01/14/2026
This Right Here!👇🏻
We love to see that other beekeepers understand simple truths in apiculture. This is why we do what we do! As a chemical free farm, we take great pride in the care we provide our bees—building stronger healthier gene pools every year.
Treating for Health--Not Varroa, Part 1
I have a friend that over the past 15 years or so has had several health issues, and with each issue the doctor's answer was to cut something out, poison it with chemo or radiation, or add another medicine to the already too many medicines they have him on. Recently he went into the hospital with sepsis, and after a week they still didn't know what caused it...and he ended up with 3 more health issues while he was in there! The problem here is that on a scale of 1-100, his health was probably around 35% when he went in the hospital, and now that he's out...it's probably at 20%, and I think his "vitality" is now too low for another hospital visit, without it being his last! If you want to understand why "the bees are dying", it's simple...we treat our bees the same way!
Beekeepers are FIXATED on varroa, and all they do is either preventative measures for varroa numbers, and when the numbers are high...attack varroa! In the same manner that Chemo is a poison used in a low enough amount to kill the problem--without killing the host--hopefully--we see beekeepers doing the same with mites. At no point are beekeepers asking the question "how healthy are my bees?" and can they handle another round in the beekeeper hospital!
On the flip side, there are those of us that focus on "are the bees healthy" and what can we do so they are? This might be that we select healthy stock, make sure there's good forage, recognize that "feeding" bees processed foods are bad for them, and not propping up the weak bees so they might breed more weak bees in the next year and the next. If you want to know why the bees are dying...it's not because they have too many varroa, it's because they simply are functioning around 35%, and winter is like a LONG visit to the hospital--where they aren't out getting fresh air and sunshine, and have to hold in their p**p for several months at a time!
To be honest here...I think this problem would be simple to fix. Stop importing bees from out of the area, stop "treating" for varroa and not keeping too many bees in an area--where you HAVE to feed, because there's not enough forage in the area to support the number of hives you have along with the feral bees and other pollinators. And...just let the bees that are going to die off...die off, and let what survives rebuild the population! Of course, this isn't going to happen, because there's just TOO MUCH MONEY being made from "if you don't treat, your bees are going to die", but that could change...if people would just think things through, and be willing/able to let go of that lie they were programmed to believe, and see the situation for what it really is.
Last year the commercial beekeepers lost an average of 62% of their bees, and in that some of them lost them all. What was the conclusion of "science says" on the matter...the varroa have adapted to the poisons we have been using, and we need a new poison! Nothing in there about the health of the bees, or how to get them healthy again...only we need a new poison!
