Discover Véto-pharma’s Beekeeping Tips and Tricks

by Véto-pharma
12 May 2025
At the apiary
6 minutes of reading

In 2024, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of our experimental apiary. Over a decade, it has become a major pillar of our R&D in favour of bee health. With nearly 400 colonies, the apiary has experienced constant growth. The rigorous monitoring of trials and colony management is ensured by our dedicated team of experts. This has not only led to the improvement or development of new products but also refined, through acquired experience, its practices with simple “tips and tricks” that facilitate daily work.

Our team shares here some advices—perhaps already known or tested by some—but which, although obvious, are sometimes forgotten. These small gestures nonetheless bring real comfort, safety, and efficiency in managing a livestock, while promoting the good health and development of colonies.

Beekeeping, let’s remember, is not an “exact science.” Many external factors can influence the health and dynamics of an apiary, honey harvest… Being a beekeeper means constantly demonstrating agility, observing, anticipating, and reacting. It’s a demanding activity but one that teaches us something new every day—and that’s precisely what makes it so exciting.

1. Apiary Installation: Knowing the Environment Around Your Hives

There’s no secret; if you want a good location for your bees (better production, better colony development…), it’s essential to know the environment (wild fauna like wild boars, exposure: wind, sun…), water supply (stagnant), and plant biodiversity around the hives for nutritional balance. It’s also important to test different apiaries, and if they don’t yield good results, don’t hesitate to change location.

2. Using Magnets and Coloured Pins on Hives to Manage Queen Age and Colony Status

Sticking a pin of the queen’s colour on the hive body allows you to know the queen’s age quickly at a glance. This can prevent losing the information if it’s only written on the hive roofs (especially if the writing fades).
Don’t forget to mark queens with the colour of their birth year. Queen marking is more difficult to do when the hive population is at its peak (harder to find her). Think about doing it before spring development or later in the season.

Place magnets on the hive roofs. Depending on their colour and what you’ve decided, they allow you to know how to intervene on the colony. For example:

• Red magnet can signal that the hive has a problem (dead queen, stopped laying, sick…)

• Blue magnet can indicate that a swarm is ready to be transferred into a hive, that a hive is to be selected for transhumance, that the queen is to be marked, or that frames can be taken to make swarms. The key is to clearly identify the different colours corresponding to the actions to be taken.

3. How to Save Time and Improve Bee Comfort During Honey Harvest?

To limit the number of bees in the supers, and thus save time during their collection, using bee escapes is more practical than using a brush. Even when handled gently, the brush isn’t very comfortable for the bees and tends to make them aggressive. However, using bee escapes requires more organisation and preparation time.

4. How to Save Time When Installing Wax Sheets on Frames?

This tip is taken from an online tutorial. To simplify the installation of wax sheets on frames, simply fix a wax embedder onto a wooden board (requiring some DIY skills!). Then, place the frames with the wax sheet, activate the switch, and the wire heats automatically.

This method avoids handling the transformer’s tips, saving valuable time while making the operation more pleasant and fun.

5. Counting Varroa Mites on Sticky Boards

It’s true that our needs, on an apiary dedicated to testing the effectiveness of varroa treatments, differ from those of a typical beekeeper. In this context, precise and weekly counting of varroa mites on sticky boards is essential.

Rather than using greased boards, we’ve opted for standard-sized self-adhesive paper sheets. At each reading, these sheets are carefully collected and placed in cardboard boxes (similar to pizza boxes) to protect them.

For several years, we’ve been fortunate to be equipped with varroa scanners from the « Apisfero » brand, which ensure quick and reliable counting.

Before acquiring them, counting was done manually. To facilitate reading, we applied a layer of transparent plastic film (like cellophane) on the self-adhesive sheets, allowing us to circle the varroa mites with a marker to count them more easily.

6. Some Biotechnical, Practical, and Observational Strategies

Inserting Drone Frames in Spring
We offer two different strategies. Allowing drones for the fertilisation of new queens or trapping varroa mites during spring in this drone brood. However, be careful not to let the drones emerge if you wish to reduce varroa infestation. A small pin or a colour on the frame head makes it easy to spot this drone frame in the hive.
Observing Activity at the Hive Entrance
Clearly, it’s necessary to observe what the bees bring to the hive and the number of individuals; these are important indicators of what you’ll observe when visiting the hives.

How to Limit Swarming?
Create space in the hive body at the right time, remove frames if necessary, adapt to the season and the bee’s genetics according to your objectives.
How to Save Time When Visiting Hives?
It’s always interesting to homogenise the strength of colonies in an apiary. This facilitates work planning and thus only needing to bring one type of equipment and perform the same actions on each hive. For example, you can only bring frames or supers or syrup, but not all three at the same time because the hives aren’t at the same development stage.

How to Improve Bees’ Thermal Comfort During Winter?
To reduce the space bees need to heat in the hive body, you can tighten the colonies using partitions before winter. This action isolates the colonies and limits their energy consumption, thus food stocks. Tightening the colonies is an important step in wintering. However, tightening colonies during winter has little interest, except perhaps trying to save an already too weak colony.

7. What Good Sanitary Practices Should Be Followed at the Apiary?

It’s necessary always to have something to disinfect your equipment on-site (blowtorch, bleach (without hot water)), and also regularly clean your suits. Keep spare equipment on-site if possible. It may seem trivial, but it can prevent spreading certain diseases between colonies. Follow a certain order of visit

8. How to Preserve Your Safety and Health During Apiary Interventions?

When frequently working in hives, many traumas can appear (lower back, shoulders, neck…); not to mention exposure to smoker fumes. Here are some tips that help us limit the impact on our team:

Ergonomic Improvement

– Install hives on raised supports (40-50 cm from the ground) to avoid bending over and prevent back pain. Invest in dedicated hive supports and more ergonomic tools.

– Adopt better lifting techniques:

• Squat (rather than bend) to grasp the hive.

• Keep your back straight and use leg strength, as in industrial handling work.

• Bring the load close to your body: lifting at arm’s length is a very common mistake.

• Use an appropriate trolley or a special hive wheelbarrow to move several supers or hive bodies without carrying.

– Prepare your body:

• Quick warm-ups before intervention (back, shoulder, wrist stretches).

• Wear a lumbar belt for long honey harvest sessions or heavy inspections.

Limit Inhalation of Smoker Fumes

• To protect your respiratory system, avoid: pellets, cardboard, newspapers, industrial materials, or treated wood in the smoker and prefer natural fuels. Always position yourself downwind.

• Limit the use of the smoker: Know how to use smoke sparingly, only to calm if necessary.

• Wear a light mask (like FFP2/FFP3 filtering mask for long interventions or during harvest).

• Keep the smoke cool: A well-assembled smoker should emit warm, not hot or acrid smoke (otherwise, it burns and releases more toxins).

We hope these tips will be useful in your daily life! Feel free to share yours with us on Facebook or Instagram; we’ll be delighted to discover them and share them with the community.

Photo credits: Adobe Stock – Véto-pharma

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