Beehive Winter Prep, Amitraz Resistance & Crazy Beekeeping Stories

in a world brimming with complexity few creatures embody harmony like the honeybee with tireless precision she dances from bloom to bloom each motion guided by millennia upon millennia of instinct each act in service to the whole and then There are the beekeepers, watchful stewards

of this ancient symbiosis. Part agriscientist, part poet, they move along their hives with the efficiency of mow, levy and curly, tending to the bee's needs as best they can comprehend, and with the infrequency of a waterfall in the Sahara, sometimes running off flapping and flailing like a penguin on a hot sidewalk. This is their journey. Welcome, welcome to Be Love Beekeeping

presented by our good friends over at Man Lake. You know, keeping Varroa in check is important all year round, but especially in the fall as we prepare our bees for winter. So what's your plan? Do you know what your mite loads are? If they're high, what will you do and when? Can you even spell IPM? I don't claim to have all the answers. In fact, nobody has all the answers. But today we're going to have a discussion with Amber Leach from Veto Pharma about their newest

treatment option. first a few fun beekeeping stories told in the beekeeper's own words. I

didn't think it was funny but somebody watching would have laughed their off. It's a cautionary tale about keeping the ground around your apiary and the path to and from the apiary clear of obstructions. I was carrying a full super from the apiary to be extracted. I had a tangled garden hose laying across the path. The scene is set. The predictable happened. I dropped the box, lurching and stumbling with the hose around my

ankle. The frame spilled out. I landed in the pile of frames and got honey all over me and my bee suit. The good news was the bees didn't automatically come after me they were more interested in the honey and in just it seemed like a split second I was covered with bees. Running away wasn't going to work. Fortunately the honey had the bees preoccupied so I hobbled a few feet away took off the bee jacket which was covered with bees and left it and the bees hanging on

a tree branch. My honey smeared bee -covered pants were a different problem not so easily solved. I couldn't take them off outside. My wife thought it was hilarious while she was hosing me off. Alright next story. My friend came to visit. He was afraid of bees but wanted to see my hives. At the time I would do my inspections in shorts and a t -shirt. I gave him my beekeeper hat and veil and he watched from about 30 feet away while I opened the hive and took out a frame.

Of course the bees completely ignored me and flew all the way over and stung him. This is just further evidence that bees sense fear. I had one more, but it involved someone throwing up before they could get their veil unzipped and off. Let's just leave it at that. Hey, I'd

like to welcome our very special guest today, Amber Leach, coming to us from the Denver area. Good morning, Amber. Good morning. How are you? I'm great. How are you today? Fantastic. We don't have snow yet so I can't complain. Well we don't have snow yet so I can complain because I love the snow. You're just on the other side of the mountains from me. Yeah we love the snow as long as we're prepared with firewood and we're not. I'm not quite there yet either. So and we do

a lot of our heating that way I love it. That's how we do too. Yeah so are you up in the mountains or down in the Denver metro area? So we're south of Denver about an hour in Monument. So we're about 7 ,500 feet. So we get snow a lot of times before the rest of the front range does. You are high up there. Now, have you been a beekeeper for a long time? About 11 years. About the same as I have, but I'm sure you know 10 times more than I do because you happen to work for Vito

Pharma. Would you just tell us what your position is there and a very brief what the products are that you guys sell? Sure, I'm North American sales manager. So when I came on board, I was responsible for both the US and Canada. And about a year ago, I handed Canada off to some other folks that were one more fluent in French. And it was much easier for them to get in and out of those places that I couldn't get to. A lot of times there were conflicts with shows and

conventions. We wanna make sure that we're. able to get as many places as possible. So now I'm just responsible for sales and management in the U .S. But you speak a little French because your company is based in France. Zero French, but I'm working on my Spanish. We have a really multicultural team, which makes it really, it makes it interesting for meetings, a lot of different accents and a lot of different backgrounds. So everybody brings their expertise to the table.

And so I know a few words in many different languages, thanks to my colleagues, but fluent in none of those probably much to everyone chagrin i i english is you know my first and only real language truthfully and you sound like you're from the south somewhere i am i was born and raised in west virginia and i raised my kids in kentucky and we've only lived in colorado really for about five years yeah there's no colorado accent going on there hey tell us about uh veto you guys are the anti -viroa

team What are your products for helping us fight Varroa? So Vito Pharma has been around now for

about 44 or 45 years and their singular focus has always been really apiculture and the proliferation of the healthy honeybee population. And the strong focus is at this point, that may change in the future, but our strong focus at this point is really Varroa mite management. from testing to treatment. And we have a whole host of products that are currently available and that are coming down the pipeline to make that happen. One of the things that we talk about a ton on this show

is testing. Test, test, test to know where you're at. We are very agnostic as far as treatment. We have some guests come on that are completely treatment -free beekeepers. We have some that are the opposite. We have some in between. And our belief is to educate everybody and then let them make their own decisions. So that's what we're doing here. We're not doing an infomercial

for Veto, but really to just... Tell people I mean everybody knows how big of a problem Veroa is let's talk about another one of the solutions But before we talk about that I want to talk about Your Veroa easy check because I have to

admit I haven't used it yet. I Have the old -fashioned court jar with the hardware cloth on top. Tell me how the easy check works So the easy check works similarly to a mason jar with hardware wire, which is how I started when I was testing my bees in the beginning. But you fill the container up with the correct amount of bees, approximately 300 bees is what the measurements are. And there are some lines in the lid that let you know that

you've put enough bees in there. It'll work three different ways, really, with an alcohol wash, which we would acknowledge that's industry standard. And really our personal preference, just because we don't have anything more scientific than that even though it's not super, super reliable in terms of science. It is the most reliable thing that we have on the market across the board. You can also do a sugar roll or a sugar shake.

And then we also have marketed a CO2 injector which allows you to use CO2 to just kind of anesthetize the bees and the mites fall off after that and then the bees theoretically rejuvenate and you can put them back in the house. There's three different ways that you can use it. Alcohol, Sugar and co2 and we we love when folks test both before and after treatment So they can get first a baseline and then after treatment Measurements know. Okay. Did this my treatment work for me?

Is this the right time of year to use the mic treatment and all the other variables that come into play when you know whether or not you're going to choose that same mic treatment next year at the same time or a different time let's get into that part of the topic because I believe one of the problems that a lot of beekeepers have is finding something that works for them and then using it every year, year in and year out. What is wrong with that scenario? We're

creatures of habit. So it's always a tough conversation, especially with hard -headed folks. And I think that pretty much applies to all beekeepers. I think we all have a tendency to be a little hard -headed and myself included. So I'm not pointing the finger outward. I'm pointing it back at myself too. So just like with antibiotic resistance, some of the things that contribute to resistance are virtue of how the bacteria and the antibiotics work. But there's so much of that that is human

contribution. And I say that because my background is in human medicine, human pharmaceuticals. So it's really, really kind of shaped how I think about an IPM. So the human contribution piece is you use a product when it's not needed. So kind of overkill, if you will, or using a product too long, or not using the product long enough, not using the product correctly. So there are a whole host of things that can just make the

train come off the tracks. And all of those contribute overall to your mites developing a resistance to a particular miticide. So we really, I tease whenever I'm at shows and I'm talking to beekeepers. I hope that folks betray me to every other miticide that's on the market. Because I work at Veto Pharma and I get these products for free. So in theory, I would never have to pay for a mite treatment if I didn't value an IPM. And Veto

Pharma really values the IPM. We know that there's room for almost every product that's on the market at the table. And when that happens, which is usually kind of a fantasy world for most of us, I've never seen consistently folks doing what theory says that you should do repeatedly. I've never seen folks doing that, whether it's on the commercial side or hobbyists. And never might be a strong word, they're a handful. I wish that that would be the takeaway from this whole discussion,

no matter what products folks are using. in their hives. If you're testing before and after, then it makes your choices as to what you're using a whole lot simpler. Yeah, if you don't know that it's working. Right. And I've had some beekeepers in my area come to me and say, hey, I tested my mite load is really low. We're going into fall. What should I treat with now? And I say, don't. If you don't have mites. White treat. So that's another reason that we need to be doing

our testing. I don't claim to be any kind of an expert on all of these chemicals. Tell me

a little bit about Ametraz that's in your Apivar product, right? Correct. So Ametraz is a synthetic active ingredient. It's been an industry standard really for about 10 years. We launched Apivar about 10, 11 years ago now. And it's been an industry standard, but a lot of folks can also get it. from Mexico and other places in a two liter or one liter concentrated bottle and then they apply it in a different way. And a lot of times that's out of necessity. A lot of times

it's cost containment. A lot of times it's a whole host of different reasons that it would take a whole other podcast to cover that. But amitraz is just an active ingredient that is known industry -wide to be kind of the cornerstone

for mite treatment. Right. Now as we've all heard about and we've talked about a lot here about the bee die -off this winter, the winter of 2025, and how bad it was here in North America with over 1 .1 million colonies lost from commercial beekeepers, the researchers looking into it have determined one of the causes, and there's more than just one, is amitras resistance. It almost sounds like amitras worked so well that everybody just started leaning on it too hard. Would you

say that's what happened? Where did this resistance all of a sudden come from? The same place that antibiotic resistance comes from. Misuse or overuse is one of the highest contributors. That's not to take away from the fact that there are true pockets of of resistance that have been found in Europe and in the U .S., but they're so few and far between that a blanket statement saying that there's a resistance to amitras as a whole. And when I say whole, I mean the beekeeping industry

altogether. I think that that's probably a grossness, an overstatement. We are our own problems, really, at the end of the day. And you've come up with

an APE of R 2 .0. Tell me about that. So ApoVar 2 .0 is different enough from original ApoVar that we will be phasing out original ApoVar eventually. And we're working towards that currently. So original ApoVar has 3 .3 % amatras and ApoVar 2 .0 has only 3%. However, each strip still contains about 500 milligrams per strip. The strips are easily manipulated. You can fold them over the top of the frames because not everybody uses.

Langstroth Hobbs, we know that. Original Apivar has just amitraz and then a plastic powder that's combined to make a contact miticide strip. And the new strip, the Apivar 2 .0 strips, have three inactive ingredients and the amitraz. So one of those is the plastic, one of those is a release enhancer so that releases properly the way that we have designed it to release. And then another one is a moisture scavenger that helps maintain the stability of the ametraus strip while it's

in the hive. And there's no withholding period. I guess that would probably be the biggest attraction to most folks is that you don't have to wait to put your honey supers back on. Let's talk about the things that we need to be careful of wherever you're getting your ametraus. As far as temperature, as far as honey supers, all these things, what do we need to watch out for? So

it needs to be stored in a cool dry place once you open it. It needs to be used within pretty short order. It's good for two years from the manufacturing date on the package. If you're a beekeeper like me, we're getting into that favorite time of year, honey harvest. But it

can be a lot of work. That's where Man Lake comes in. They have everything you need to make the job easier, cleaner, and more efficient. Removal aids, refractometers, uncapping tools, extractors, tanks, wax melters, even the jars and labels. Plus they have free shipping on glass containers. Whether you're a hobbyist with two hives or a full -blown commercial operation, Man Lake has it all. And don't forget your discount code MLBlove10. It's in the show notes. For $10 off your first

$100 purchase. Most of the things to look out for are storage and Application to make sure that you're doing it correctly and it's it's honestly I think one of the easiest products to use for a new beekeeper So I don't think that there's a whole lot to it that you can mess up unless you just Kind of go cowboy or go rogue and decide not to follow the directions that are on the label every I think it's really straightforward I think it's really simple and a lot of times

I think it might be one of the best things to suggest for a new beekeeper because it's hard to mess it up speaking of new beekeepers, let's

say somebody is a buying a package of bees next spring. I think a lot of people assume when they get their bees, they're completely clean. There's going to be no mites. I'm starting from scratch with no mites. There's no resistance. I don't have to worry about any of that kind of stuff. Is that the case or is that a false assumption? I think like everything else in life, but I know I'm not trying to skirt your question, but I think it just depends. I think it's important

to know where your bees are coming from. If you, if you live, Out this direction. There's a really good chance that if you're buying packages or nukes that they're coming out of California They're coming straight from almonds and that just depends on On the beekeeper what they use how they how they use the product if you are In the middle of Kansas and you're getting bees locally probably you can count on on Knowing your beekeeper. You can know the source so Again, it just depends.

But those are all great questions to ask. Have they been treated? What have they been treated with? Where are they coming from? Is it coming from a commercial operation? Are these local bees? So there are just a ton of questions and the list just gets longer and longer. You know, the longer you do this, the more you realize I have way more questions than answers. So my list of questions just continues to get longer and longer. That's perfect. The more questions,

the better. I guess the point I was trying to

get at, I have found. You can buy a package or a nuke that's come from somewhere else or even locally to you that already has mites in it and So don't assume that these are clean that they don't need to be treated or that they don't have any resistance Or that you know, they don't have any other disease or some something like that because they can hopefully they don't But they often can Sure, in a lot of times, in a commercial operation, when the bees are ready to come from

California to us in the form of packages and nukes, it's a whole process of just shaking bees into packages. So to assume anything about those bees, you don't assume that they're queen right. You don't assume that they've had enough to eat. You don't assume that they have no mites. You have to treat it just like you would any other beehive. And if you get a package and there's only 10 ,000 bees in it, nobody wants to kill

300 bees immediately. And I don't necessarily think that that should be everyone's approach right out of the gate, especially if you are getting bees. Some places it's warmer than others and you can get your packages in February, March, April. Here sometimes we don't see package deliveries until June. And again, it'll just depend on your geography. And one of the best pieces of advice

that I can give. anybody who's a backyard beekeeper or a hobbyist or even a sideliner, growing into a sideliner, is apprentice yourself to the key opinion leaders in your area. Because I started my beekeeping journey in the Midwest, in the South, and when I came here it was like starting over. Beekeeping at 7 ,500 feet is not at all like keeping bees at sea level. So it's important to know that the word's always and never. don't usually apply to anything, but especially beekeeping.

Absolutely. What kinds of things have you learned

for those of us that haven't kept bees at 7 ,500 feet? Still might be interesting to hear. Oh, gosh. Well, the year we moved here, it snowed two feet September the 8th. So this time, five years ago, we were getting pounded with snow. I had strips in my hives and I had just started my treatment because back in Kentucky, where we moved from, we could still be getting a fall

harvest in September or October. So we knew that it was gonna be colder, we knew that it was gonna snow, but the day before that we were fishing in 80 degree weather. So it was a shock to us. So always be prepared to pivot, always try to get ahead of the curve. It's really easy as a beekeeper and I've done it, I've been guilty myself. Summer gets away from you, and unless you're a commercial beekeeper, and it can get

away from them too, but. If you're just a hobbyist and you have kids and sports or you have weddings or vacations planned, it's really easy for summer to get away from you. And I've learned that you have to be much more diligent. I thought whenever I started my beekeeping journey that journaling was silly, and I've learned that journaling is not silly. I need to know exactly what's happening. And if I have it at my fingertips, it's much easier to reference that. So I've learned to.

try to get ahead of the game faster and more consistently and to document everything because my memory isn't what I would like for it to be, unfortunately. I think we're all in that boat. Join the club. What kinds of things do you do to prepare your views for winter? It's almost

completely centers around mic control. I know that It's really easy to get caught up in, especially if you're a hobbyist and you don't necessarily look at your beekeeping journey as a business venture. And sometimes we see them as a hobbyist. A lot of times my beekeepers will see them as pets or the girls or the ladies. And the real difference in a hobbyist and a commercial beekeeper is that it's just business to a commercial beekeeper.

They don't have time to gingerly put the the honey supers back on and avoid crushing the bees. Sometimes the bees die. And hobbyists are more inclined to go slower and to avoid trying to kill the bees. Do you use any kind of insulation or anything like that on your hives? I know a lot of people do wrap their bees. I don't here in Colorado. I never did in the Midwest and in the South because our winters are really, really mild. And that's not to say that there's not

need or room. Some of my Canadian friends, some of the folks up north in the Dakotas, those guys I know do rap sometimes. Sometimes they have their bees in an indoor facility, but bees have been in existence way before we decided to put them in a box and then in our backyard. They are quite capable of making it through the winter. They're quite capable of keeping themselves warm. They've been doing that well before we got involved.

When you consider the human contributions to that, if you put them in a box and you're feeding them sugar water and it's freezing outside, that's not gonna work for your bees. Or if you put them in a box and then you take all of their honey and they're left with no food all winter and now they have no place to go, they are going to starve to death. So that's when weather really makes a difference, at least in my experience. But I sometimes will build a windbreak because

it does get pretty windy here in Monument. But aside from that, I make sure that I don't take all other resources and I make sure that their mite loads are as close to nonexistent as I can get because from the first snow, which could be September the 8th, to snow melt, which could be June of the following year, that's a long time to try to live on just a few frames of honey. So I try to make sure they have at least a box and a half of honey going through the winter.

All right. Let's have a little fun. You've been

beekeeping long enough. You have to have some kind of a crazy or embarrassing or painful story that you can tell us about. Anything come to mind? I have one that probably covers all three of them. I used to teach like a beekeeping 101 at the local library back in Kentucky. And one of my students quickly became one of my friends. She was quite adept and one time had asked me if I would check on one of her hives while she was on vacation. I was glad to do it. I was glad

to help. No matter what the books say, we don't always do that, right? We always tease that the bees didn't read the books. Well, sometimes even when the beekeeper reads the books, we don't follow the rules. And I was checking on one of her hives and I'd been in this hive with her previously. It was unexpectedly very hot. In just about a three week period, it had gone from

just an easy hive to inspect to really hot. And I hadn't zipped my veil up all the way, and one immediately got in my veil and stung me on this really tender area under your chin. And I did exactly what you're not supposed to do, which is rip my veil off. And it was just a human reaction. I knew better. And within, I don't know, a minute, these bees were all over me. I mean. I've never experienced anything like it. They were all over me. I probably had 10 or 15 bee stings all on

my head and neck area. My son was just up on a little hill not too far away by the lake and there was nothing for me to do except head towards the car. But as I did, now I'm bringing all these angry bees with me to him. So I'm trying to yell ahead, you know, get in the car. And at seven or eight years old, he was, I think he thought I was dying. So he was pretty scared and then when I get to the car, I'm not allergic to bees, one or two or three stings at a time that I know

of. But with 15 or 20 stings and my face was swelling quickly, like from here to my neck, it looked like kind of a turkey, like I had no neck. It was just swollen full of inflammation and the local hospital was 25 miles away. So I called a couple of girlfriends and I'm like, listen, if you don't hear from me in pretty short order, you should probably. come looking for

me and they knew where I was. So they were, they would have to like reverse engineer, um, the route to get to me, but I'm not going to lie. I was concerned. I was concerned. My son was concerned. I think my friends were concerned. It turns out to be that just, you know, some Benadryl and a good rest helped, but I didn't look like myself for at least a week. I looked pretty deformed. It was my fault. I knew better. You know, it wasn't my first year. We always

claim it's our fault. Can't be the bee's fault. Even though they were hot that day. Anyway, that sounds scary. You don't have a picture of yourself all swollen up, do you? I don't. I didn't take one. No, but by the time I got to the car and got my veil off, my hair was just completely... I looked like I'd just gotten out of the shower. It was... I was a sweaty mess. Okay, I thought you were gonna say you ran and jumped in the lake. No, but, you know, if I had been thinking

at all, I might have. Isn't it funny the things that we do when we panic? It was yeah, it was it was sheer panic We had somebody on the show a while back that when he was a new beekeeper Had something sort of like that happen where one bee got inside his veil and that's never happened to you That's a whole new experience when you actually see the back of the bee instead of the underside of the bee Yeah, and and usually they're not coming for you. They actually want

to get out of the veil. But anyway This guy freaked out a little bit differently than you, though. He started hitting at it like this until he finally gave himself a bloody nose and a fat lip and did more damage than the bee would have. But anyway, glad you're okay. Yeah, that's a little terrifying. Yeah, I made it out unscathed minus the 15 or 20 bee stings. But that's a lot of bee stings at once. A lot of bee stings. Yeah, I'm still not allergic. Knock on wood. All right,

before I let you go, I'm just curious. I know you work with all kinds of beekeepers. As far as working with commercial beekeepers, is there anything that you've learned from them that you might want to share with hobbyists and sideliners? One of the things I think commercial beekeepers

are so much better at than we are is that they see it as just business. the finances of it to how they take care of the bees so they don't coddle the bees. I'm not saying that we need to be abusive to the bees and none of my beekeepers are that I've ever met. But to say I don't want to kill 300 of my bees to do an alcohol wash

because that just seems brutal. Having a hive die through the winter is much more brutal and it's heartbreaking if you only have one hive or you only have two hives or no matter how many hives you have really but If you wake up in spring and you have no halves left because of your own

negligence, and that's really what it is. If you're not testing before and after and if you're not treating, if you, and I know some folks that do treatment free very successfully, but that's not what I would advise for a first or second or third year beekeeper. That's something that's well into what I think is a journey where you've gained enough knowledge to manage that. And you have a much different lifestyle than a commercial

beekeeper. To answer your question, I think that we have to look at it as a business because it is an investment. If you have one hive going into the winter, you might have $750, $800, $900 invested in this hive. So 300 bees dying in a mite wash. Well, it sounds harsh and it sounds brutal. It's much more cost conducive to approach beekeeping that way than to buy a new package

in the spring. So if commercial beekeepers could teach us anything is that it has to be just business because you take the emotional piece out of it and then you, I think you're much more successful if you're not so concerned about the here and now. You have to be thinking three and four and six months ahead and that's how you approach your treatment and your testing. I think commercial beekeepers are so much better at that than we are as hobbyists. I like to try to get inside

the mind of the bees too. and think what would they do if they truly understood the situation. I think they would send 300 bees out and jump in your tester because that's what they do, right? They have guard bees that are willing to risk their life to protect the hive and during the busy time of the year you may have a thousand bees emerge in one day anyway. 300 isn't that many when you look at it that way. Yeah, if a queen can light 1 ,000, 1 ,500 bees in a day,

the 300 really is impacting her production. It's not at all. And at the shows where I am, not the commercial shows, but the ones where I'm talking to hobbyists and backyard beekeepers, that's the thing that I get all the time. Or they'll treat before, excuse me, they'll test before, or they'll test after, but they won't test both. I'll give you an example because I

think this is really important. I had a beekeeper, a very, very knowledgeable, very experienced beekeeper message me not long ago. And they had some hives that their counts were really high, 40s, 50s, 60s. And at that point, it's a ticking time bomb. But they use Apivar. And they tested for efficacy midway through the treatment period and found that their might loads were still really high, 10, 12, 20. To put it in real world terms, you have asked a product to work in a situation

that was unthinkable. Ape of R is an Ape of R 2 .0, even though it works faster. You get the maximum result at about week three. So it's a little bit faster than Ape of R, original Ape of R, but. If you have a beehive that has miteloads that are that high, a slow release product, which is what Apivar was intended to be, that's not your best option because you have a hive that's

ready to implode already. So he was very frustrated that Apivar didn't work the way that he said, the way that we have said that it would work and so on and so forth. But my message to him was it did work. It worked really, really well. It just didn't work in a way that's going to get your beehive through the winter. Because if you go from 40 or 50 mites down to 10 or 12 mites in a four week period, the product's working.

But you can't test in the middle of it to see what the efficacy is because a long release treatment requires all of that time to do the work that it was designed to do. So if you don't test before and you experience a product or what you think is a product failure, is it really a product failure? Or was your mite load so high that no product would have worked? And a lot of beekeepers, because they don't want to kill their bees, they'll say, well, we know we have mites, so we're just

going to treat anyway. And I get that. I do. And to be honest, that was how I approached my first year or two in beekeeping. I don't want to kill my bees. I know that I need to treat. I know that I have mites. I'm just going to use something. And the first year, I started with three halves. I used Apigard. Two of my hives died. I hated Apogard. I thought Apogard was the worst product in the world. Fast forward three or four more years. I love Apogard. Apogard

is part of my IPM. I've just learned that I was the problem, not the product, not the bees, but that I didn't test it properly. I didn't treat correctly. And at all, all fingers point back to me. When a first or second third year beekeeper tell me, you know, my hives died. It's hard to say this, but it's almost always unequivocally the beekeeper's fault. It was my fault. It was the fault of a lot of my colleagues who started

in a very similar fashion that I did. So for something to be the fault of a product or other circumstances outside the hive is much less likely than it is a beekeeper problem, truthfully. And that's hard to say. It's hard to hear. That's one of the things that I've learned from speaking

with commercial beekeepers is they don't wait until fall to treat. They're testing clear back in July and they're and they're treating in July if they need to and August and September. So that come October or November, you know, whenever they're buttoning up for winter, the mites aren't a problem. They're not trying to go from a 40 to a six. you know, overnight, which is just, as you're talking about, isn't reasonable for any kind of treatment. Right. So start early.

Hey, I'm as guilty of this stuff as anybody. We all are. Start early. Start early and consistent. I have some folks that are testing five and six times a year. That's, you know, thousands of bees at the end of the day. It's better than hundreds of thousands of bees, which is what's going to happen if you don't test. Absolutely.

Thanks for all your wisdom, Amber. I've really enjoyed it. If anybody wants to reach out to you, I'll put a link to Veto Pharma in the show notes. And hey, keep in touch. Thank you. Thank you. And if anybody has questions, please provide my email address. They're welcome to reach out. Will do. All right, Amber, take care. Thanks, you too. Thanks for joining us on Be Love Beekeeping

presented by Man Lake. If you like this content I hope you'll share it with a friend, follow and subscribe to this podcast, and even sign up for our newsletter at BeLoveBeekeeping .com Also, just a shout out to Vita B Health for their support, we appreciate them. Vita's Varroa Control range of products includes Apistan, Apigard, and now Varroxan Extended Release Oxalic Acid Strips. Thanks guys, and remember, if you're not just in it for the honey or the money, you're

in it for the love. See you next week.