Drugs and More Drugs

Like most people, pharmaceuticals play a regular part of my life.  I only take the odd pain killer, but my bees generally take two treatments for Varroa Destructor every year – one in the summer and another in winter.  Traditionally the winter treatment is between Christmas and New Year although more and more beekeepers are coming to believe that it should be done earlier than this – those treatments that require there to be the smallest amount of sealed brood should possibly be carried earlier in December as there is evidence that the queen starts to increase laying in December and sealed brood levels have already started to increase by the end of the month.

 

(C) National Bee Unit

I treated my bees on Boxing Day, 26 December.  And I used the oxalic acid trickling method – so already I’m not following my own advice as the method requires the least amount of sealed brood to be successful.  But life got in the way.  Anyways, opening a bee hive on Boxing Day is totally unnatural and the bees know it.  The odd bee was flying (it was about 10C – 50F) but the bees are fully aware of what time of the year it is and they know no good news comes from some big hairy beekeeper opening them up then either.  So my good old bees showed me their displeasure – who has ever heard of a person getting stung by a bee on 26 December?  Actually, it wasn’t as bad as last year (the temperament of my bees deserves its own blog) when I had to retreat and give it up as a bad job, but it still wasn’t a fun job.  Job done, I put on some fondant and barring any emergency that should be the last time I need to go in the hive until spring – here in Northern England from the end of March, but more usually, early April.

 

Boxing Day Flying Bees

Harry has his own relationship with the pharmaceutical industry.  It is quite typical for children with autism to have problems with sleeping and when Harry was about five years old it was normal for him to get by on four hours sleep a night.  Which meant that everybody in the house was getting by on four hours sleep a night.  It was upsetting to see him so tired and be trying to sleep, but it just not happening.  So along came Melatonin (after considerable medical consultation – quite rightly, they don’t make it easy) and sure enough he quickly established a routine.  The human body can build up a tolerance to Melatonin so it should be given in the smallest quantity, but what that is is largely left to the parent/carer.  Harry’s amount is miniscule and at the most he only has it five times a week (and during school holidays it may only be two or three times a week).  That is our choice.  Other parents take a more liberal approach – I’ve encountered parents who freely admit to administering ten times the amount we give Harry and every day of the week regardless.  I don’t judge – I just count blessings.

 

Happy New Year.

Bananas

A few years ago I saw a Youtube video which showed the correct way to open a banana.  It’s fair to say that it wasn’t exactly a life-affirming event, but it did shave a few seconds off the time it takes – those seconds add up and who knows, when I’m on my deathbed I might get to do that one extra thing because of all the banana time I’ve saved.  I eat a lot of bananas – I love bananas.  So much so, that when my wife bought a dehydrator so as to preserve summer berries to be used over the winter, when she was looking what else to dehydrate she came across bananas, their high content of potassium and how this can be concentrated through dehydration.  Potassium makes for great fertilizer and my banana skins are now being put to a better use than ending up in a landfill.

Bananas came up again this week when I read about a beekeeping myth that feeding bananas to your bees will aid them in overcoming any possible disease or parasite they encounter over the winter months: “…potassium in bananas will help the bees flex their wings, and the gases released from ripe bananas will kill pathogenic spores. A similar posting on Facebook claims bananas will kill Nosema, varroa, and chalkbrood, and a link on Twitter claims your bees will live up to nine times longer on a winter diet of bananas.”  Rusty, the blog author, went on to debunk the myth.  I’d never heard it before, but it never surprises me what some people, sometimes beekeepers for many decades, can believe the oddest theories.  Don’t get me started on lay lines.  The subject came up again when The Bush Bee Man did a Q+A a few days ago - he hadn't heard about bananas either (or rather using them on bees), so it's not just me.

I think the problem is that if we don’t understand something, we think up ever fanciful explanations to help the human mind understand why/how something is happening.  It’s the same with autism.  I’ve heard multiple theories as to the causes of autism (vaccines being the famous one) and multiple hypotheses as to how autism can be cured, or the symptoms of the condition reduced (from gluten free diets, to simply beating the autism out of them).  The truth is, if we care enough, we cling onto hope that someday an answer will be found and our children will turn neurotypical overnight.  Lorenzo’s parent found their oil, after all.

I’m all for research, and I know as many researchers in the field melittology as I do autism.  I’m happy to listen to your theories, but I won’t be buying a surfeit of bananas any time soon.