Bob asked if thymol is effective against tracheal mites (acarine).

When I started beekeeping (1981) I used to worry about acarine (and
everything else connected with the health of my bees!) and regularly
dissected bees with symptoms, or from colonies that died in the winter.  I
used Folbex (now no longer available) to try to 'save' infested colonies.  I
also used Fumidil regularly against nosema.

After a few years of this, I realised that I was on a treadmill and decided
to allow susceptible colonies to die and to breed from those that survived.
The problems rapidly disappeared and I have not bothered to look for either
acarine or nosema for many years.  I am hoping that by using thymol to keep
varroa to sub-lethal levels I will achieve the same happy situation with
them in due course!

I would expect thymol to be effective against acarine, but without an
acarine problem I would be unable to conduct any meaningful tests.  I would
have thought that the US would have been a better testing ground.

Co-incidentally, I re-read Manley's 'Honey Farming' on my recent holiday.
Writing in 1944, he wrote:
'There is no doubt whatever that there are strains of bees that will not
survive long in this country, but which become infested with acari very
quickly.  These strains, at least those that have come my way, are all
imported from the United States.  Acarine disease is unknown in the New
World, so far as I know, and this probably accounts for the bees from there
being very susceptible to acarine infestation.  This does not apply to
European bees which are all survivors of acarine attacks at some time or
other, I expect, and French and Italian bees are just as liable to carry the
mites as are British.  I think it probable that were mites to get into the
apiaries of North America, there would be a holocaust that would put our
past experience into the shade entirely.'

Peter Edwards
[log in to unmask]
www.stratford-upon-avon.freeserve.co.uk/

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