Making stuff with bees wax

bee producing wax

To one degree or another bee keepers will find themselves building up amounts of bees wax.

The wax in the frames needs to be replaced from time to time, particularly the brood frames that can get quite black. This is a build of general muck and particularly brood poo.
Its recommended you change  third of the frames each year. Its important as the queen won't lay eggs in dirty comb.

Also the wax in frames can be damaged and need to be replaced.
I have done blogs on collecting wax from extraction and also the use of a steam extractor..

The wax I get from the steam extractor mostly comes from old brood frames and isn't as clean as the cappings wax which is usually bright yellow.

So what to do with it?

I use some of the 'brood' wax for general repairs to frames and to stick things together.

Once the wax has been cleaned it can be traded in against the cost of new sheets of wax and the Bedfordshire Bee Keepers Association run this sort of scheme. The cost of sheets of foundation to members of the Association is about half the normal retail price.

However for most beeks, particularly if they do markets, the wax is used to make candles and furniture polish.

Making polish is easy, if a little pointless as few people have wooden furniture.
Its just a mixture of bees wax, I use the brood wax as its colour isn't important, turpentine. and carnauba wax.
Its important to use pure turpentine not turpentine substitute.
You can buy artists  turpentine by Winsor and Newton for £5.25 75ml but I get it from eBay for £8.50 500 ml
Carnauba wax comes from the leaves of a palm tree only found in North Eastern Brazil.
INTERESTING FACT - Keith of The Little Smokehouse tells me its used to make the shiny shells of Smarties.

There are a variety of different ways of making candles but I don't have the patience for most of them.
I have tried to make moulds by covering a suitable figure/toy with layers of latex but it was a pain and didn't come out well.
Dipping candles also takes too long so I just use silicone candle moulds.
I use the cappings wax as the candles are quite yellow and nicer to look at. Most of the candles are sold to kids and I don't think any of the candles are actually lit.

Here are videos of how I make the polish and candles.

December Bee News

The Bees

As the weather gets colder, the activity gets less but I still get the occasional nutter who makes it across the field to The Shed.

I still have a look every day at the Ravensden bees as I take The Boys for a walk and clear any corpses from the landing boards. During the Summer the corpses are left on the landing boards to dry out and get lighter making it easier for the worker bees to get rid of them. In Winter when they can't fly they just drag them out of the hive on to the landing board

A bit of a disaster happened today [22/11].
The bees in Ravensden are in a copse across a field about 150 yards from the back gate of my garden and I can normally get to the bees by walking around the field. The field is usually seeded but there's a headland around the field.
Today its been ploughed right up to the perimeter hedgerows meaning it's very difficult to walk around the outside of the field to get to the bees and impossible to get any equipment like supers to or from the bees.

A full super can weigh 30lbs and its no fun trying to wheelbarrow up to a dozen of them across a field.
It looks like I'm going to have to move the bees, possibly to Scald End. A job so mind boggling awful it makes me feel dizzy.
Its not ideal as with the number of bees I now have, there are benefits in having two apiaries at least three miles apart so I might have to find a friendly local farmer.
We are away for Christmas and the New Year so I will have to forget this until we're back.

Whats that bee?

I have often mentioned the confusion there is about bees and that people often cannot tell one type from another.
On a blog I follow the writer said there are two pubs near him in Newcastle called the Bee Hive.
This is the sign outside one.

He didn't have the nerve to go inside and point out the sign has Bumblebees on it and they don't live in bee hives.

The other one does have a bee hive [a skep] on it but again the sign has bumblebees.

I did a quick image search on Google for Bee Hive pub signs and these aren't the only ones that are wrong.

Solitary Bee Houses

I have finished the [slightly] newer version of the solitary bee house.
It has a release box underneath which hopefully might mean the emerging female bees will use the channels again.

I've mucked around with the nesting channels. Initially they were wide enough for mason bees, the most likely bee to nest. Leafcutter bees make a smaller channel in the wild so I have put some smaller channels on the outside of the blocks and drilled some holes in the middle of the blocks to have removable straws that are big enough for the mason bees,

I think I will sell them at markets next year and include a copy of the Little Book of Solitary Bees, a booklet about siting the house and how to deal with the cocoons and also a couple of tubs to store the cocoons in. Probably ~£18.

Obviously the Solitary Bee market is booming as in direct competition to my bee house the Flow Hive people, producers of the bee hive that's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, have produced their own Flow Bee House.

It doesn't seem to be on sale outside Australia and they are charging about £50. Its a limited edition and made from off cuts from the Flow Hive. All profits go to charity.
Its a lovely looking thing  and will look great sited next to people's Flow Hives, but is essentially a lot of bamboo canes in a box. It suffers from the usual problem with these sorts of things in that the tubes can't be cleaned so parasites and disease will build up.
As usual they produce a lovely video about the hive that makes you feel all warm inside and has lots of bees and smiling children in it [The children are in the video not the hive, that would be silly].

Making feeders

Not only is Winter time for dull routine chores, it's also time to try and set up a few new things for the coming season
After the autumn feeding I brought back the feeders to be cleaned and stored for use in the Spring.
When we first started bee keeping we bought whats called a Miller feeder. Its a tray that sits on top of the frames and has a slot the bees can climb up and syrup is stored in a reservoir. The wall to the reservoir has slots so the syrup can be accessed by the bees without them drowning
They're nice things and can hold a lot of syrup so I thought I might buy some more. That is until I found out they cost £50 each.
So I made one and it cost about £10.

Bees making Comb

In the wild bees make lovely sheets of wax comb.

Although fine for them, its very inconvenient for us as its a difficult and messy process to get the honey for our porridge. So we make them make their comb in neat wooden frames in a bee hive

This is a time lapse video of  bees making comb naturally albeit it in a glass observation hive.

November Bee Update

It's now winter, at least as far as the bees are concerned.
They are still getting out and about but things are slowing down and my focus is getting them thorough the winter.
I have put their winter wraps on
These are plastic sheets that are wrapped around the hives for insulation. I have to cut them back slightly to fit and to have a gap where the hive entrance is.

I also took the opportunity to add fondant blocks for their winter supplement.

The next thing to do will be to give them their winter varroa treatment but this won't be until after Christmas.

Although the bees will be tucked up until next march there's things to do for next season.

Drinkers

Like all animals bees need water to drink and they also spit water into the hive and fan it with their wings to keep the hive temperature constant.
Scald End bees have a stream running behind the hives  but there's no standing water that's close to the Ravensden hives.
In the past I have used these things which are largely useless so I've decided to do something about it. ready for next season.

This came about from watching another video by the man who did the swarm video I posted recently. The video is here and you might want to watch to see his obvious pleasure at being with his bees and also to enjoy his wonderfully soothing voice, nearly as good as the great Oliver Postgate
I have a couple of old chicken drinkers and will probably set up the same thing as used by Arven.

Supers

These are the boxes that during the Summer have the 'retail' honey i.e the honey that is extracted for sale.
It appears I now have 32 of them that need to be checked. A standard winter job is for the frames to be checked for repairs/replacement and with an average of 10 frames a super it can take some time.
Is it a fun job I look forward to? No.

As a start I have put together frames to produce cut comb. Its not complicated you just use foundation than is thinner than usual and doesn't have the wire that conventional foundation has.
Its never going to be a best seller and is a bit 'generational' but I did a few frames last year and got more interest than I expected so I will set up a complete super which should give me about 40 blocks.

The frames that have damaged foundation will have the old foundation removed, a mucky job.
I clean the frames in a weak bleach solution, using a Burco, and then replace the foundation.
The frames that have foundation that can be used again are sprayed with something called Certan .

Wax moth can set up home in the cells of drawn out foundation and the spray should take care of them.

Solitary Bees

I've extracted the cocoons from the straws, and will clean them and store in my fridge for next Spring.

I've made a slighter bigger bee house with an integral cocoon release box and they have a removable cassette so you can view the bee's progress.
I'm thinking of making a few of them and selling them at markets with some bits and pieces to do with the cocoons as well as a booklet on solitary bees and how to look after the cocoons.
Keep an eye out in the Solitary Bee aisle in yoir local North Bedfordshire Honey Mega Store.

Ban on neonicitinoids?

As well as being an utter arse,Michael Gove is Environment Secretary and today has said in an article in the Grauniad about neonicitinoids that

While there is still uncertainty in the science, it is increasingly pointing in one direction. Not to act would be to risk continuing down a course which could have extensive and permanent effects on bee populations. That is not a risk I am prepared to take, so the UK will be supporting further restrictions on neonicotinoids. Unless the evidence base changes again, the government will keep these restrictions in place after we have left the EU.

Being the duplicitous shit he is,and aware that the NFU will be lighting torches and sharpening their pitchforks, he goes on to say

The current process of emergency authorisations – used not just in the UK but across the EU – will remain in place, allowing the short-term, limited and controlled use of neonicotinoids in exceptional situations to control a threat that cannot be contained by any other reasonable means. Farmers will be able to apply to Defra who will take advice from the advisory body on pesticides and Defra’s chief scientist, with authorisations granted where the evidence is clear that neonicotinoid use is essential.

The have already been invoked in the UK and last year three areas were allowed to use neonics.

37.6% of statistics are rubbish

The National Honey Week.
I didn't know this was on until Sue showed me an advert in the Grauniad with an unfunny and stupid cartoon.
Its sponsored by the British Beekeepers Association and I went to their site to see what sort of things were going on during the week.
Very little it would seem other than the National Honey Show at Sandown racecourse on the 26th-28th where the many varieties of honey and honey products are judged.
I suppose any pursuit will have advocates with a competitive edge but I'm afraid I don't really understand this. I know someone who used to be on the circuit and told me about the weird things people do to show their honey like having special spoons to remove air bubbles from the corners of jars, otherwise the honey doesn't stand a chance.

The other thing that happens is the BBKA announce figures for their members' honey production and they came out today and HONEY PRODUCTION IS DOWN!!!!! AGAIN!!!!!
Not only this but much is made in the media of the fact that 62%  of bee keepers 'are worried about 'the use of pesticides including neonicotinoids'
This gave the press the chance to dust of their stock of standard headlines and the Grauniad presented us with this

The 'decline' is  from 12.8kg per hive to ........11.80 kg. 1kg less.
Is this significant? Honey production is obviously variable and the Secretary of the county association said his honey production had been affected by hot dry weather early in the season reducing nectar production and then rain later in the season reducing the bees ability to forage.
Is this reduction indicative of the continued decline in bees and can it be linked to neonicintinoids?
Lets not forget this is a survey of what I would call 'retail' honey i.e the honey extracted for sale and ignores the honey the bees make for themselves. We're obviously not too bothered about this type of honey rather than the possibility of having to endure the nightmare of eating waffles without honey on them.
It's quite reasonable to have a situation where the bees have produced plenty of 'bee' honey that will get them through the winter but not produce a big excess for us to pour over our porridge. Year before last was a 'poor' year for my 'retail' honey yet all the colonies survived.
I had some hives that I deliberately didn't take any honey from and was happy for them to build up their stores and next year I will have at least one hive where I have no intention of taking honey from.
At this point I will again refer to the legendary and still incomplete blog I intent to do titled 'Bee keeping without honey'.

Also I'm not sure this is a representative survey of honey production anyway. The BBKA is essentially an organisation representing amateur bee keepers of which there are a lot in the UK. However the real volume honey is produced by professional beekeepers who belong to the Bee Farmer's Association. You have to have at least 40 colonies to belong to the BFA who as far as I know do not publish annual statistics.

The 62% of beekeepers who are worried about neonicintinoids in itself produces another statistic that 62% of bee keepers are probably stupid as neonicintinoids have been banned in the UK for nearly three years.This doesn't stop Grauniad readers from getting their lattes in a froth as they rage about pesticides and we are treated to the old favourite 'if the bees die, we die'.

'How was my honey production?' I hear you ask. I'm not too sure but OK I think
I don't keep records of what the bees produce although this year I had decided to do as few markets as possible and not get in the position of doing markets but running out of honey.
So I roughly worked out how much I might need for a year and it looks like I got enough to do them.
I did weigh the buckets but unfortunately lost the bit of paper the numbers were written on.
If I have more than enough to get me to the first extraction of next season in May then the surplus will sit in the garage.
If I run out, no big deal.

Swarms are not dangerous

I recently gave a talk on bees to the Arlesey WI which was great fun. Before the talk I spoke to a couple of people who were both scared/terrified of swarms. Brainless headlines in the press like this don't help.

Swarms are a bit of a pet subject with me, mostly because the press coverage they get is usually the exact opposite of the truth and leads to people being unnecessarily afraid of bees.
I mentioned that this year I had handled a small swarm without suite, gloves etc - EEEEK! they said.

Hopefully my talk reduced their fears but I came across this rather nice video about a swarm that shows:-
 - they aren't 'Killer Bees'
 - you don't need to 'barricade' your house
 - they are not 'deadly'
- they aren't 'beasts'

Its a substantial size but dealt with by someone who didn't need to be suited up like an astronaut and clearly isn't in fear of his life.
All he needed was to spray some water to stop the bees flying for a while while he sorted things out.

Propolis - a follow up

When I was first mucking about with propolis a fellow bee keeper told me he had come across propolis toothpaste. We both thought it a bit odd as propolis stains things brown.
Today on a bee keeping forum thread about propolis it appears that such a thing exists, albeit in Singapore.

Out of curiosity I Googled 'propolis toothpaste' and perhaps predictably found Holland Barrett sell the 'great tasting' toothpaste here.

Comvita are a New Zealand company who sponsored the initial research into Manuka honey so I wouldn't  be surprised if one day they sold Manuka toothpaste which will cost £50 a tube.
The 'About Us' section on their website is nearly as deranged and stuffed full of New Age hippy nonsense as the Egyptian Magic site.

So another use for propolis but before you ask, no I won't make it.

Propolis - What is it, how do I make it and what does it do?

A long time ago in a farmer's market far, far away I was asked if I had any propolis tincture.
I suspect like a lot of bee keepers all I knew about propolis was that it was, to use a technical bee keeper's phrase, 'a pain in the a.....e'
I said I would have a go but the following week the market closed and I never saw her again.
Over the coming months I was occasionally asked about it and it was noticeable the people who asked me about it were often Eastern European where using propolis as a medicinal product is very common.
Eventually I decided to have a go and thanks to Google and some trial and error came up with a method to make it.

Propolis is a sticky substance made by honey bees by mixing saliva with bees wax and tree sap, particular from Poplars and conifers.

They use it  for a variety of purposes. They use it to seal up small gaps or cracks [they fill up bigger gaps with wax comb] and also to prevent disease and keep the hive clean. They cover the walls of the hive with it and I have often read it makes a hive 'the most sterile environment in nature'.

Honey bees are so fastidious about keeping the hive clean, the photo below is of a mouse that got into a hive and was killed by the bees. As the bees couldn't get it out of the hive and the mouse would have decomposed and spread bugs and disease.  the bees mummified  it in propolis to keep things clean.

Some hives produce a lot, others don't and if a hive is untouched for a time the build up of propolis means getting it apart is very difficult. Last year I was given two hives that hadn't been looked at for a long time. The supers were so stuck down, one of them broke as I tried to get it off.

To get off its scraped with a hive tool. Any I take off will be replaced so I don't take every bit off a hive, just a little from each one that produces a lot. I now have a store which will last ages.

Apart from the propolis the main ingredient of the tincture is alcohol. Propolis is very insoluble and the only way to make a tincture is to soak it in very high strength alcohol. You can't get it from a chemist [I tried!] and I finished up buying 90% alcohol from Germany.
I was once asked by someone, who was Polish, how I made it. She said had I tried Spirytus? I hadn't heard of it but it's Polish vodka which is 96% proof. You can buy it over the internet!

I am doing a video on how its made.

If you Google  propolis there is tons of stuff about its medical properties. However I don't have any medical background and there were different permutations of how to make it and at what strength. so was a bit reluctant to push it at markets.
However I met someone [who was French] at a market who asked about it. It turned out she, and all her family, use it all the time and didn't know why it isn't more widespread here. We had a long conversation about it and when she told me she was a qualified nurse I asked her if she would be a 'test pilot' for my propolis.
I saw her a couple of months later and she said my stuff was fine and her daughter used it instead of the commercial stuff. To prove it worked when I met her she was in a wheelchair as she had broken her leg. However she was using crutches that gripped at the wrists and elbows and produced red sores. She used the propolis on one arm and not the other and on the treated one the sores cleared up.
This, combined with the fact she was a qualified nurse, gave me the confidence in it to formally sell it at markets.

As its a liquid it can be a little difficult to apply, and it can stain, so I wondered about making a cream. I have often been asked if I could make a honey lip balm.
The problem with this is that to sell something that is a cosmetic is expensive and time consuming to get it licenced, so I carried on having some available if anybody asked about it and gave most of it away.
After a while people came back for more, and several of the other stall holders at the markets I did used it. I have done some Dog Shows and a couple of people have even used it on their dogs paws if they become dry and cracked. So I decided to give it a go.
Not the greatest experience I have had although to be honest not quite as bad as I expected and after some occasionally weird correspondence and £200 later, it was duly licenced.

The benefits of propolis are two fold. It is anti bacterial, anti viral and anti fungal and is considered beneficial for skin ailments and gum sores.
Propolis is also a source of bioflavinoid compounds that enhance the therapeutic properties of Vitamin C and are also present in vegetables and fruit that contribute to the 5 A Day requirements.
I have met several people that add 5 drops of tincture to warm water with a bit of honey as a daily tonic.

Propolis has been used as a medicine for centuries and I was approached by someone asking if I could supply it.
Julian and Valerie  are the Two Apothecaries and are part of the Reenactment Movement as medieval apothecaries and demonstrate medicines made from plants and natural resources. A picture of the propolis  is here.
They were at the St George's Day Festival and if they are there next year you really should go along and say hello and talk to them about the various medicines they have on display..

.I have produced a couple of leaflets I give out at markets that can be downloaded from here.

The tincture and cream are now available at your local North Bedfordshire Honey Mega-store or at the Bromham Mill or Potton markets.
If you are interested in it please contact me via my website - northbedfordshirehoney.com - I don't check the Facebook page.

General Bee Stuff

The Bees
At the risk of this statement coming back to bite me in the bum, they seem to be doing OK.
The autumn varroa treatments have been completed and they are in the middle of their autumn feed of syrup.
Its seems a little odd that some of the colonies quickly slurped up the 2/3 pints of syrup I have given them each yet a few others haven't touched it.
This will go on for a few weeks yet and then I will switch to the fondant that I ordered.

The bees at Ravensden are on the route I take The Boys for their walks so twice a day I just have a quick look in to the copse to see what they are up to.
I do enjoy the regular inspections and its a shame this now won't start again until March/April next year unless something dramatic happens. I won't disturb them just because I fancy a look/see so I will have to content myself with visual checks and its encouraging to see them very busy.
I have no idea where they are getting it from but they are still bringing in yellow pollen so the Queens are still laying.
A little while ago I combined two hives as one of them was struggling and wouldn't have made it through the winter and I pleased to see  a large amount of activity in the combined colony. The down side is that this colony now has two brood boxes [like The Beast] which are a pain to check.
Here's a short video about some of the colonies.

All the supers have been bought back and stacked up and this will be one of the winter jobs to replace/repair broken frames and get foundation put in ready for next year. They also need to be sprayed to prevent parasites setting up shop in the frames.

From time to time I am asked about what I call cut comb but is also called honeycomb or comb honey. Its basically a rectangle of wax cut from the frame with the honey still in it.

Inexplicably a lot of bee keepers consider it a 'premium product'. I consider it 'revolting'.
The frames have to be specially set up to produce it and I did  few and rather to my surprise its proved quite popular so something for next year is to set up more frames.

My main objective for next year is to populate my Top Bar Hive.

I had hoped to get a swarm to put in it but surprisingly it never happened.
I could wait for a swarm next season but rather than muck around I intend buying what is called a package. This is a box of 'loose' bees, usually about 3lb, with a queen in a queen cage. You normally use a package as normal frames don't fit in a TBH.

I don't know anybody locally who sells packages so I might have to get it from a company I know in Sussex. Unfortunately it means I have to drive there to pick it up.

Asian Hornet
Bees can be forgiven for thinking that life, like history, is just one bloody thing after another.
Climate, insecticides, varroa and habitat loss and now Asian Hornets can be added to the list of things they have to put up with.

Widespread in France a single hornet was found in Somerset last year and three days ago a confirmed sighting was made at Woolacomb, North Devon.
Reassuring noises are being made by the authorities but it all sounds a bit Canute like. They spread very quickly in France and will no doubt do so here and bee keepers will have to start thinking about what they can do.
Asian Hornets are nasty things and their favourite snack is a honey bee.

Still out of adversity comes opportunity.
Shortly after the announcement was made one of the more 'stack 'em high, flog 'em cheap' bee keeping supply firms sent out something to all their email subscribers attempting to flog their Hornet trap.
The email had the heading
Asian Hornets sighted in the UK!
They rapidly issued another email to their 'esteemed customers' saying some browsers translated the emoji wrongly and it should have been a grim face emoji not a smiling one which might suggest they were happy with the sales opportunity.
I use Chrome and I checked the email in Explorer and it had the smiling face as well. Perhaps users of more popular browsers didn't have the problem.

It also gave the Independent to go all Daily Mail'ish and run the headline

Originally the Independent showed a picture of the wrong type of wasp

The Express followed with

This despite the National Bee Unit saying

The Asian hornet is smaller than our native hornet and poses no greater risk to human health than a bee.


I understand tomorrows Daily Mirror headline will be:-

Introducing a new Queen

I often start a blog, possibly finish it but then forget about it.

This is one of those blogs,

Although our Queen seems to live for ever, honey bee queen have a shortish life.
She can live between 3 and 5 years although once she reaches 3 she starts to be lose it a bit and she starts laying just male drone eggs rather than a mixture of drones and workers, which is not a good idea ,so she has to be replaced.
Also she can just die or perhaps a queen doesn't return during the swarming season.

It is possible just to let the bees develop a new queen on their own but I decided to use some of the vast cash reserves North Bedfordshire Honey has accumulated in its secret offshore tax haven to buy two new ones.

Click here to see the video.

Autumn Feeding

Now the 'retail' honey thing is out of the way, its now time to concentrate on 'bee' honey.
A healthy hive can produce three times the amount of honey it needs but poor weather, bad winters and disease can mean the bees may need some help to get through the winter.

The varroa treatment has started and I need to think about what feeding may be necessary.
Autumn feeding is usually some form of syrup. Although its just sugar and water you wouldn't believe the debates on the forums about what mixes to use.
As far as I am concerned you use 1 lbs sugar to 1 pint of water in early Spring and 2:1 later. In winter I switch to fondant blocks.

There are a bewildering array of different feeders you can use.
At the top end of the market there are Ashforth feeders which holds two gallons.

These are put on top of the brood box and the bees come up through a slot to feed. I have two of them, one that only fits the WBC hive and the other will be put on The Beast.
Very nice but they are £50 each. I have eighteen hives so not having £800 handy, I use plastic contact feeders.
The ones I use are called rapid feeders and hold four pints, so obviously need filling up more regularly, but they only cost £3.50.

In each apiary I will have a 25ltr container of syrup to keep the feeders topped up so I buy a few 25kg sacks of sugar from Bookers.

How much to feed them?

As in all things opinions vary. I know two very experienced bee keepers who belong to the Association, one gives a gallon per hive and that's it, the other feeds as they need it. I'm of the latter school of thinking.

Steam Wax melter

Throughout the season you build up a pile of normally skanky wax comb from damaged frames or from extracting the honey

The local beekeeping association has a scheme where you can trade in your unused wax and they in turn sell it on to an organisation that then gives it a discount on the wax foundation sheets we buy from them.
However before we pass the wax onto them it has to be cleaned. There are many methods of doing this and normally you melt the wax with some sort of bain marie and then strain it through a pair of tights, first making sure no one is wearing them, into a plastic container.

If you can afford it you can buy steam wax melters which do what the name implies

The association recently bought one for use by any of its members and I wondered about making one and in the words of that irritating arse Jeremy Clarkson, thought 'How hard can it be?
I wandered through YouTube and a lot of home made ones used the steamers you use to get wallpaper off. I had one of these so I thought I would give it a go.

Apart from trading it in I use the wax to make candles and furniture polish and add it to propolis to make a cream. More of which in a future blog

Autumn Varroa Treatment

Following on from the previous blog, as the 'retail' honey has been extracted, I can now do the Autumn varroa treatment.
The chemical in the treatment taints the honey and makes it smell a bit, not that the bees care.
I used two different treatments, Apiguard for the Ravensden bees and Apistan for the Scald End bees.

The Apiguard should be applied when the weather is warm and two doses are given a fortnight apart.
Apistan should be taken off by 6 weeks or 8 weeks at the latest.

As I mentioned in the previous blog, its not uncommon for the treatments not to be applied correctly.
The Apiguard needs to be put on when the weather is warm and taken off after two weeks or else the bees can become resistant to a weak level of the treatment.

As honey bees are classified as food producing animals bee keepers are required to keep a Veterinary Medicines Report. Both Apiguard and Apistan have batch numbers and I keep a record of these should the Inspector from the National Bee Unit needs to see it.


Next year I might switch them around or try something different. Its thought best practice to change the treatments to prevent the bees building up a resistance to a particular treatment.