DISEASES OF BEEKEEPERS AND BEES
It is difficult to say whether the beekeeper is part of the apiary and the hives, or whether the hives are part of the beekeeper. They are like communicating vessels: when the apiary sings and hums, intoxicated by the warm weather and abundant blossoms, the beekeeper’s heart sings and hums as well, no matter how burdened it may be. When the beekeeper is calm and in a good mood, the bees seem to sense it and become as gentle as ladybirds—they do not peer out, lunge, or sting. Of course, there is always something that can irritate and enrage them, but the beekeeper’s good mood and friendliness are often passed on to the bees.
This text is intended for everyone, but especially for young people, because while a person is young, they can still make changes to their work and behaviour in order to preserve their health for longer. If a beekeeper is already approaching seventy, it is rather late to explain why his body has become bent and how he might have protected himself from back and knee pain.
Let us begin with the health of the young beekeeper. What are the main hazards he faces? I will list them without arranging them in order of importance. There are several harmful activities that damage the beekeeper’s health and shorten his life.
An impulsive nature and a desire to show off one’s strength. In other words, lifting heavy loads—often as a demonstration before others and even before oneself. When it comes to lifting heavy objects and enduring stings, many beekeepers behave like masochists.
What harm can excessive lifting cause before the final collapse? Herniated discs, inguinal hernias, umbilical hernias, scrotal hernias, and others. Diaphragmatic and hiatal hernias, and gastroesophageal reflux. Detachment of the retina or vitreous body of the eye, and osteoarthritic changes in the small joints of the hands—just imagine having to remove 100–200 full Dadant-Blatt frames today. Gonarthrosis—damage to the knee joints. Coxarthrosis—damage to the hip joints. Haemorrhoids and rectal or uterine prolapse. Such problems can result from swapping and turning hive bodies unaided, lifting full supers and brood boxes, or even entire hives. “But they are only ten-frame hives,” someone may say. Sometimes ten-frame hives are packed so full that even a horizontal hive may prove lighter. Dobruja deserves a separate mention, because juggling twelve-frame hives, brood boxes, and supers is regarded there as an established tradition.
A dismissive attitude towards bee stings has brought more than a few beekeeping careers to an end because of the development of an allergy.
Smoke from the smoker is a highly harmful factor and may contribute to lung cancer. How many times have we spent entire days in the apiary, and no matter where we put the smoker, the smoke always seems to come towards us? We breathe it in deeply while dreaming of frames full of honey and strong, healthy colonies. If those things are meant to happen, they will happen without our breathing in smoke.
Cigarette smoking—and even blowing cigarette smoke into the hive instead of using a smoker. Of course, producing smoke to repel and calm the bees is one thing; smoking one or two cigarettes before or after work, or during specially arranged breaks, is quite another. Perhaps with a cup of coffee. Do not even think about having a glass of rakia, although it often goes hand in hand with a cigarette. Try it and the bees will punish you. Anyone who manages to break this harmful habit may consider himself a winner.
Fire and hot water are often used in and around apiaries, so burns are not uncommon.
When One Falls Ill, the Other Almost Always Suffers
The beekeeper opens the hive, removes a frame, and looks for signs of disease: a spotty brood pattern, sunken cappings, bees with deformed wings, traces of diarrhoea, or too few bees covering too many combs. He looks, smells, shakes, and calculates. He wonders what has happened to the bee colony.
Yet while examining the bees, he rarely asks what has happened to himself.
Bee diseases are described in textbooks. They have pathogens, symptoms, and sometimes treatments. The ailments of beekeepers are more varied. Some affect the back, joints, lungs, or heart. Others attack judgement, patience, and the ability to admit a mistake. Still others are economic: a perpetual shortage of money, cheap honey, expensive treatments, and the belief that another ten hives will solve the problem.
The truth is that the health of the apiary and the health of the beekeeper cannot be separated. An ill beekeeper misses signs of disease. An exhausted beekeeper delays treatment. A discouraged beekeeper allows weak colonies to be robbed. And a diseased apiary gradually makes its owner ill as well—with anxiety, losses, and sleepless nights.
The Bee Colony Falls Ill as an Organism
An individual bee is an animal, but the bee colony functions as something more—as a single organism. The queen is its reproductive centre. The worker bees are simultaneously its hands, wings, immune defences, heating system, and ventilation system. The brood is its future, food stores are its energy reserve, and the wax combs serve as home, storehouse, and memory.
That is why, with bees, it is not enough to ask, “What killed this bee?” The more important question is: “Can the colony preserve its population, organisation, and ability to defend itself?”
A colony may harbour the pathogens of various diseases without any visible collapse. The problem begins when several blows accumulate: varroa mites, viruses, lack of food, an old queen, poisoning, drought, a prolonged dearth, or inappropriate intervention by the beekeeper. In such cases, there is rarely a single cause of death.
A bee disease is often not a bullet, but a rope woven from many thin threads.
Varroosis—the Disease Beekeepers Most Often Underestimate
Varroa destructor is not merely a parasite that takes a little nourishment from a bee. The mite reproduces in sealed brood, damages developing bees, and facilitates the spread and amplification of viral infections. Deformed wing virus is a particularly visible example, but it is only the most obvious part of the problem.
By the time bees with underdeveloped wings are crawling in front of the hive, the disease is not beginning—it is already advanced.
The most dangerous symptom of varroosis is the beekeeper’s confidence that “there aren’t many mites.” This conclusion is often reached without measurement, based only on an impression. Yet the mites visible on adult bees represent only part of the population. A substantial number may be hidden in the brood.
That is why varroa control must not become a calendar ritual: “Every year, I put in the same strips at the same time.” It must be a system:
determining the infestation level;
treating at the appropriate time;
strictly following the prescribed dose and duration;
rotating authorised active substances and methods;
monitoring after treatment;
taking into account the presence or absence of brood;
preventing residues in honey and wax.
One treatment may kill many mites without solving the problem. If the survivors reproduce, the colony is once again at risk. It is not enough merely to see mites falling onto the bottom board. After treatment, the beekeeper must check how many remain.
American Foulbrood—a Brood Disease and a Test of Character
American foulbrood is caused by the spore-forming bacterium Paenibacillus larvae. Its spores are extremely resistant and may persist for a long time in combs, honey, wax, and equipment. It is precisely this resistance that makes the disease so dangerous.
The infection may be spread through:
transferring infected combs;
feeding contaminated honey;
using contaminated equipment;
robbing and drifting by bees;
combining diseased and healthy colonies;
purchasing colonies and nucleus colonies of uncertain origin.
Suspicious brood must not be “treated by eye.” A spotty brood pattern can have many different causes. Odour is not a reliable diagnostic method either. When disease is suspected, the colony must be isolated, frames must no longer be moved between hives, and an official veterinary diagnosis must be obtained.
Antibiotics may suppress multiplying bacteria, but they do not destroy the spores. The visible signs may therefore disappear temporarily while the infection remains in the apiary and continues to spread through honey and equipment.
American foulbrood is also a moral disease. It reveals whether the beekeeper thinks only about his own hives or also about the apiaries of everyone around him. Concealing an infection does not save the operation. It merely postpones the loss and distributes it among the neighbours.
European Foulbrood—When Weakness Opens the Door
European foulbrood is associated primarily with the bacterium Melissococcus plutonius. It mainly affects unsealed larvae. The disease often becomes more severe under conditions of stress, malnutrition, unfavourable weather, and weakening of the colony.
This reveals an important feature of bee diseases: the pathogen matters, but so does the ground upon which it falls.
A strong, well-nourished colony with a good queen and pronounced hygienic behaviour may overcome pressure that would cause a weak colony to collapse. This does not mean that strong colonies cannot become ill. It means that colony resilience is part of disease prevention.
Nosemosis—the Invisible Exhaustion
Nosemosis does not always present a dramatic picture. There may be no heaps of dead bees or obvious changes in the brood. Instead, there may be gradual weakening, reduced lifespan, poor development, premature depletion of the adult bee population, and unsatisfactory use of available forage.
Faecal staining may draw attention to a problem, but its absence does not rule out nosemosis. A definitive diagnosis requires laboratory testing.
Moisture, poor overwintering conditions, insufficient or unsuitable food, and prolonged stress may worsen the condition. Sometimes the beekeeper blames the queen, the weather, or the bee strain, while the colony is actually losing vitality slowly because of a combination of Nosema, viruses, and varroa mites.
Viruses—the Silent Accomplices
Various viruses may be found in bee colonies: deformed wing virus, chronic bee paralysis virus, acute bee paralysis virus, sacbrood virus, and others.
The presence of a virus does not always mean visible disease. The danger increases when the colony’s defences are impaired. Varroa plays a key role because it damages developing bees and facilitates viral transmission.
The beekeeper often wants a treatment “against the virus.” In practice, however, the main defence is different: varroa control, good nutrition, young and vigorous queens, replacement of old combs, good hygiene, and avoidance of unnecessary stress.
Not every disease can be cured by pouring something into the feeder.
Chalkbrood and Stonebrood
Chalkbrood is caused by the fungus Ascosphaera apis. Affected larvae turn into hard white, grey, or black mummies. Moisture, chilled brood, excessive expansion of the colony, poor ventilation, and inherited susceptibility may encourage its development.
Stonebrood is associated with fungi of the genus Aspergillus. It is less common, but requires particular caution because some members of this genus may also be dangerous to humans. Suspicious materials must not be sniffed at close range or shaken without protection.
Here the beekeeper must understand that “warmer” does not always mean “healthier.” A hive that retains moisture is not a well-protected hive. Bees tolerate cold considerably better than prolonged dampness and poor ventilation.
Diseases of the Queen and Conditions That Resemble Disease
Not every spotty brood pattern is foulbrood. It may be caused by an old or damaged queen, inbreeding, food shortages, chilling, poisoning, or disrupted larval feeding.
Not every weakening is nosemosis. Not every crawling bee has a virus. Not every dead bee in front of the hive is proof of pesticide spraying.
A diagnosis based on the first photograph found on the internet may be more dangerous than the disease itself. The same outward sign may have different causes, and a single colony may suffer from several problems at the same time.
A good beekeeper does not merely know the names of diseases. He also knows the limits of his own knowledge.
Starvation Is Also a Disease
A bee colony may have kilograms of honey and still die of starvation if the stores are inaccessible to the winter cluster. It may have carbohydrate food and yet suffer from a lack of diverse pollen. It may appear strong in autumn but enter winter with physiologically exhausted bees.
A monotonous diet is not a complete diet. Sugar syrup may be a necessary tool, but it cannot replace every component of the bees’ natural food. Pollen is not merely protein meal either. Its quality, botanical origin, and diversity matter.
Starvation does not always mean an empty hive. Sometimes it means a full storehouse in which the essential thing is missing.
Poisoning—Sudden and Gradual
In cases of acute poisoning, large numbers of dead or trembling bees may appear in front of the hives. Yet there are also effects that are harder to notice: impaired orientation, reduced foraging ability, loss of flying bees, and weakening of the colony.
Not every loss following a plant-protection treatment automatically proves poisoning, but not every poisoning leaves an enormous carpet of dead bees either. Samples must be collected promptly and stored correctly; the event must be documented, witnesses found, and the competent authorities notified.
The facts must be gathered in time. After several days, the grass, ants, wind, and the bees themselves may erase the evidence.
Parasites, Predators, and Invaders
The wax moth does not usually destroy a strong colony. It completes the destruction of combs that have already been weakened or abandoned. Its presence is therefore often a consequence rather than the original cause.
The small hive beetle, Tropilaelaps mites, and invasive Asian hornets are threats that require early recognition and official reporting. In the case of a new pest, self-imposed silence is particularly dangerous. The first isolated cases may represent the only time when its spread can still be contained.
If the beekeeper fails to recognise a new pest, the hive may become its means of transport.
And What Makes the Beekeeper Ill?
Bee Stings—Common, but Not Harmless
Most bee stings cause local pain, redness, and swelling. An allergic reaction, however, may develop rapidly and become life-threatening.
Danger signs include:
difficulty breathing;
tightness or swelling in the throat;
swelling of the tongue;
generalised hives;
hoarseness;
dizziness, weakness, or loss of consciousness;
a sudden drop in blood pressure;
vomiting or severe abdominal cramps following a sting.
If such symptoms occur, emergency assistance must be sought immediately by calling 112. A doctor may prescribe an adrenaline auto-injector and a specific action plan for a person with a confirmed risk of anaphylaxis.
An antihistamine may help with some skin symptoms, but it is not a substitute for adrenaline in cases of anaphylaxis. A beekeeper must not devise his own “anti-allergy treatment” using arbitrary injections and tablets.
Experience does not provide complete protection against allergy. A person may tolerate stings for years and later develop a severe reaction. The reverse is also true: severe local swelling does not necessarily mean that the next sting will cause anaphylaxis. The risk should be assessed by an allergist.
The Disease of the Strong Back
A full hive body, a frame of honey, a tin of honey, and a sack of sugar do not care how old the beekeeper is. They weigh the same whether he is twenty or sixty. The difference lies in how much lifting them will cost his body.
Beekeepers often suffer from pain in the lower back, knees, shoulders, elbows, and wrists. The weight itself is not the only culprit. The dangerous combination is bending, twisting, and lifting with the arms extended. A sudden turn while holding a full hive body is particularly harmful.
A trolley, lifting device, smaller hive bodies, and a helper are not signs of weakness. They are ways to enable a beekeeper to remain a beekeeper for longer.
The most expensive piece of machinery is the one we buy after the operation.
Heat, Dehydration, and a Heart Beneath the Veil
A beekeeping suit reduces the body’s ability to release heat. The work is performed in the sun, often during the hottest part of the day, while the fear of interrupting the job pushes the beekeeper to finish the inspection at any cost.
Headache, weakness, nausea, confusion, staggering, severe heart palpitations, and unusually hot skin may be signs of dangerous overheating. Age, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and certain medications increase the risk.
Water must be kept in the apiary, not in a car parked a kilometre away. Resting in the shade is not wasted time. The bee colony can wait ten minutes. Sometimes the heart cannot.
Smoke Is Not Harmless Just Because It Is “Natural”
A smoker produces a complex mixture of fine particles and irritating substances. Damp, mouldy, or chemically treated fuel material further increases the risk. Painted wood, plastics, synthetic materials, and waste of unknown composition must never be used.
The beekeeper often stands directly in the smoke he is directing towards the hive. When dozens of colonies are involved, this is no longer occasional inhalation but occupational exposure.
The aim is not to gas the hive. What is needed is small, cool puffs of smoke and a working position that prevents the smoke cloud from constantly passing across the beekeeper’s face.
Sun, Dust, Propolis, and Treatments
Long hours outdoors increase cumulative exposure to ultraviolet radiation. The face, ears, neck, and hands are often insufficiently protected. Sunburn may occur.
Propolis is a valuable product, but it may cause contact dermatitis. Pollen and dust from old combs may irritate the eyes and respiratory tract. Moulds in poorly stored combs are not harmless either.
Organic acids and other veterinary medicines must be used in strict accordance with their instructions. A “natural acid” is not necessarily safe for the skin, eyes, or lungs. Improvising with concentrations, vaporisers, and protective equipment may harm both the bees and the beekeeper.
Ticks and Wounds
Apiaries are often located near forests, bushes, and tall grass. This exposes beekeepers to ticks. Working with wire, nails, sheet metal, and contaminated equipment creates a risk of cuts and puncture wounds.
Suitable clothing, checking the body after work, keeping a first-aid kit, and maintaining up-to-date tetanus protection are all part of beekeeping—not some unrelated medical matter.
Bees are not the only living creatures waiting for the beekeeper in the grass.
Diseases of the Beekeeper’s Mind
Hive Mania
The first hive gives birth to a second. The second gives birth to a fifth. Then comes the point when the number of colonies is no longer determined by available time, physical strength, or the market, but by the beekeeper’s inability to refuse just one more nucleus colony.
Hive mania begins with the sentence:
“If I can manage fifty, I can manage a hundred.”
But a hundred colonies are not simply two lots of fifty. When swarming fever, drought, poisoning, or disease strikes, every colony requires attention at the same time. Work that is not done on time does not merely remain undone—it creates more work.
The number of hives is not a measure of the strength of a beekeeping operation. Sometimes it is a measure of its disorder.
The “Just One More Treatment” Disease
When a colony is weak, the beekeeper often looks for something else to pour, spray, or vaporise. If the first treatment does not help, he adds a second. Then come vitamins, herbal infusions, acid, sugar syrup, and something “tested by an old beekeeper.”
But the colony may not need another treatment. It may have an unfit queen, too many empty combs, starvation, a high mite infestation, viral damage, or simply too few bees.
Treatment without diagnosis turns the hive into a chemical laboratory and the honey into a questionable end product.
Diagnosis by Preference
Sometimes the beekeeper does not seek the true cause. He seeks a cause that does not blame him.
If a colony has died, it is most convenient to blame farmers, the weather, the bee strain, the neighbour, or “some virus.” It is far more difficult to admit that treatment was delayed, food was insufficient, the queen was old, or a diseased colony was combined with a healthy one.
Self-blame does not help. But without honest analysis, a mistake becomes a standard practice and is repeated every year.
Secrecy Mania
Some beekeepers conceal everything—yield, price, methods, and disease. Concealing an infection is especially dangerous. Diseases have no respect for fences or title deeds. Bees drift, rob, exchange mites, and visit common sources.
A beekeeper who remains silent about a dangerous disease is not protecting a trade secret. He is helping it spread.
Nostalgitis
“There were no diseases like these in the old days.”
There were diseases. Some were not recognised, others were not investigated, and losses were given general explanations: a bad winter, moisture, starvation, or a weak colony. At the same time, genuinely new conditions exist today—intensive movement of bees and queens, greater exchange of pathogens, changes in land use, climatic extremes, and new invasive species.
The past may be a teacher, but it must not be treated as a laboratory result.
The Disease of Cheap Honey
The beekeeper produces honey, calculates his costs approximately, and sells at a price set by the most impatient colleague. He then attempts to compensate for the low price by keeping more hives. More hives mean more labour, more fuel, more equipment, and less time for each colony.
In this way, an economic disease gradually becomes a veterinary problem.
Cheap honey is not merely a commercial matter. It may mean postponing the replacement of old combs, saving money by avoiding laboratory tests, using the cheapest treatment, and being unable to hire a helper.
A poor beekeeper finds it difficult to maintain an apiary rich in health.
The Absence of Records
Human memory is wonderful, but it is not a beekeeping journal. Immediately after an inspection, every colony seems to have been memorised. A week later, only a vague feeling remains that “this one seemed all right.”
Without records, it is impossible to compare reliably:
how each queen develops;
when treatments were applied;
what the infestation level was;
which colony shows a tendency to swarm;
where a particular comb came from;
which colonies overwinter successfully;
whether a repeated mistake has already become a habit.
A beekeeper without a journal begins a new beekeeping career every spring—but with all his old misconceptions.
The Beekeeper Is Also Part of Biosecurity
Hygiene does not end with scorching the hive tool. It includes the organisation of the entire working process.
The sensible order is to inspect healthy, strong colonies first and suspicious colonies afterwards. Equipment used in a colony suspected of carrying an infectious disease must not be moved carelessly to the next hive. Combs and food of uncertain origin must not be handed out like charity. A weak colony must not be “saved” by combining it with another until the cause of its weakness has been established.
Buying cheap, abandoned hives and combs may bring not only property into the apiary, but also the history of someone else’s disease.
Sometimes the most dangerous tool is not a dirty hive tool, but the van that transports infected colonies over dozens of kilometres.
What Does a Healthy Beekeeper Look Like?
A healthy beekeeper is not someone who never makes mistakes. He is someone who notices a mistake early enough.
He:
observes before treating;
measures instead of guessing;
keeps records;
seeks laboratory confirmation when disease is suspected;
knows his legal obligations;
protects the quality of the honey;
does not conceal dangerous diseases;
does not lift unaided what could be lifted with a trolley;
does not work in the heat until he collapses;
knows when to call a veterinarian;
knows when he himself must see a doctor;
keeps only as many colonies as he can genuinely manage.
A healthy beekeeper does not wage a constant war against nature. He tries to understand where his own actions are disturbing the balance.
One Common Diagnosis
Bees and beekeepers suffer from different ailments, but they share one common weakness—overload.
A bee colony can withstand a single adverse factor. So can a beekeeper. But when varroa mites, viruses, starvation, and pesticides affect the bees simultaneously, the colony collapses. When debt, heat, pain, lack of help, and low honey prices weigh on the beekeeper at the same time, the same thing happens to him.
There is no treatment that can correct all of this at once.
Beekeeping is not merely the care of bees. It is a system involving the bee colony, the human being, plants, agriculture, weather, the market, and the state. Disease in one part gradually spreads to the others.
That is why the most important inspection of the apiary does not end when the last hive is closed. At that moment, the beekeeper must also look at himself:
Do I have the strength to continue like this? Do I see the true condition of my colonies? Am I doing the work on time? Am I spreading the very problem I am trying to cure?
The bees cannot choose another doctor. The beekeeper can.
