Varroa Destructor: The Looming Threat—Why It’s Time to Prepare and Protect Your Bees Now!

Varroa has arrived in Australia and is wreaking havoc in the eastern states. As it slowly advances toward us, now is the time to take action: educate ourselves, learn how to monitor effectively, and become familiar with treatment options.

Below is an image of a corn cob. Although corn relies on wind for pollination, it serves as a powerful analogy for what could happen when our essential pollinators falter under the burden of increasing pest pressure.

https://www.varroa.org.au/training

The Time to Act is Now: Prepare for Varroa and Protect Your Bees

Every beekeeper needs to be informed and proactive as Varroa approaches. Recently, I attended a training hosted by WA DPIRD, and while it was a long and detailed day, the information shared was absolutely vital.

The session began with an overview of Varroa and quickly moved into treatment options, highlighting their implications and best practices. Even after completing the training, I recognize the need to carefully map out when and how to apply treatments, considering factors like our specific sites, floral schedules, expected mite loads, and seasonal dynamics. Choosing the right product and factoring in temperature ranges for effectiveness adds complexity to the process.

Western Australia’s extended beekeeping season and the need for neighboring beekeepers to manage their hives effectively make this challenge even greater. A neglected hive in your area can become a “mite bomb,” leading to re-infestations and undoing your hard work.

Understanding Treatment Rules in Australia

Not all treatment products can be used according to the label instructions. In Australia, legislation requires compliance with the Australian Honey Bee Code of Practice, which takes precedence over product label directions. Beekeepers are legally responsible for ensuring treatments are used according to Australian regulations, which may differ significantly from international guidelines. Misuse of treatments not only risks harm to your hives but could also lead to non-compliance with the law.

The Danger of Improper Treatment Use

Using treatments incorrectly or failing to rotate products properly can result in Varroa mites developing resistance, rendering once-effective treatments useless. This is why understanding the approved treatment methods and their appropriate usage is so important.

It’s important to remember: there is no silver bullet for Varroa. Experimenting with untested methods in your backyard could result in disastrous mite explosions that harm your colonies.

Key Takeaway: Monitoring, Compliance, and Planning are Critical

DPIRD is currently offering free inspections by their VDOs (Volunteer Diagnostic Officers). They can provide valuable guidance and, if they spot your queen, they’ll even mark her for you—how good is that?

Why Sign Up for Training?

• Learn how to monitor your hive effectively.
• Familiarize yourself with treatment options and how to use them in compliance with Australian law.
• Gain the knowledge you need before you face an infestation—waiting until it’s too late could create major pest issues.
• Receive a free set of materials to help you monitor your hives and maintain records.

Take Action Now!

The training is free, and the skills you gain could make all the difference for your bees and your community.

https://www.varroa.org.au/training

Learn, monitor, and will see how we go WA, all the best, will probably need it!

Customer picture gallery

Customer hives:

Everyone loves pictures and we do too! 

Lets have a look on how those NUCs are coming along in some of our customers backyards and how they put them into their gardens to give you some additional inspirations.

David's hive:

Jason's hive:

We even got an action picture of Jason transferring the NUC into his flow hive.

 


Willi's hive:

Greg's hive:

< YOUR PICTURE AND SETUP COULD BE HERE >

There is no requirement for our customers to send us their pictures and we do ask our customer for their permission to use the pictures online prior publishing.

We hope this give you some additional impressions on what people do in their backyards!

Backyard Wickingbeds - food for bees and humans! - Win - Win

Feeding bees while feeding ourselves - backyard wickingbeds:

This blog post is not directly a post about bees, rather it is a post about how we can support bees in our own backyards while producing heaps of veggies and feeding ourselves while using the least amount of water to produce crops.
The setup shown features float valves, optical levels, dedicated filling / drainpipes and more, giving you options of hand filling as well as more automated float valve / irrigation-controlled options so you can go on leave without needing to have someone remember to top up the wicking beds for you!

Before we get going in showing you our construction, here is an excellent study about wickenbeds worth pointing out:

Study about wicking materials and water holding and wicking characteristics:

https://www.roogulli.com/wicking-beds

Building our version of wickingbeds step by step:

OK, this is the final product of our wickingbed, and our Paulownia tree coming along nicely as an initial test.

Wickingbed piping / preparation works:

Find an Schuetz IBC which has been used for food / water, ensuring you are not utilizing an IBC having contained harsh chemicals or pesticides. Remove the bottom pallet component first by undoing the screws. Then follow up by removing the IBC bladder from the metal grid.
Once done, meassure to your desired height of the wicking bed, in our case we stick to 60cm, this allowing 25-30cm of sand, and another 25-30 cm of soil for optimal wicking performance.
Once done, cut up the IBC bladder at 60 cm in our case, having previously ensured the IBC bladder is actually holding water and does not have any punctures. Also it is good practise to keep them filled for several days to ensure the tap is sealing correctly.

Western Australia is usually fairly dry and using a grinder during the hot season outside is a big NO-NO by DFES legislation, hence, do the right thing and grind behind closed doors using the appropriate PPE.

This is a quick overview picture to show how it all fits together while we later discuss the individual parts prior getting to the below stage. What you see here is the cut off IBC at 60cm height, with a 100mm pipe in the corner later used to house the float valve. The 100mm pipe is closed off with a piece of GeoTex fabric and a piece of wire to hold it in place, covering the 100mm pipe from sand and dirt entering the pipe from below.
The drainpipe unfortunately on this picture is shown within the 100mm pipe, which in later pictures we have moved out of the 100mm pipe.
Also please note the piece of GeoTex fabric placed over the IBC drain hole, which avoids sand and dirt clogging up the drain if needed.
Additionally, you can see the drain / filling pipe covered in GeoTex too, looping around to allow an adequate distribution of water when manually filled in a fast pace.

Water Level indicator:

Below you can see the secret technology involved in our water level indicators. Find a few wine bottles, have a good time and hang on to the corks. then stick them on a piece of wire. 2x corks tend to be needed for the side going into the water to generate enough lift to make it stick out at the top.

#Update a few month later in regards to using corks:

Use plastic straws with different colors for water level and use a polystyrene float as that tends to work better than the corks.

Water level pipe 25mm:

We put in 25mm Poly pipe from Bunnings, and once again used GeoTex fabric from stopping any debris coming into the pipe from the bottom.

Drain pipe / filling pipe preparations:

You can use anything from 32-40mm agricultural drainpipe for this matter.
The only main concern is to stop your wicking material from entering your drainpipe and wrapping it with GeoTex fabric. This is probably the task which will take you the longest out of all individual tasks.

We used some wire to hold the GeoTex fabric in place roughly every 20-40 cm.

Filling the wicking media:

Make sure to remember to put GeoTex over your IBC drain hole, prior filling sand, as this is easily forgotten in the heat of getting on with the task!!

Once you filled your bottom half with the wicking material you can start filling it with water in order to level out the wicking material.

Sand is fairly easy to work with, as once filled with water it nearly flattens itself without any effort.

GeoText barrier prior filling the growing media / soil into the wickingbed:

Prior filling your wickingbed with your growing soil ensure you place another piece of GeoTex Fabric between the wicking material and the soil, while ensuring you lift the edges up so no soil can pass through the sides of the container into the wicking material.

Self watering / float valve / irrigation setup:

Below we cut a 40mm pipe just at the right distance from the ground to allow the float valve to sit right at the edge where the wicking material / sand and the growing media / soil is located.

You will have to play around until you find the correct height and fine tune the location by cutting back the 40mm pipe until you have found the perfect water line.

This is the view of our 3 inlets:

-100mm inlet to place the float valve connected ot our irrigation controller.

-25mm pipe shown with another 15mm pipe used as water level, later replace with the cork solution.

-32mm agricultural drain / filling pipe, if we use the hose to quickly fill up the wicking bed.

This is the final view of the water level indicator and the finalized float valve and connectivity to connect to the irrigation. Assuming you have your irrigation controller set for 1-2x a week, your water level should remain constant at the level set by the underlying 40mm pipe distance.

We do not have the classic drain hole as other people tend to have. In wintertime we will have to keep an eye out if things get waterlogged, however in WA we don't always get that much rain and we will just see how it goes. Worst case the IBC tap can be used to open up or attach a screw cap with a 19mm water hose and set it to the correct drain overflow, just slightly over the float valve setting to fully automate the draining in case of overfilling the IBC.

When you get to the stage of filling your wickingbeds, here's a handy tip.

When buying halfways established veggies at places like bunnings, make sure you pop them into a bucket of water, wash of the soil. Once done, you can easily transplant the individual plants without damaging their root systems, while poking a deep hole into your soil and planting them, giving them access to the wicking magic right away!
Assuming you plant a lot of crops, you could potentially place an air-stone from an aquarium pump into the bucked and just let it bubble away for a few minutes or hours until you come back and all the earth would most likely be bubbled and washed away.

This post is a bit different from our usual beekeeping related posts and might just inspire you on helping out our pollinators while growing your own backyard food, with close to zero touch!

Update on the growth:

Things have literally gone banana's with those wickingbeds, as it was started late in the season around mid January which is pretty much in the middle of the hot season and at present in mid March which is going into our Autumn the wicking beds look like below:

Medicinal significance of honey - long forgotten wisdom - An essay by Hugo Flury 1978 Switzerland

This blog post features an Essay discovered in an old book called the "DER SCHWEIZERISCHE BIENENVATER" given to us, the original copy in German following the English translation and scanned documents.

The essay by Hugo Flury, based on a lecture by Hans-Joachim Rau, explores the historical and medicinal significance of honey. It emphasizes honey's diverse composition, including natural invert sugar and a rich array of minerals, vitamins, and organic acids. The essay highlights honey's potential in diabetes management, its positive effects on heart health, and various traditional applications, ranging from a honey cure to wound treatments and skincare.

Temperature experiments - black IBC filled with water / 1.6m below ground in Gingin Western Australia

While this blog post is not technically directly related to beekeeping we intend to keep it here for "our reference", in our defence however the heating and or cooling out of those experiments and applications may be used to either help cool down or heat up hives in winter and we will ensure to keep you updated on the beekeeping application side for sure too.

This is a post about a few experiments we are running in Gingin Western Australia.
We are generating our own data surrounding the storage of heat in black IBC and other means, in order to potentially utilize the heating and or cooling effect of some of the experiments conducted and or combining some ideas. All data is attached to the blog post, so it can be used for the wider "scientific" audience. It seems its hard to get real life data online these days, hence we are uploading our data freely available here for people to use and study.

The temperature probe we had been using for all experiments is the following found at JayCar: USB Temperature/Humidity Datalogger with LCD | Jaycar Electronics

We basically stuck it into the IBC and made it float by attaching it to a rock and having it float about within the middle of the IBC submerged by about 30-40cm worth of water while the IBC is filled up to the top. The IBC had been painted black or at least of the paint that remained on the IBC after a few month, this side of the picture probably being the worst chipping of the paint from the IBC overall.

 

Sensor being placed in a little bottle, and tied to the stone pulling it to the ground and making it float about half way in the IBC submerged by water.

Temp Data Graph:

The rise and fall of thermal energy within an IBC on a fairly warm day (16.10.2023):

August 2023:

October 2023:

December 2023:

Gingin IBC Temperature Data as Excel files:

<insert URL for temp data download>

Introducing APISOLIS - vaping the bees instead of smoking them

Will this be the holy grail in beekeeping and making it a bit more fire safe?

We have just recently picked up an APISOLIS, and luckily it just came in time. One of our bee sites which we have not visited in some time had quite a bit of growth and we did not have a whipper snipper  and rake with us to clear it. It would have been way to dangerous to inspect the bees using a real smoker as the grass was knee high and was as dry hay can be, and the slightest ember dropped on the floor would have started a grass fire for sure. Hence the APISOLIS came just in time to save the day.

We tested the APISOLIS on around 36-40 hives that day, full strength production colonies.
Luckily our hives are not too bad in temper and we can get away using the APISOLIS.
However, we would probably say that most bee hives which have not specifically been bread to be of fairly calm and healthy producers would probably not get away with an APISOLIS and would need a traditional smoker.

When running NUCs / Nucleus Colonies the APSOLIS is a great tool, ready to go right away and sufficient smoke to direct the bees from the frames.

Overseas in colder climates lots of beekeepers use bee houses and or similar structures to house the bees, and for beekeeping within a structure the APISOLIS would be a great fit.

 

We use magnetic chargers and APISOLIS to avoid USB ports to be clogged up by bees wax and propolis.

APISOLIS fluid

The fluid has a nice calming fragrance not just for the bees, its also way better to have this in the car with the suit. We're still testing on how many inspections and hives can be inspected by one bottle, however the pricing model is fairly steep and it would be great if APISOLIS could once payed for their investment and development bring down pricing to something reasonable. 

 

Processing bees wax using solar solutions in Perth Western Australia

We had been playing around with multiple different tweaks and setups, follow us along and see what tends to work best for us.

Toolbox inside painted black:

We had one of the Bunnings tool boxes left over and played around to see if we could easily and passively be able to process burr-comb and other old brown comb without the need for electricity or utilizing gas. Basically doing it on the cheap and letting time do its thing rather than us needing the doing, basically every so often filling up those crates with comb and getting a nearly finished product without much doing. However running the unit with black paint on the inside this did not exactly perform very well in the Perth Western Australian winter going into spring time as we had hoped it may  (August-September, early October). Even said the weather was not great, we had hoped to get the box warm enough to sustain the bees wax melting point at around 62-64C Celsius long enough to get it to melt away.

 

Temperature data indicating that we where not even close of the 64 Celsius needed in spring in order to melt down the bees wax:

weather in those past few days:

Same Toolbox with silver lining / chrome spray:

We changed the setup from painting the inside with a chrom / silver spray to see if we can make a difference. Keep in mind the second test is being done in October, nearly 1 month later and getting closer to summer, which makes a massive difference on the suns position and solar radiation hitting the box. We just kicked this test off and showing below weather data and temperature data once available. But I have the feeling the silver lining will probably do way better, also having said the backing trays will nicely soak up all bounced back radiation.

Weather for the silver lining test: