The Apiarist

• Housekeeping

  It's a good time to tidy and secure all the spare boxes, boards, queen excluders, roofs, and frames that have accumulated during the season. Winter storms, rodents, and wax moths will otherwise make a real mess of them … which you'll have to clean up next year.

• Alternate to exterminate

  When and why you should treat with oxalic acid after late-summer use of Apivar. With resistance increasing, an alternate treatment — applied in a timely manner (so not 'sometime in winter') — helps minimise mite levels for the following season.

• Talking the talk

  The winter may feel never-ending, but in person and online talks offer the opportunity to improve your understanding, learn something new, and make the 'off season' seem just a little shorter.

• Repellent smellents

  It might be possible to create pesticides repellent to honey bees that reduce the accumulation of the sub-lethal chemicals that have a long-term detrimental impact on colony health.

• Drone congregation areas … or not?

  Some equinoctial thoughts on success and failure in beekeeping, and attempts to understand my woefully poor queen mating this year. Mating occurs in drone congregation areas (DCAs) … or does it? A recent review questions the evidence supporting the role for DCAs in queen mating.