Varroa Management Guide Update with Dewey Caron (380)

Varroa Management Guide Update with Dewey Caron (380)

Eric Debaker

Hi, I'm Eric Debaker. I'm a first-year beekeeper from Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, here at the Midwest Honey Bee Expo. Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Jeff Ott

Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast presented by Betterbee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. I'm Jeff Ott.

Becky Masterman

And I'm Becky Masterman.

Global Patties

Today's episode is brought to you By the bee nutrition superheroes at Global Patties. Family operated and buzzing with passion, Global Patties crafts protein-packed patties that'll turn your hives into powerhouse production. Picture this: strong colonies, booming brood, and hundreds.

Money flowing like a sweet river. It's super protein for your bees and they love it. Check out their buffet of patties, tailor-made, for your bees in your specific area.

Head over to www. globalpadties. com and give your

Jeff Ott

Hey, a quick shout out to Betterbee and all of our sponsors whose support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription. We don't want that and we know you don't either. Be sure to check out all of our content on the website.

There, you can read up on all of our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download, and listen to over 300 past episodes, read episodes transcripts. Leave comments and feedback on each episode, and check on podcast specials from our sponsors. You can find it all at www.beekeepingtoday. com. Thank you, Eric, for that great opening from the floor of the Midwest Honey Bee Expo.

Becky Masterman

Wonderful, Eric. We really do appreciate those openings. Do we need more, Jeff?

Are we running out or do you have a stack?

Jeff Ott

We are good for openers. Of course, we're always looking for someone to send us an opening from, say, Idaho and Utah.

Becky Masterman

Oh, we do have Utah. Did we ever get North Dakota?

Jeff Ott

The Dakotas are still absent on our listener map.

Becky Masterman

You and I are going to be at the Tri-State Beekeeping Conference. in July of this year, and we are going to get so many openers from North and South Dakota.

Jeff Ott

We better. We better. Here are the states we're missing.

North Dakota, South Dakota. Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Missouri, Louisiana, West Virginia. Come on, that's my alma mater for college.

Come on, West Virginia. West Virginia, Virginia, and then there's a variety of states on the East Coast that I can't see on the map, but they're missing. So New Jersey's missing.

I can't believe New Jersey's missing. That's a big state Yeah, Vermont and I think that's Connecticut. Connecticut there.

Oh yeah. So we have a few states and we have no one from Mexico.

Becky Masterman

Nobody from Mexico.

Jeff Ott

BC is missing, Saskatchewan is missing, Alberta is missing.

Becky Masterman

So come on, beekeepers. And then I would just like to say I noticed that we're trending in Italy right now. So I would just like I'd love to have a listener opener from Italy.

Jeff Ott

That would be great.

Becky Masterman

And if I have to go there myself to get it, Jeff, I would do that for this podcast. Wow. Wow.

Just like in June or July of this year, I'd be willing to do that.

Jeff Ott

I've sat here thinking about it and Yeah, but it's probably not a good idea. Probably can't make that Italy trip work.

Becky Masterman

Ah, okay. Well thanks for letting me know and uh we'll just have to depend upon our listeners to just

Jeff Ott

We'll count on that. And listeners, if you want to record an opening, just Go to our website, beekeepingstate podcast. com.

Go to the home page or actually any page that pops up in the lower right hand corner. There is a microphone icon. You can click on that and just speak right into your computer and leave us an opening that would be wonderful and also for our listener question you can do the same thing with our listener question Speaking of which, we are going to do our loosener question with Dr.

Dewey Caron right after these words from our sponsors.

Betterbee

For more than forty-five years, Betterbeeee has proudly supported beekeepers by offering high quality innovative products, providing outstanding customer service, many of our staff are beekeepers themselves, and sharing education to help beekeepers succeed. Based in Greenwich, New York, Betterbeek Betterbee serves beekeepers all across the United States. Whether you're just getting started or a seasoned pro, Betterbeee has the products and experience to help you and your bees succeed.

Visit betterbee. com or call 1-800-632-3379. Betterbee, your partners in Betterbeekeeping.

Apis Tactical

This episode of Beekeeping Today podcast is brought to you in part by Apis Tactical, a beekeeping brand focused on innovation. They use new designs. Designs, new materials, and new ideas to bring more joy to beekeeping.

Apis Tactical creates a wide range of gear for beekeepers of all types. They use new designs, new materials, and new ideas to bring more joy to beekeeping. Our products are built with purpose and they're already getting attention well beyond the US, with beekeepers in Europe discovering them through this podcast.

If you're looking for well-made beekeeping gear from a company that understands the work, take a look at APISTAC. com You can learn more at apus-tactical. com.

Jeff Ott

Hey everybody, welcome back. Sitting around the great big virtual beekeeping today podcast table down in Portland, Oregon. We have Dr.

Dewey Caron. And Becky's in St. Paul, and I'm up the road from Dewey in Olympia, Washington.

Dewey, welcome officially to the Beekeeping Today podcast show.

Dr. Dewey Caron

Thank you, Jeff. And hello, Becky. Glad to join you.

Becky Masterman

Hello. I'm so happy you're here. You've been a part of the podcast for a while, but we haven't officially had a conversation.

in an episode. So this is going to be fun.

Dr. Dewey Caron

Oh good.

Jeff Ott

Me too. I think so. As Becky pointed out, you've recorded with us uh for the about the last year or more, doing occasional shorts And we decided recently to make that official and do it a regular monthly series.

But before we go into that, why don't you tell our listeners who may not be familiar with you. Who you are and a little bit about your background and bees.

Dr. Dewey Caron

As indicated Jeff, I'm on the West Coast now down the road in Portland. I moved to Portland, Oregon in 2009, after I had uh retired, well, one of my first retirements, from teaching. I was a biologist, an ecologist at my undergraduate school and went to the University of Tennessee and did a master's degree in ecology.

And then looking around to continue my education, I uh focused on uh Cornell University and uh had a couple of options, study stream insects and study honey bees So I went into the office of Dr. Roger Morris and said, Yeah, um, you know, honey beast, what are you doing? What's you know, what's going on?

I said, but um I don't know if I've ever been stung. Said well we can fix that right away. And out we went, up to a beehive he picked one up, put it on my arm, and I survived And so began a longer saga with bees.

I did the Boy Scout merit badge a while back when they still had a uh beekeeping merit badge I just fell into my niche for the rest of my professional life. I uh finished up at Cornell, took a administrative job there, and then got an offer for a position in the University of Maryland the briefkeeping professor there, Al Deetz, had left for uh Georgia. And so I took that position and went through promotion, eleven years there, was acting chairman as our chairman went to Brazil for some work on soybeans.

And then at the very last moment applied for uh chairman of Entomology and Applied Ecology job at University of Delaware. They somehow in their wisdom I guess or lack of um invited me to become chairman. And so I w went up the I ninety five, about an hour and a half away, to New Art, Delaware, and I stayed.

I stayed for twenty nine years. Didn't stay as department chairman all that time, but I did stay there. Doing extension and research, still in the area of pollinating, pollinating uh critters.

I also did a lot with uh insects around homes and gardens and or what we call ornamental insects And uh as well, did some greenhouse IPM work. So did a bunch of different things. We had a entomology and an applied ecology department of of uh only five entomologists.

So We ended up doing a bunch of different jobs over the years. Different uh you know, taking on different types of tasks. Then as I indicated, in two thousand nine, retired.

My sons had moved to Portland, Oregon and started families and so it was yeah, coming out on the west coast and spending two weeks in there and their extra bedroom, uh, slash work rooms, slash, you know uh whatever. Uh or moving here. So I like the idea of moving here, so we did.

We moved out in March. I've been here since then of March at Two thousand ten. Doesn't see that I can't believe it's been that long.

In retirement I thought I'd do a bunch of different things. I didn't think I'd sit around and watch TV. I haven't.

I thought I'd yeah, about uh nature center making trails in the there's so many trails here in the Pacific Northwest, some lovely walking trails, hiking trails. Started to work with Xirzi Society, the largest nonprofit for uh invertebrate conservation issues. And then we started a master beekeeper program with a committee.

uh couple years after I was here and so I volunteered to be on the committee and it's just led from one thing to another so I'm essentially doing extension entomology as a volunteer out here and just loving it. I some weeks uh like last week I did of six days I did five presentations. So that th those are busier weeks than others.

But I average over a hundred presentations. I still write for the journals and nature issues, so I guess that's not an elevator speech, but A little bit of some of my background.

Becky Masterman

I don't know it. Doctor Caron, I think I've counted at least four careers. It's very impressive.

Dr. Dewey Caron

Yeah, I gotta stop uh retiring Becky and getting uh the things that you get at retirement, you know. So uh actually my watch that I had is Has quit, so maybe it's time to retire again.

Becky Masterman

Oh, don't do that to us.

Jeff Ott

That would be bad. One little bit of trivia that maybe not too many people know of and that keeps it all here in the Beekeeping Today podcast family, is that you had a student way back when, one of your PhD students who's also a member of the Beekeeping Today podcast, And that was Dr.

Dr. Dewey Caron

Jimmy too? Yes, indeedy. Jim was one of the early ones that I had, University of Maryland.

I had uh half a dozen there in Maryland at that time. And this kid from Alabama walks in the office one day and uh he uh he says, I'm interested in uh doing uh some more my education been from Auburn. I couldn't understand what he was saying, but eventually I could understand the uh the language.

And uh for some reason he w he wanted to be in the area and he of course comes from a beekeeping family And his dad had been in with bees and he'd had some bees while he was at Auburn. So uh I said, You're sure, come on, come on down, we'll do some uh pollination research. So I guess that's how we started.

I then I then left him and went on uh sabbatic to USDA lab in Tucson and left Jim in charge and we had uh honey sales from University of Maryland Honey right there in the front desk. We had a separate building at Maryland for bees. And one day one of the university auditors came in and Wanted to see the books for the honey sales.

Well, we didn't have any book. It wasn't official. Uh I got this panic phone call uh s uh from Jim.

What am I gonna do? I said, well, figure out something. And Jim was resilient.

He did, he figured out something. We I think he we gave him about a half a case of honey and he went away.

Jeff Ott

The auditor did.

Dr. Dewey Caron

The auditor did. Yeah. Not him.

Jeff Ott

The auditor went away. Yeah. Jim's not here to defend himself or add to it, but that's a fun story.

I'm glad you shared that with us.

Becky Masterman

Funds.

Dr. Dewey Caron

No boy, they sure aren't Becky.

Becky Masterman

Undeclared revenue

Jeff Ott

Well, uh we have our ongoing listener question series, part of our promotion with Hive IQ, where they've provided us with their Really nice high IQ tool. It's co-branded with their name, but on the other side is the Beekeeping Day podcast brand. We have listeners either leave us a voicemail message or write in a question for us to answer in the podcast.

And our only caveat is that we're gonna answer it. We're not guaranteed it's the right answer. I mean it would just it depends.

But this is a special time because you're going to be with us and you can help us answer this question and we can pretty much assure them that it's mostly right. That it'll be right.

Dr. Dewey Caron

Yeah. Yes, three beekeepers you get six answers.

Becky Masterman

So I think there might just be one right answer to this question though.

Jeff Ott

What's the question there, Becky?

Becky Masterman

Well we got a question from Kenneth Moore and Kenneth asked if it is okay to use menthol cough drops in his hives. In his colonies?

Jeff Ott

Yeah, I would I would ask if the bees if it's a dry cough. Or wet cough. The bees, you know, you have to listen.

Sorry, Ken.

Becky Masterman

I'm just Oh boy. Yeah, I don't think does he get two hive tools if you make a bad joke? I don't know what the rules are

Jeff Ott

Yeah, I'm afraid he'd stab me with them. In all honesty, menthol cough drops made me, and I've told you guys, it took me right back to the tracheomite days when we used a lot of menthol in the hives.

Dr. Dewey Caron

Yeah, that's what it's going back to, I have a feeling. Yeah Tracheomites have not disappeared. They are not common.

The mitocides we're using for Varroa seem to be also taking care of keeping down populations of tracheomite

Becky Masterman

I think is there menthol in April Life Var? I know there's Eucalyptus and Tymol. I think it might have menthol in it too.

Dr. Dewey Caron

Yeah, you're right. It does. Ape yeah, apolite bar is a real good material for bromites, but it's not too commonly used.

Jeff Ott

To Ken's question, placing Hall's menthol cough drops and put them on the inner cover or even on a bottom board in the in the colony, is that harmful to the bees or to the honey? Is there a problem with that?

Dr. Dewey Caron

It's not going to be harmful, but it's not also going to be very helpful. To understand, you know, dealing with a pest. In this case, we're to say talking tracheal mite.

you have to have a certain level of the poison that you're putting in. Many of the poisons that we use are fairly common materials. Oxalic acid is in, you know, rhubarb and carrots and a lot of foods that we eat.

And we can eat it, and it's not harmful to us, even if we ate a lot of carrots or a lot of rhubarb. But to kill the pest, we're going to have to up the concentration. So the cough drops, you'd you'd want to, uh you would typically they'd crush them up and then sprinkle them on top.

So the uh the menthol in that case is just not going to be in a high enough concentration. It's dummy down so that we can put it in our mouth and you know, help solve the sore throat, the sticky throat, the cough, whatever. But there's just not enough of it there that's going to do in the be a poison, enough strength to be a poison to kill the tracheomite.

So it's not going to harm anything, but it's also not going to help if you indeed think you have a tracheal mite problem.

Becky Masterman

It could also possibly get into the comb though, couldn't it?

Dr. Dewey Caron

It could. It's a it's a pretty low concentration, but you're right. As if you've got it on when the bees are bringing in nectar that the that ripening nectar, because it's put in the shell uh put in the comb cells and you know, painted in there and it's a big surface initially as uh the bees are trying to, you know, dehydrate it to get the water out of it.

And so though that can absorb that uh that odor, that mental odor, and so you would have um sort of you might have a mentally related type of uh taste I think you'd have to have a lot of cough drops, more than one pack of cough drops, you'd have to have a lot to have a fairly strong odor.

Becky Masterman

I love that Kenneth is trying to help his bees, but Kenneth, keep the cough drops for yourself, right?

Jeff Ott

I think that's good advice. Yeah. Well thanks, Ken, for that question.

And we'll be in touch soon. Get your shipping address and get you your hive tool from Hive IQ. in the mail.

Now on the B Science, Dr. Dewey Caron, tell us about your new series that you are starting up. What is it and what's it about?

Now I'm real excited.

Dr. Dewey Caron

I have done a couple three podcasts, you know, on different titles. I know we've done uh a couple that related to the work that we're doing with the Honey Bee Health Coalition, which we can get into as a topic. But one of the issues things that came up is that the interest with the podcast to do uh shorter versions, not the uh the longer interview versions, but one person uh presenting thoughts and ideas.

And so I was asked to do some shorts and gladly uh agreed to do some of those as part of what I've I feel I'm doing now and giving back um all those years that I've worked with bees. And then we seg that into a new series, a shorts again shorts in terms of B science with myself with uh my talking uh fifteen to twenty minutes on some sort of a topic. What we're looking at for the each of the episodes, we're doing one a month It's being released about the middle of the month, so uh near the end of the month, I'll get together and we'll do the recording and then you do all the wonderful things that of getting all the coughs and everything else out of the recording.

Um and so then it's released in the middle of the month. So what we're trying to do with each of the episodes is to blend research, be research obviously with the practical aspects of for example the field experience trying to work both of those in and Because we're doing a monthly also to bring in seasonal context, in other words, what's happening then, what might be occurring then We're promoting it as focusing on the why be w behind honey bee biology and behavior. all my life whenever w anyone asked me a question, I often then start the answer by talking what the bees do, what's the biology.

and then you know, then get to their question that they asked. So for meeting presentations like et cetera. And we welcome any suggestions you might have as to the type of topics.

Usually try to cover things that are newish, we provide some resources at the end that then can help you get into the if you're interested to get a little bit more detail into the some of the biology that was covered particularly the newish biology that was covered during each of the episodes.

Jeff Ott

De Clarify, we're looking to get your series out the third Wednesday of every month.

Becky Masterman

It's so clear when you listen to each episode that you do that you've you must have really enjoyed teaching when you were at the university because you everything is laid out so carefully and clearly and so easy to follow. Are you putting as much work into this as it seems like because it's it's so impressive?

Dr. Dewey Caron

I found my niche, Becky, in teaching. I enjoyed immensely, and I taught undergrads, I taught grad students of course, and I taught in the honors courses as well Each of the levels were challenging. I never ever went into a class picking the a lecture just from my notes without a review of it.

Sometimes I didn't change very much, but at least I reviewed it before I went in And I like to in engage the students. And so going to bee meetings before the audience, you know, that's that's engaging. They're um they're non-traditional students as beekeepers, but it's it's still the same effect.

I don't like the Zoom as much because, you know, it's so impersonal, but still like everyone else doing the Zooms as well. I really did enjoy teaching. That was the hard part to give up with um thinking about retirement.

And why I guess I've gotten back in so heavy of doing these uh all of these different meetings and I am uh content communication spouse for our Oregon Master Beekeeper program. So that involves a lot with working with a program and doing all the tweaking and things like I would with my lectures to make sure this part of it works, to keep this part current, etc. Yeah.

I You know, I've I won awards back in the days for teaching and advising. So that was always nice from big universities to win to you know garner those awards, but it's It was uh it was the students. The students always uh I mean, they're marvelous, where they're older people doing beekeeping, younger kids in four age, and of course those that age group were Education kind of gets in the way, those university students.

Jeff Ott

Very good. So let's take this opportunity to take a quick break and we'll be right back after these words from our sponsors

Premier Bee Products

Beekeeping is demanding work. The last thing you need is equipment that can't keep up. That's why Premier Bee Products builds every frame and hive body in our South Dakota factories with one goal in mind.

reliability when it matters most. From our beefy pura frames to our natural profila hive bodies with rough interiors, we design for long life in the field and in the colony. Because we believe that in beekeeping deep Details make all the difference.

Premier Bee Products better for bees, better for beekeepers. Visit online at PremierBeeproducts. com or call us today.

Use promo code PODCAST for 10% off your net. Online order. StrongMicrobials Beekeepers, if you're looking for a smarter way to support colony health, take a look at bee bites from strong microbials.

Beebites are a new Protein patty made with spirulina, chlorella, and targeted probiotics, designed to support nutrition without creating new problems in the hive. With 15% protein, bee bites are unique because they do not attract small hive beetles. A big deal if you've ever battled infestations during feeding.

Strong Microbials has been supporting beekeepers and farmers since 2012, developing high-quality commercial probiotics and nutritional supplements you can trust. Learn more about Bee Bites and their full line of bee nutrition. Nutrition at strongmicrobials.

com. Welcome back everybody. Dewey, I was just listening to the your recent episode about Varroa and I recognize how you put everything into the big picture where you were talking about integrated pest management.

And now that I hear about your background, I understand why you nailed that part. So well and it was so well done. But you also are sharing this updated research.

So even though you're not in the university, you're still learning as well as teaching, aren't you?

Dr. Dewey Caron

Oh, absolutely, Becky. Yeah. And that's what a great thing would be keeping.

It's uh it's uh You get one part of it down one year and then the next you work on another part. It's it's it grows with you and you grow with it.

Jeff Ott

You're also doing work with the Honey Bee Health Coalition? For our listeners who may not know what the Honey bee Health Coalition is, first tell us what that organization is and then what you're doing to help with their work. Yeah, okay, sure.

Dr. Dewey Caron

The Honey bee Health Coalition was established in the mid teens, I think two fourteen or two fifteen, two thousand fourteen, two thousand fifteen. And it brought together all of the aspects, someone to speak on behalf of all of the aspects of our beekeeping industry. So it included people that were in the pesticide realm, it included beekeepers, it included officers of organizations, the national organizations.

For example, it included our consumers of our products. It included the governmental agencies. And the overriding concept and idea was that it would be a group that would look in terms of uh providing uh non-biased uh scientific based information for the industry at large, not just beekeepers, but Those that needed bees for pollination and you know all the way down to consumers that were consuming our beekeeping products It initially started with a uh a group of maybe twenty-five or so individuals.

In addition to the national organizations of the regional organizations of Eastern Apriculture Society, AS, and WAS, Western Apriculture Society, were invited to uh to participate. after I had moved and been very active with EAS and had moved to Oregon, I also then became a very active in WAS. I'm so active to the point I arrived in two thousand and ten and then put on the WAS meeting that year.

That's that's a little bit active. Uh so um Wait, did you take it over or did you It was struggling and uh the meeting we had in Salem, Oregon attracted a hundred and fifty six people and uh the biggest number they'd had prior to that time was uh under seventy five. So yeah, we kinda revived it.

Yeah. Among uh among those that were active in WAS, you know, um uh I guess I was one that the when everyone said step forward, I s I stepped backwards or when they said step backwards, I step forwards and so they nominated me to serve that role for WAS. And we work with task force in the Honey Bee Health Coalition, and one is Honey Bee Health.

And the other is the crop pest management aspect. And then the third is the is aspects of you know the other things such as nutrition of of the bees. And of course then there's a public uh outreach component as well.

So I was most interested in the honey bee health aspect and then became a leader of our task force that we have on that. And one of the first tasks we took on is We needed a comprehensive review of how we were dealing with varylamites. Again, science-based, non-biased, not trying to push a product or trying to push a concept one way or the other.

Having worked with pollination and pests that were serious pests of greenhouse uh plants, et cetera, in my life, I had always had this approach of We need to integrate what we have. We need to know about the pest. We need to measure what's happening with the pest.

Are they growing or are they decreasing? And we need to select controls and not rely on simply reaching for the bottle, reaching for a pesticide that kills the pest. And so that was what I proposed for our overall group.

And so we came up with the concept of that we need some communication system to get all this across to our audience, the people using the bees and of course the beekeepers providing the bees or, you know, keeping bees healthy in pollination. So I guess that's that's how it started. Over the years, things have changed in how we look at varroa and our tools that are available to try to attack that pest.

We then started doing revisions. I didn't I wrote the whole first draft initially, and then we had a committee look at it Since then we've formed a committee to do reviews and it's incredible. Our first edition was 2014 and we are now finishing the ninth revision of this thing And so all volunteers, you know, dedicated people, again, just volunteers.

No one is paid from the Honey Bee Health Coalition to put out this material that's on Baroa. That's sort of how tools for Varroa management started and is uh on a continuing basis. This year we've had the biggest number of changes.

I think we've ever had in terms of trying to put out this information. We put the information out in printed form But this it this year and we did also some videos on how to use uh some of the products. And this year we're looking at uh better way of reaching the beekeepers who are in the cab of the truck, you know, twenty five out of twenty four hours in a day, type of thing.

They they're not reading. They don't have time. they're listening to material.

So we're trying to better format our material so it is in is in listenable segments such as a podcast, such as podcasts. You know you're listening to it. You're not having to sit down and read something.

Becky Masterman

That's a big change.

Jeff Ott

Yeah, do those changes is that a reflection of the knowledge gained in the last few years or is that uh reflection of something else in the industry.

Dr. Dewey Caron

It's the yes, it's it is the knowledge changing and our refinement and our developing industry, our industry in one form or another, developing new tools. One of our committees is even on uh at that aspect. So one of our committees is looking at new chemicals that might be of use that chemical companies are not interested in developing as a product but might still be a product for varomites.

So those so those orphan chemicals uh that could kill mites could kill the varomite but it's not in a product at the current time that uh beekeepers can take advantage of it. So sort of all s you know, looking at all aspects in terms of honey bee health issues

Becky Masterman

Dewey, is there a release date for the ninth edition?

Dr. Dewey Caron

Current time, and we're talking here of um of March, uh current time it is in uh being formatted. So we've done all the committee has done all their work with all the revisions and it's in the process of being formatted And I might say this committee went through every single word and we debated wording. We also debated lowering the thresholds that we provided in this document through the years and we have.

We've we've decided that um you know three percent if you wash adult bees and you get a level of washed adult bees, the phretic mites, greater than uh, in most cases one percent it would call for a level of risk that might not be acceptable. And so you need to then determine if you want to do a control or change a control or add a control or do something differently than you're presently doing if you find in washing those bees. you get more than uh 1%.

That would be three mites and 300 Bs in your in your wash water, uh soapy water or alcohol.

Becky Masterman

That's actually really big news and really exciting for the industry because I think that we've been doing our best to support beekeepers, but it's hard to share the message of just how few Varroa can really take a colony down. And so I'm really excited to hear that the thresholds are being evaluated and changed.

Dr. Dewey Caron

It really yeah, Meg it really is a is a unusual situation because We're after the vector, bees can stand mites feeding on them, whether it's the pupae or whether it's the adults, they can stand that. It's of course the issue of the mites enhancing or assisting in the um the ability of certain groups of uh viruses to grow within the bodies of the bees that they're feeding on, whether it's the adult or whether it's the pupae. And of course these are the DWV, the deformed wing viruses, and the uh paralysis viruses, whether it's acute uh bee paralysis virus or cash beer or Israeli acute uh bee paralysis virus, one of those

Jeff Ott

It's really interesting because most people focus on the varroas killing the honey bee, but it's really the virus that are uh transported by the mite.

Dr. Dewey Caron

And there these groups of viruses reach epidemic proportions. Somehow they're compromising the bees' bodies, which have a large number of viruses, just as our bodies do. So somehow they're compromising that bee body and these couple of groups of viruses grow at the expense of all the other viruses that are in a bee's body

Becky Masterman

When I started beekeeping in the nineties, I think the threshold was like eight to twelve percent or something like that. It was just a very, very high number of Varroa before you would even think about intervening. And so just the fact that the thresholds are changing and now you can't go much lower at this point.

So it really does get to the fact that w we're having trouble communicating to be keepers how they should how and when they should intervene and the tool that you have developed at the Honey Bee Health Coalition for Varroa Management is the gold standard in both knowledge and ways to understand all of the tools that we have out there and the decision tree you have. It's the only thing that I recommend to beekeepers as far as Managing Varroa is that go here because you have always done such a good job taking care of beekeepers

Dr. Dewey Caron

And we offer it for free. It's not a something that you have to pay or sign up or have to have training to try to do. We've tried to make it available for or the brand new beekeeper, the beekeeper that's not very educated in terms of bees or the pests that are on bees to the uh the commercial beekeeper with thousands of colonies

Jeff Ott

We referred our listeners to the Honey Bee Health Coalition through the years in the show notes as the definitive source for learning about Faroa and treatment options.

Becky Masterman

I think it's a slide in every talk I give, even if it's about flowers. Oh by the way, here's here's a great tool for Varroa management and learning about control. So it's in the talk I'm giving tonight.

Dr. Dewey Caron

Oh, funny thing, I put it in every one of mine too.

Becky Masterman

I bet you do, but you get to you get to sign it then and say look what I did.

Dr. Dewey Caron

We do make some copies available, but for most people it's a download. And what is very encouraging is a huge number of clubs across the U. S.

put it on their website so that the individuals don't have to try to figure out where to where to find it. It's easy enough, you know simply use your search engine, tools for rural management, or Honey bee Health Coalition. But If it's on their own state or club website, it's it's right there, right handy.

Jeff Ott

Not only do you have the varroa management guide, which is going into its ninth edition, there's also the varroa management decision tree or decision tool that is useful for all types of beekeepers, whether you're trying to go with uh treatment less or treatment reduced beekeeping, or if you don't mind using synthetic chemicals uh there's a the appropriate decision tool there that you can follow and that's very useful.

Dr. Dewey Caron

Yeah, and that developed because of the way that we as beekeepers uh you know work with our bees. You know, if you pick up the tools for rural management, thirty-some pages, you know, that's a lot to sit down and read and try to figure out what am I going to do about rural mites with individuals, you know, needing to get in and do the job, we also came up with the decision tool. So that that basically is saying what part of the tools should you concentrate on?

What or what should could you read? Could you get the information? So say let's say in your situation, oxalic acid would be an appropriate material.

And so then you can go uh to that section on oxalic acid and then find out What are the disadvantages? What are advantages? What are the restrictions on its use?

And where can I get, you know, with a website, where can I get more information if I still am in doubt? So that's all sort of in one place. And so the decision tool is trying to help you get into the right place to get the most accurate.

science-based information that you'll need.

Jeff Ott

What else are you working on, Dewey, that you want to talk to us about?

Dr. Dewey Caron

Busy time of the year, spring, RBs, crazy weather in s and parts of the US But our craziest weather for Jeff and I out here on the West Coast has been it's been unbelievably warm winter. Um that's not good for the snowpack, which provides irrigation water, a and our bees are just, you know. They think spring has already been here for a couple months and so they're they've started out uh crazy.

In the spring I do a survey of commercial and backyard beekeepers, uh non the smaller scale beekeepers of the three Pacific Northwest states, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. I do that in conjunction with uh the Beinformed uh partnership, which was doing the national survey. And one of the issues was uh was to try to ground truth the national survey, but also gather more information for the beekeepers of the region of the three Pacific Northwest states.

And so I uh emulated the national survey and did this in April. Well, this year because of the early spring, I've also opened the survey in March And it's designed to answer some basic questions of how many colonies you had in the fall and then how many survived in the spring, what kind of hive that you kept them in, uh locations so we can do some uh additional work with the database that we have. And then I added sections on management.

So what did you do for wintering? What did you do for feeding bees? How were you surveying for uh for mites, were you surfing or how?

And then of course what tools were you using to uh help control the mites. And so over the eighteen years I've been here, I have a rather large database and then write up a report for clubs that I get a number of returns from. If I get under, I find if I get under uh fifteen, sixteen, eighteen from a club then one or two returns can really skew the uh statistics that I do.

So generally for the larger clubs where I'll get more than twenty or so returns. I'll I'll have a report for them and that'll summarize what this year over wintering period occurred, what happened, what were averages, levels of losses. What were the numbers of losses?

Well, how did it affect the config what you had as a hive? How did different how did nukes do? How did Langstroth eight framers, how did Langstraw ten framers do?

That type of thing. And then also then the managements that they eat that they that they use so that The clubs then, whether you actually put in a survey loss or you were just a beekeeper in that region, you could look at it and say, well, okay, the average level of losses was twenty-five percent this year. So I only lost one of my ten.

So you know I'm I'm doing something different, something better. And so I used uh API FAR. What did the survey say for those individuals that used API FAR in um They'll find out for with that particular product that consistently year after year on the survey, people that use it uh have lower levels of losses.

And so it's a it's an information gathering and the thing that I could do here in the Pacific Northwest is get a return back to the clubs uh faster than the national survey could do because I wasn't dealing with this such a huge amount of data. And mine was targeted for the people that were in those clubs in the local region. So for your local club there, Jeff, and uh in uh Washington, you know, I had like sixteen or so returns last year and so I had a report for that particular club of levels of losses and how different levels of types of hives did and there how the hive uh originated.

So there's a there's a bunch of material. And I wanted to try to do it so that you know surveys, oh god, surveys, another survey in the mail, so that you could do it, uh do the basics of the survey in like under five minutes So every year our someone asks, well, why don't I ask um did you have Italian bees or did you have Caucasian bees? Um or why don't I ask if you used a fowler board in your top barhive or didn't use a fowler board in your top barhive?

So it's it's you know, it's the it's the broad view in terms of what's going on in the area.

Becky Masterman

Oh no, I have a question about if you ask something and I don't know what you're gonna say, but do you ask how long they've been in beekeeping?

Dr. Dewey Caron

I do.

Becky Masterman

Have you seen any changes over the last decade or so

Dr. Dewey Caron

I do, in the surveys that I'm doing, I get a oh 50% or a little bit more of individuals that have one, two, three colonies. And I get about forty percent that have been beekeeping less than thirty years. And that has um thirty years.

Becky Masterman

Wait, less than three years or thirty? Whoa.

Dr. Dewey Caron

Beekeeping right. Be beekeeping uh less than three years. Forty percent less than three years.

So it's the newer people that are responding, and I think are the ones that are finding the greatest information from it because there's nothing more discouraging than you buy two nukes and they don't survive over the winter. So I have information and how did nukes survive generally and in some years nukes nuke loss is fairly substantial, you know, 60, 65%. So maybe that takes a little of the sting out of it, but it but it also points that you know, yeah, I started nukes and they didn't survive, but but I'll do it again.

I need to try that to up my game and and you know do per perhaps the next year a little bit different. So the survey I think can be useful in something like that. I do have more experienced beekeepers and beekeepers with larger numbers, so the backyard survey is up to 50 colonies.

And I'm not separating, at least initially in the cut, I'm not separating the individuals that have up to five hundred colonies or those that have five hundred and above. I do on some of my graphs to show the difference. But basically, as you gain more years of experience, your percentage of losses go down.

And as you have more colonies, you're the manager of more colonies, the percentage of your loss goes down. If you've got more colonies, you might actually lose more colonies, but we're I'm presenting it as percentage. And why I found it useful in the in the ground-truthing was to be informed, at least initially was giving you an average.

It was the average of how many beekeepers in the state of Washington or state of Minnesota? What how many colonies in the fall, how many in the spring. And in the survey, if you had one beekeeper that had 10,000 colonies, they would supply that information.

If you had 500 beekeepers with under five colonies average each, they would give that information. And so the statistic and average losses for the state of Minnesota or Washington was basically what happened to the larger beekeeper, those ten h his or her losses relative to ten thousand counties. you know, completely overswapping five hundred beekeepers with five colonies each, twenty five hundred colonies.

Eventually the bee inform started parsing that material out, but it would be a year or so before we would get that information back. And so starting right away in May, I then start these reports and uh and I can I can churn them out so that I've got um state reports and most of the large club reports done within that month.

Becky Masterman

Do you see a difference then between survivals of packages and nukes?

Dr. Dewey Caron

Certainly do. Yeah, swarms, packages, nukes, yeah. Feral hype transfers.

That's all part of the questions related to the origin of the colony and place where you had them. So that's all I'll put into the way we've got the questions formatted that I can pull and separate those aspects.

Becky Masterman

Yes. And the packages are have a higher survival rate than the nukes do?

Dr. Dewey Caron

Depends a little bit on the year. So there are years where packages just don't do well at all. And there are years now we're seeing where the nukes aren't doing very well.

Nukes always seem to do very uh to do better, not as well as overwintered colonies But swarms usually will do better than nukes and followed by packages in a normal year. But there are some years where it does change and nukes all of a sudden seem to do better I see some trends. I see a lot more people overwintering nukes, for example.

And there are, we've always known that there are swarmy years and years where there are not very many swarms. And that really shows up and and that's that I can correlate that to club data where that where a number of clubs here have the swarm hotlines. And um someone in the club is gathering those numbers.

And so how many swarms do we get in March? How many do we get in the month of April? You know, how many in May?

So that we can we can key in individuals in the club, okay, you know, this is our heavy swarming year, look for, you know, this would be time you look for swarms

Becky Masterman

Well do if your kids ever decide to move to Minnesota, we are really excited to welcome you here.

Jeff Ott

No, I think they're they're happy in the Pacific Northwest, Becky.

Becky Masterman

Because oh my gosh what a great what a great informative survey that you are providing for I hope that they appreciate you dewy

Dr. Dewey Caron

Well, thank you. It's uh it's a labor of love. Um I've had a great uh data crunching person and um she has moved on, she finished her degree uh and moved on and uh And now I've got this huge data set that I'm looking for a student and an ag economics in some university that needs a data set.

Do I have that? Do I love data? You know, doesn't matter what the data set is, but that's you know, that's what the master students said that you know our ag economics and ag engineering and those type of uh majors need at the university.

Jeff Ott

So Well maybe they'll be listening and be contacting you here shortly, Dewey Well, I want to thank you for taking your time this afternoon to join us. Talk about your new series on B Science with Dr. Dewey Caron and look forward to listening to those each month.

The third Wednesday of each month, yeah.

Dr. Dewey Caron

Well thank you. We have to work on one yet this month, uh so There's always a deadline, right? Yeah, always a deadline.

Uh one point you made earlier, Becky, was uh do I Do I don't wing those. And so what I'm working with is I'll s I'll spend time working on like I'm writing a manuscript. And then I'll refine it and then I'll say, oh, this needs this part.

Oh, gee, it doesn't have much science in it, so I need to add some more science. So it is it is not just pull it out of my back pocket and start talking. It is it is programmed

Becky Masterman

That is exactly the answer I expected because it's just so well organized and so it's it's very clear and it's so easy to listen to because of the work that you put into it. So Thank you so much for doing that. That and I hope the listeners, if they have not listened to your latest episode, that they listen because you'll be smarter if after that twenty or so minutes.

Jeff Ott

Thank you. Very nice. I enjoy Dewey's episodes and it's always something to learn from what he has to tell us.

Becky Masterman

Well, I wanna bring my Varroa Management Guide to him and have him sign it. I mean, what a rock star. I have been singing the praises of that varroa management guide.

for as long as it's been out. I mean, the very first time I learned about it and saw it, I've appreciated how valuable it is for beekeepers. And so and the fact that I mean the fact that it's still evolving and they really are trying to support beekeepers with it and they're they're working hard on it is it just means a lot.

Jeff Ott

So recommendation is that if you're a first year beekeeper or you're a hundred year beekeeper Go out to Honey bee Health Coalition, look at all the information they have, but especially look at the Varroa Management Guide that they have available and look for the soon-to-be-release 9th edition.

Becky Masterman

Right, the ninth edition. Yeah, and I'm I'm so excited about that threshold change too, because it's really hard to recommend to beekeepers just how low of a level is acceptable in colonies because of those viruses. And so The fact that they are shifting that number it should send a message that we need low varroa in those in those colonies in order to keep them healthy and have a swarming problem instead of a death problem.

Jeff Ott

And that about wraps it up for this episode of Beekeeping Today. Before we go, be sure to follow us and leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you stream the show. Even better, write a quick review to help other beekeepers.

discover what you enjoy. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews tab on the top of any page. We want to thank Betterbee, our presenting sponsor, for their ongoing support of the podcast.

We also appreciate our longtime sponsors, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Northern Feedbooks for their support in bringing you each week's episode. And most importantly, thank you for listening and spending time with us. If you have any questions or feedback, Just head over to our website and drop us a note.

We'd love to hear from you. Thanks again, everybody.