WALES

Clive and Shân Hudson (Lleyn & Eifionydd BKA). 

We live in Snowdonia, north-west Wales, and have been enthusiastic beekeepers since 1985. We found varroa in our hives in 1998 and treated with chemicals until we made two observations. Firstly, we noticed that varroa numbers in our hives were reducing year-on-year. Secondly, and of particular significance, we found long-lived colonies in buildings and trees; and these bees were surviving without any treatment. At first we used Bayvarol strips for nine seasons until the mites became resistant to the chemical. We then changed to using 2 teaspoons of thymol crystals on cloth placed across the brood frames. In 2009 we treated some hives with thymol and did not treat others. We could see no difference between the colonies, and have not used any treatment since. We still see varroa in our hives, although increasingly rarely; they are no problem, and we enjoy our beekeeping exactly as we did before varroa arrived. We are members of Lleyn & Eifionydd BKA, where most members keep bees without using any miticides. More information about our treatment–free experience on our website https://beemonitor.org/

James McMullon (Lleyn & Eifionydd BKA)

I have been interested in keeping bees and as a first step I joined the local Lleyn & Eifionydd Beekeepers association and attended my first meeting in October 2018, to find out more. In 2019 I was put together with a mentor, George Burgess, with 50 or so years of experience, and met with him at the association apiary, for a few Sundays of tuition through the season plus I helped him in his 3 apiaries at every opportunity. I saw the occasional bee with deformed wing, occasional chalk brood in weaker colonies. Fortunately, in our area there is a long history (more than 10 years) of not treating for varroa, and colonies are able to control it. In the summer of 2019, I got my first colony as a nuc from the association apiary and my second as a complete hive from George. The two colonies produced about 15 lbs of honey in that first year and survived the winter with syrup in the autumn and candy in Jan/Feb 2020.

In the 2020 season I split one of the colonies to control swarming (the other superseded late in the year) and bought 2 more colonies from a local beekeeper who was giving up. All 5 survived the winter. I have never treated for varroa, and would not know how, although I think that if I ever saw one of my colonies suffering badly from deformed wing virus, I would not be looking to help it with chemicals anyway, best to let the bees deal with it themselves or die out. Last year I peaked at 14 hives in 2 apiaries (I took over 5 existing colonies at the second apiary) and produced about 400 lbs of honey, I combined colonies to reduce to 10 over the winter as of the middle of Feb 2023 all are still going.

John E Owen (Glamorgan to Haverfordwest)

I have been keeping bees for 50 years and run over 80 colonies in 6 apiaries from the Vale of Glamorgan to Haverfordwest in Wales.  I have been treatment free for 6 years.

I was inspired to go treatment free after an apiary meeting hosted by Clive and Shan Hudson from Llyn & Eifionydd Beekeepers in north west Wales.  Also, from hearing that South African beekeepers never took up treating and varroa isn’t a prominent issue there now.  Monitoring for varroa and treating was taking up so much of my time and getting nowhere - bit like a dog chasing its tail.  We don’t treat for Acarine or Nosema, so I decided to stop treating.  In the first 3 years, winter losses varied up to, but not over 20%.  Now they have normalised at around 10% and I have bigger issues than varroa from chalk brood in one apiary, possibly due to bees brought into the area.

I make increases from colonies that perform well, cope with varroa, have a low propensity to swarm and are gentle to handle.  Importantly for me, these are native or near native bees which are strong flyers, resilient and suited to the Welsh conditions. Colonies that don’t fit these criteria are re-queened from stock that does. National hives are mostly used with solid floors, which helps with brood build-up in cooler conditions.

Honey and also treatment free nucs are sold locally.  Contact John E Owen: eifionow@gmail.com

ENGLAND

Rhona Toft (Foragers Bee & Honey Co, Worcestershire)

My husband Richard and I live in the South of Worcestershire and started beekeeping in 2000 as a hobby. Varroa was already well established in the UK and so we followed the guidance and used Varroacides in our colonies. I was teaching organic horticulture at the time and so using Varroacides did not sit comfortably with me.  I also began to notice free-living colonies in buildings and was regularly called to collect swarms from them. How did those bees survive without varroacides? Some of our bees had the same genetics! I also had the pleasure of listening to a talk by Ron Hoskins and his experiences of Varroa resistant bees. So in 2007 we stopped using Varroacides on our bees and they all survived that 1st Winter. That was (naively) enough to convince me to work towards developing a resistant population. We increased monitoring and used biotechnical controls such as sugar dusting. We only had a few colonies but there were big differences between the numbers of mites falling onto the monitoring boards. We did see a lot of immature mites on the boards and didn’t know the significance of that. We also observed bald brood in a lot of colonies. Colonies that had high mite numbers were shook swarmed and had their drone brood trapped and removed. Those with low mite numbers were used to raise Queens and drones. Winter losses were usually the same as those reported by other local beekeepers or sometimes lower. We have had an occasional bad year for losses but most beekeepers do. We have gradually increased the number of colonies and apiaries and now rarely monitor mites or take action regarding Varroa. We regularly see bald brood and cannibalised pupae and have bees that recap a high percentage of brood cells. We occasionally spot a colony that is struggling with mites and will give it a shook swarm or remove the sealed brood from it. As we are in an area with a high density of colonies, mostly treated and with some beekeepers who bring bees in to the area, we are always on the lookout for that occasional colony that might have an issue with Varroa. In 2022, we only intervened with one of our colonies. The hobby has grown over the years and we now manage up to 80 colonies as a small business. www.foragershoney.co.uk

Steve Riley (Westerham Beekeepers)

"A group of seven like-minded Westerham Beekeepers started a project in 2017 to find varroa resistant bees.  Collectively, we had always been uncomfortable applying chemical miticides to our colonies and were increasingly interested in why honeybees were surviving without beekeeper intervention."  To read their fully illustrated story click on this link. 

https://westerham.kbka.org.uk

Grace Evans (Lincolnshire) 

I collected a swarm from a chimney where wild bees, (according to the owner) had been living there for approximately 20 years.  This was in September, I didn't treat them, and they came through the winter, no problem.  I then carried on breeding from this source, and I now have over 100 hives.  I haven't treated for 10 years, and I completely forget that others must treat their bees, I just let mine get on with it.  I have no need to mess about with treatments, I can extract honey whenever I like and don't have to worry about chemicals in the hive.  I am also about to make my own foundation, so I don't have wax from beekeepers who treat.  I notice uncapping and the odd dead pupae in the entrance.  I very rarely see varroa.  I am also a member of the bee farmers association. 
 Fenapiaries.com

Joe Ibbertson – Treatment Free story

I have never been a treating beekeeper and for a few reasons. Having lived next to large expanses of natural habitat in Germany, I had watched free living colonies as a young man. The idea that honeybees must be able to adapt to new pests and pathogens was already in my mind….otherwise they wouldn’t exist. Even in 2010 when I started learning, the rhetoric repeated within BKA’s didn’t match certain beekeepers’ experiences and the developing scientific literature. However naïve this venture may have seemed for a complete novice, I was prepared to rear queens, make splits and treat if necessary. It wasn’t necessary.

My approach was simplistic – attempt to mimic nature. Ironically, I had quickly become aware of numerous free-living colonies in my area, from which I collected multiple swarms. After some years faffing about with different ‘hive systems’ I’d gone full circle and settled on standard brood box with a Queen excluder. However, I’d incorporated multiple entrances, a no feeding/combining approach, low density apiaries and perpetual roof insulation (like a Warrè hive). I didn’t experience anything exceptional. I didn’t see anything cataclysmic. Losses were experienced during winter. The largest of which were in the fourth and fifth winter after building up colony numbers with swarms. Things quickly settled and over the last six years my losses have averaged 12.6% (compared to my regions 18.4% for the same period). Being a mentor to new beekeepers presents the most obscure problem of asking them to approach Varroa in a way that differs from the common narrative.

The most fascinating aspect for me has been watching behaviours like uncapping, the removal of pupa, low mite numbers and more recently recapping. Especially as some of these are often expressed in tandem with the forage and climatic ebbs and flows of my locality. These behaviours are inherent to colonies with resistance to Varroa and the differences in those colonies which are less capable is quite apparent in both behaviours and mites. Indeed, it has been a great pleasure to have had Prof Stephen Martin tie uncapping/recapping, low mite fertility together, I had often been confused seeing multiple behaviours and never one dominant trait. My first colonies were from a free-living tree colony. Mother and daughter colonies lasted six and seven years respectively. The high level of natural selection facing free living colonies, incorporating those layers of selection and evolutionary dead ends into my beekeeping, being conscious of my colonies’ health and shepherding the situation in a positive direction, is where I would attribute our success.

Gareth Trehearn, (Manchester) 

I originally got into beekeeping by attending a two-day course arranged by my local beekeeping association. I approached a local beekeeper and offered to help in return for some coaching. A few months after I started volunteering at his apiary, he suddenly fell ill, and I ended up running his hives for the rest of the season. I was hooked and the ‘Friends’ of a local park got in touch about a piece of waste ground that I could keep bees on and so I set about getting some bees. I was advised to buy a Nuc as my first colony. However, I’d done a bit of research online, and really wanted to have locally adapted bees. I purchased the equipment and decided, instead, to advertise for swarm collection online and a few weeks later I had 4 hives of bees.  My initial reason for not chemically treating the bees or feeding them sugar syrup, was because I wanted to produce honey in its purest form for the family’s consumption. I recoiled at the thought of sublimating oxalic acid into my hives, for which I had to wear full PPE and breathing equipment, and how it would affect the bees and honey. I was aware that the usage instructions required there to be no supers on the hives during treatment, but I was also hyperaware that bees reorganise their colony throughout the year and could just as easily mix honey that had been in contact with oxalic acid with honey for harvesting. In those first few years, I didn’t observe any noticeable Varroa infestations. I continued as a hobbyist beekeeper until Covid hit in 2020 and so again advertised to collect swarms online. That spring and summer I was inundated with requests to collect swarms, presumably because so many more people were at home instead of at work and I finished the season on 49 hives. Because I hadn’t experienced the losses that people spoke about from Varroa, I didn’t have the fear about going treatment free on a larger scale. I’ve currently got 100 hives, all of which have come from swarms or from splitting my strongest hives and I don’t see any unexplained losses or sickness amongst the colonies. While varroa has not caused any significant impact on my bees' survival rates, I acknowledge that my methods may not work for everyone.

www.manchesterhoneycompany.com

Dr Fred J Ayres  (Lune valley, Lancashire) 

I took up beekeeping in 2000 and after taking several conventional courses, acquired my first nucleus the following year. In 2002 my colony swarmed, and I housed the swarm and acquired another nucleus. By 2005 I had 15 colonies on two sites. At this point I realised that I simply did not have the time to manage these colonies using conventional beekeeping techniques and decided that I either had to give up the hobby or find an alternative approach that was less intrusive and less time consuming. 

One aspect that concerned me was the regular usage of chemicals to treat the bees. By this time varroa had been in the UK for some 15 years and, despite the ever-growing range of treatments on the market, nothing seemed to work. Two other factors concerned me. If the beekeeper had to wear a range of protective clothing whilst administering some of these treatments, could they really be harmless to the bees? The other was that despite the dire warning about honeybees dying out if beekeepers did not treat their bees, the number of untreated feral colonies in my area was steadily increasing. So, I stopped treating in 2006 and have not treated since. Since then, I have maintained 8 colonies in my home apiary with only 3 losses, none of which were due to varroa.                                                                 

In 2016 I was instrumental in setting up Lune Valley Beekeepers (see video below), a new club focused on minimal intervention, treatment free beekeeping, in well insulated hives. The Club now has over 60 members, none of which treat their bees. We closely monitor our colony losses, and none have been due to varroa.  We strongly advise our members not to bring bees into our area to avoid bringing in further varroa and have set up a breeding section at our Club apiary to be able to provide members with healthy bees, adapted to our local environment. We also train our members to carry out a regular programme of comb exchange at their spring inspections to ensure that there is no build-up of varroa within the hive.  Whilst these measures may not eliminate varroa, our experience is that colonies seem to be able to manage the pest without treatment, provided it is not being constantly reintroduced by importing bees into the area.                                               

www.lunevalleybeekeepers.co.uk

Patrick Laslett (Norfolk) 

I now keep my 40-50 colonies in Norfolk entirely treatment-free. One of my apiaries has not been treated for nearly ten years now and the rest of my colonies have not been treated for the last five years. I started beekeeping in the early nineties and my journey to treatment free beekeeping was a slow one. 

First, like many other beekeepers, I used the whole gambit of chemical mite control methods from strips to trickle on and finally to pads. In the end I was getting concerned that the cure was worse than disease and wanted a chemical free solution to the problem. As Varroa increased and bred in capped cells I decided to treat it as a brood problem, and I began removing the brood from some of my colonies in a modified version of the shock swarm process. My site www.miteout.co.uk documents what I was doing for a few years.

After a few years I felt brave enough to stop treating my colonies in one apiary and that apiary became my treatment-free apiary. After a few more years I stopped treating all my bees whatever apiary they were in. I think I did lose more colonies as a result but gradually over time the colonies that I lost were replaced by the offspring from surviving colonies or the empty brood boxes were re-filled by a swarm looking for a new home. For a few years now I have noticed 'bald brood' in some of my colonies without knowing exactly what is going on. I have always collected and kept swarms. Nowadays most swarms are almost certainly coming from my beekeeping neighbour's colonies. But some I think are from the now small stock of feral colonies that still exist out there in the wild. So, I think all swarms are well worth collecting, keeping and assessing. I still use my Varroa shook method when selling a colony and I still document my visits to my original treatment free apiary. https://www.youtube.com/@honeybeesforsale

Now I will be taking much more notice of bald brood and start selecting the best from those colonies where I find bald brood.

Monica Barlow the Broadstone Bees (South Wales)

This is a case study in observation of bee colonies in a natural apiary over 13 years from 2011-2023. Colonies are free-living although their nest cavities are man-made. We monitored their activity, survival and swarming. The aim of the study was to determine whether a resilient population of honey bees could survive and thrive in an ordinary landscape in South Wales: the apiary site is not protected, isolated or particularly noted for bee forage. 

Honey bee colonies are surviving and thriving without intervention in this location, in numbers sufficient to let them reproduce successfully, spread and maintain their population. Since observations began in 2011, 23 colonies have survived through their second winter or beyond. The project has confirmed that honey bees are surviving varroa in South Wales without the need to treat or feed them. For much more details and the entire story Click here

NORWAY

Dr. Melissa Oddie – The Norwegian beekeepers Association

Melissa is the first person to link recapping to Varroa resistance and so is a key person in the Varroa resistance story. Since it was this trait that led to the mechanism  of resistance to be explained for the first time. Melissa's personal journey of discovery and understand of Varroa  resistant makes for a fascinating read.  Click here to  access  the full story.