Happy New Year!

Honeybees are Apis mellifera. 'Apis' is simply Latin for 'bee'. From it come 'apiculture', 'apiary' and a biennial, international conference called 'Apimondia' (Copenhagen in September this year). Marketing executives love it: many products associated with beekeeping aim to give themselves an air of seriousness and sophistication by incorporating a flash of relevant Latin into their brand name. Pharmaceutical companies are particularly prone to this weaknesses, I think. I take a drug every day with a brand name that incorporates the Latin for the poisonous 'false hellebore'; reassuring

Brand names for approved treatments against the Varroa mite include

Apiguard
Apilife Var
Apivar
Apitraz
Apistan
ApiBioxal

It can get confusing! The picture is the first one on the list. It is a gel, containing the aromatic chemical found in the herb thyme - quite a pleasant smell to you and me; slightly irritating to bees (provoking grooming) but very disorienting and toxic to Varroa mites, which drop off the bees to escape it and fall through the mesh in the floor of the hive. It sits on top of the brood frames like this for four weeks. The bees slowly clear it away, so distributing the vapour around the hive and increasing its effectiveness 

If there is a 'start' to the beekeeping year, I think this is it. The bees are now rearing the larger, long-lived, heat-generating workers that will carry the colony through the cold, dark winter months. The remnant who make it through to spring will rear the first generations of summer workers in the new calendar year, and start the new population build-up for reproduction, honey-making and repeating the cycle once more. What happens in the next few weeks will be critical to the success of the colony throughout the year to come

The winter bees must be as healthy as possible to 'live long and prosper' - critically, they must be as free as possible of the Varroa parasite and the fatal viruses that it carries from bee to bee. That is why we intervene at this moment, and why there are so many 'Api's to help us

[Thank you for the hearts and stars yesterday. I don't want to dwell on the tragedy, but I appreciate the support]