Review of Bee Health

Here in Washington state, we’ve been making a major contribution to healthier bees since I helped kick-start Washington State University’s research program. Now WSU has a diagnostic lab to which beekeepers can send bee samples to be analyzed for disease and parasites. And recently, using our state’s abundant controlled atmosphere storage facilities, we’ve begun controlling varroa without chemicals, ‘suffocating’ them with carbon dioxide in these facilities while sheltering our bees from damaging winter weather. Varroa mites can’t develop resistance to not breathing!

The payoff for beekeepers lies in anti-varroa initiatives like these, not a ‘witch hunt’ to ban the neonicotinoids that have greatly reduced the volume of pesticides sprayed into the environment and practically eliminated the devastating pesticide bee kills that beekeepers regularly suffered in decades past. It’s time we face the truth — and tell the truth — about what’s really harming our bees so we can develop real solutions.