Browsing an old copy of An Beachaire from 1980, I was amazed to read a ‘Gleaning’ from ‘A Russian Beekeeper’ who was seriously concerned that beekeepers might be stressing their colonies by visiting them too often: he recommended no more than four inspections per year. 

My initial reaction to this was a feeling of nostalgia for the good, old, pre-Varroa days; but it did not take long for me to realise that he could still be right and, regardless of other factors, it is all too possible that beekeepers themselves are stressing their colonies. I thought it would be worth looking into ways of trying to reduce the stress our bees suffer, particularly because colony stress is so frequently cited as a major factor in high colony losses worldwide. Even so, the major stress factor is certainly the Varroa mite, so I wondered whether the reputedly Varroa-resistant ‘Russian bees’ which are so popular in the USA suffer the same stress problems as other bees? I did not find this to be the case, but so far as I can tell, the more one looks into this question, the more complex and inter-related the causes of serious stress are seen to be.

Research into the question of ‘What is killing the honey bees?’ became most