>Is this due to the use of thymol or is there another factor involved?

My plan from the beginning was to allow bees exposure to varroa in order to promote resistance - or at least the ability to survive with varroa.  Trying to get 100% varroa kill seemed counter-productive - as well as contaminating the hive with some rather unpleasant and persistent hard chemicals.  I accepted that we might get higher winter losses for a while, but hoped that they would not be disastrously high; in fact we have never had higher than 30% and usually much lower.

I also believe that breeding from the most native (A.m.m.) stocks that we have (we breed all our own queens from our own stock) has been a positive factor.

It all seems to have worked.  We rarely see varroa and our honey crops at 67lbs per colony are consistently around twice the national average.

Best wishes

Peter 
52°14'44.44"N, 1°50'35"W

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