06/01/2025
A new blog post from us is online, 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝, on the topic: "How to ecologically save the bees from dangerous VARROA in winter 2025? Part III of the Varroa series in the beekeeper Oswald blog" The post is in German, but these days the automatic translation is relatively easy. Link to the post: https://bio-honig.com/imkerkurs-bienen-varroa-winterbehandlung-2/
Here are some translated excerpts from my article:
How to biologically save bees from the dangerous Varroa mite?
**Part III: Winter 2025**
**Minimizing Colony Losses Through Winter Drip Treatment**
# # # Why Is Residual Treatment Against *Varroa destructor* So Important?
Varroosis (also known as varroatosis) is unfortunately widespread across Germany.
It is a chronic, incurable, and untreatable silent parasitosis with an epidemic-like nature. Without intervention from beekeepers, it is sadly fatal for bee colonies.
The nature of this parasitosis makes it undetectable in its early stages. Even an infestation with just one *Varroa* mite in a bee colony will inevitably lead to the colony’s illness within just four years if left untreated.
In nearly all cases, by the fourth (untreated) year, mite infestations escalate to such an extent that the first colonies collapse in the autumn or winter. Over time, 45% to 95% of the colonies at a given apiary may be lost due to lack of treatment or improper treatment.
Any surviving individual colonies (the last remaining colony) must be preserved for breeding, as they may possess genetic resilience to *Varroa* mites.
# # # Prevention Is Better... ..than cure, especially since efforts to "heal" insects are challenging.
I hope all readers can help their bees fend off and overcome the threat posed by the *Varroa* mite so that the colonies achieve a harmonious balance and their biological optimum.
To achieve this goal, it’s worth acquiring all the necessary skills and consulting various guides. Every unnecessarily lost colony is one too many. The absence of a single colony can disrupt the ecosystem it supports.
The problem should not be viewed in isolation.
The Varroa mite problem is linked to the pesticide problem.
The Varroa mites act as gravediggers, so to speak, for bee colonies that are ailing or have weakened colonies.
The Varroa mite is the secondary problem, pesticides (agricultural poisons) and the resulting brood damage, lack of food and short lifespan of the individual bee are unfortunately the primary problem today.
The two together, i.e. Varroa + pesticides, then lead to high loss rates when the bee colonies overwinter.
Beekeepers have been working successfully for 40 years with a lot of commitment and inventiveness to solve the Varroa mite problem.
On the other hand, we beekeepers have only a small, mostly indirect influence on solving the pesticide problem.
2. What loss rate of bee colonies in winter (winter losses) would be normal?
A long-term loss rate of 3% winter losses would be normal.
An average winter colony loss rate of 3% per year would be normal.
The actual average winter colony loss in Germany is now between 10% and 90%, with the average loss in Germany now being around 40% per year.
In Germany, massive winter losses of 30% to 50% of overwintered colonies have been recorded on average over many years.
3. Which bee colonies are first affected by the Varroa mite?
The Varroa mite first affects bee colonies that have lost their flying bees due to pesticides and can no longer properly warm the brood.
But colonies that have lost their food source due to the use of glyphosate herbicides and therefore raise shorter-lived bees,
as there is a lack of healthy pollen in sufficient quantities, are also particularly at risk from the Varroa mite.
We beekeepers would welcome the switch to pesticide-free agriculture, but the changeover may take decades. That is why we currently have to deal with combating the Varroa mite.
This does not solve the actual problem, but gives us time to save the colonies for better times.
4. A third of beekeepers are in acute need
About a third of beekeepers in Germany are currently on the verge of collapse.
Winter losses in Germany and Europe have currently leveled off at an average of 40% dead bee colonies every winter, with wide fluctuations up and down depending on the region and weather, but also from apiary to apiary.
Winter losses of 3% would be normal.
This means that today we have a loss rate of bee colonies in winter that is ten times higher than under normal conditions.
This is the high price that we as beekeepers, but also our bees, have paid for the cheap food prices of the last few decades. Honey bees and their beekeeping families have made immense sacrifices for the common good in the last few decades.
The cheap food prices in the period from 1990 to 2020 were only possible through the massive use of artificial fertilizers and liquid manure in combination with pesticides and imported protein feed from cleared rainforest. Incidentally, the artificial fertilizers used were produced with Russian natural gas and the pesticides were synthesized from Russian oil. It is a sad fact that the total amount of pesticides used in Germany is higher than the total amount of the German honey harvest.
It is our duty to do something about high loss rates.
In this context, people talk about continuous repair work, because the problems in Germany unfortunately do not disappear into thin air and will unfortunately probably continue to concern us for decades to come.
It is simply a historical fact that there is a connection between the prosperity and well-being of a country and the well-being of beekeepers and small farmers.
Once beekeepers, shepherds, small farmers and their livestock have been driven out of a landscape, the war of global investors for the land and the country's resources begins, in particular the sale of the land in the area to mostly Chinese investors and their front men.
5. Why sprinkling the winter cluster in winter is necessary
The winter treatment offers the possibility of decimating the Varroa mite in the brood-free period outside the brood cells.
By removing the remaining mites in winter, a relatively high level of efficiency of 90% to 97% mite removal rate can be achieved.
This reduction in the Varroa mite can take place very effectively in the brood-free period outside the brood cells.
The first brood cycles of the new year are then no longer so heavily infested, and the bee colonies can start the new year relatively unaffected.
The winter treatment of the bee colonies is a strong lever to prevent the Varroa mites from taking over in the bee colonies in the coming year.
(...)
Hans Georg Oswald (beekeeper & founder of bio-honig.com)
