the amount of miticide applied, with preferential treatment given to naturally-derived miticides as long as they remain effective. Beekeepers should always rotate between different miticides, to reduce the risk of varroa developing resistance to a particular chemical.
How do you want to work with honey bees?
As we discussed in our initial definition of natural beekeeping, good beekeepers do not leave their bees alone. Doing nothing about the mites in your hives is an inevitable death sentence for your colonies. If you’re not ready to work with your bees, the lowest level of commitment to the honey bee might just be the role of bee watcher. There is no shame in coming to terms with the fact that mite management isn’t for you. Much like a bird watcher, we need people in this country to simply appreciate honey bees in nature and support their habitat.
The next level of involvement with bees (and one that we do not recommend for anyone) is the bee haver- someone who purchases hive equipment and bees, and then just has them on their property. When the care ends at installation, all sorts of things happen. Beekeepers who do nothing about mites don’t keep, they just have. As retired Cornell Professor Tom Seeley has often said in his lectures: “Can we let the bees be the beekeepers? Yes, we can. We can, but be ready for your bees to go survive somewhere else, and your hive be empty.”
A bee haver might think to let their bees swarm naturally as wild colonies do, but the remaining smaller colony may fail to requeen properly, and may still die from varroa. You will have spent hundreds of dollars for no reason. Think of all the native plant seeds or expensive camera lenses that could have been purchased to appreciate bees instead of trying to have them for 6-12 months without actually keeping them.
A hive from one of our Apiaries
A fully-invested natural beekeeper understands their hive’s mite populations and intentionally manipulates the bee’s environment to help them thrive. There are many ways to fight mites in a natural way, but here are three common natural mite management paths:
- Using miticides that are made with 100% natural compounds. Formic Pro, VarroxSan, dribbled or vaporized oxalic acid, and HopGuard 3 are all based on naturally occurring organic acids. Apiguard and ApiLife Var are both based on thymol, which is a primary part of the essential oil of thyme. (Other components found in natural thyme oil can be toxic to bees, so only miticides made with purified thymol should be used!) There is historically no evidence of mite resistance for any of these naturally occurring ingredients. Bee scientists at Penn State have published An Organic Management System for Honey Bees that uses these natural miticidal compounds in their varroa management plan.
- Drone comb trapping and removal. Using either a plastic frame with drone-sized cell foundation, or giving bees a foundationless frame in which they will build large amounts of drone-sized cells, lets us trick and kill mites without using any outside chemicals. Since mites prefer to invade cells with drone larvae, we can sacrifice the capped drones by putting the frame in your freezer, killing the mites that crawled right into our trap.
- Providing repeated brood breaks either with Frame Isolation Cages or by following Tom Seeley’s Darwinian Beekeeping approach that promotes brood interruption when hives swarm or become honey bound.
In nature, wild honey bees nest inside trees with a limited amount of space. They swarm once or more each year due to their compact nest. The brood break that occurs naturally as the old queen is replaced with a new one helps maintain lower mite populations, since some mites leave with the swarm, and others die of old age before there is new bee brood available for them to reproduce.
Performing regular colony splits of your hives can mimic this natural habit without the headache of swarms in your trees. Another option is to keep your colonies in a single deep box (as opposed to the usual two boxes) and let them swarm. Be prepared, however, for the potential problems you could create in your immediate surroundings.
Formic Pro on a hive
Darwinian beekeeping can be a workable option for small-scale beekeepers who want to avoid chemical treatments and who are satisfied with a very modest honey crop: A beekeeper using this method may harvest 20-25 pounds of honey per hive as opposed to 75+ pounds from a hive managed more conventionally. This idea might seem simple, but it takes knowledge and experience to be successful, and those interested in learning more should read more of Dr. Seeley’s research-backed framework here: https://www.naturalbeekeepingtrust.org/darwinian-beekeeping
At Betterbee, we manage too many colonies to rely entirely on non-chemical mite control tools. If we split our hives whenever their mite levels got high, we’d have hives everywhere! For us, the most effective way to maintain colony health is to perform regular mite counts and treat whenever the population exceeds a specific threshold. We use Formic Pro and/or VarroxSan if honey supers are present, and Apivar or a thymol-based treatment early in the spring or later in the fall if necessary. During the winter, we always treat with an oxalic acid vaporization. We use natural treatments when we need to, but we don’t bother the bees with a miticide treatment when mite numbers are at a manageable level. By diversifying treatments, we help prevent mites from building resistance against any one compound.
No matter what, mite counts count! We’d love to hear your go-to mite count method, and how you’re managing your mites this year. Please write to us with any questions or join the conversation on Facebook or Instagram.
Dr. Seeley's Quote was taken from this video:
To watch Tom Seeley’s lecture on Darwinian beekeeping: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTRp6dEbMyk
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