In this interview, Gaia, daughter of Ermanno Duccino of Melitta Bees, shares practical beekeeping knowledge from her Italian operation. She emphasizes the foundational skill of gentle, calm handling, noting she works without gloves and rarely gets stung. Gaia explains their organic varroa control regimen: using Scalvini block cages to force brood breaks in winter and after queen mating, combined with oxalic acid strip treatments applied two to three times annually. The family prefers Dadant hives for all production, citing cost and uniformity advantages. Bee genetics are highlighted as the primary driver of honey yield, with Buckfast, Elgon, and Ergon strains favored for honey production, while Ligustica/CGS are used for prolific brood and queen rearing. Colony health monitoring focuses on compact, covered brood, low disease incidence, and vigilance for viruses, chalkbrood, and sacbrood, which are rare due to strict varroa management and isolated apiaries. Gaia discusses the main challenge of limited honey production in the Mediterranean climate, where rain and forage availability dictate a focus on producing nucs, mini mating nucs, and queen packages rather than maximizing honey. Aggressive colonies are managed by removing and requeening with calmer stock. Finally, she describes the seasonal forage pattern—abundant early spring blooms followed by scarcity—necessitating supplemental feeding with protein patties, fondant, and sugar syrup to sustain colonies and support queen rearing.
Chapters
Today I'm interviewing Gaia, the daughter of Ermanno Duccino, the owner of Melitta Bees, a hugely experienced beekeeper that I can learn lots and lots from. Let's go and meet him. So welcome, Gaia. Thank you very much for having me in Italy.
Thank you too.
You're a bit nervous, yeah?
Yes, I am.
Don't be nervous, don't be nervous. Gaia is a hugely experienced beekeeper. We're here today finding some queens, And I just thought what a perfect opportunity to ask her some questions and get a take of what it's like to keep bees in Italy.
What I have to do today is to open my hive, find the queen, and take a little bit of bees.
A little bit of bees. Yeah, that's right.
Yes, for my apidea.
For your apidea, mini mating box.
Yes.
On the way over here, I said to Gaia she needs to have her own YouTube channel because she's a brilliant beekeeper. The surroundings are wonderful, and everyone can learn a lot from her. So we'll do do some videos here, but I'll convince her that she has her own YouTube channel soon. So what do you think are the most important skills for a beekeeper?
To be gentle, gentle, kind, and have respect for the bees.
I really like that, and I have to say I've noticed that just coming over here. Like I try and be as gentle as possible. Gaia works with no gloves at all. And every time she's so slow and meticulous and gentle, and she never gets stung. Literally never gets stung on the hands. They use a smoker here and they use a veil, but I've been here and although you get a few bees buzzing around, 'cause it's, you know, they're really prolific colonies, not taking any stings at all. So I think that's really good. Top advice, number 1 on the list, which is be calm, be gentle, and take your time. So the next question is, how do you manage varroa mites in Italy?
We, Do the block cage.
Block the cage.
With the Scalvini cage.
Yep, Scalvini cages.
In the winter.
Okay.
So now the colony is pretty clean.
Okay.
We have to do another tampon in 1 month to our hives because it's not possible in the spring for us to use again the block cage.
Okay.
We can't use because we need to have always the queen active.
Yeah.
Offshore, but we prefer that kind of way for togliere, cancel the varroa in the hive.
Okay.
So we do one on winter with the block cage, after again with the tampon oxalic tampon, and after at the end of the spring we do again the block cage.
The cage, yeah. Okay, and is it 4 times in a whole year?
2 times of block cage.
Yeah.
And I think three, two or three times with the oxalic.
And it's always oxalic acid you use, yeah?
Yes.
Okay, nothing else.
I think Tommaso con l'ossalico cosa facciamo anche glicerolo.
So just to summarize what Gary and Tommaso said there: completely organic. All they use is organic treatments, pure oxalic acid. They use it on the strip method, and they use it four times per year. However, for two of those treatments, they take the queen; they place her into a Calvini cage, which is just a place where she can live within the hive, and the bees can still feed her and keep her well. But you're effectively forcing a brood break, and then they put the oxalic acid strips in. The bees transfer that oxalic acid all the way around the beehive, and then that kills the varroa mite. It's so warm out here in Italy that it means that. you never really get a natural brood break. So there's no natural time to go in and do this treatment. They have to force it, but they can't force it at specific times of the year because they need the bees to kind of build up, to harvest the young bees, to make packages, to make nucs, and to use the bees in the mini mating nucs. So at very specific times, once in winter and once after the queen mating season, they block that queen in, force a brood break, oxalic acid strips, which if you're not sure what that is, it's just an organic compound kind of found in rhubarb. at a very high concentration, mixed with water, applied onto kind of like Jiffy cloths, and then they're hung over the brood frames, and then the bees move that all around the hive for a natural varroa treatment, but a very, very effective natural varroa treatment. Okay, next question, Gaia. What is your favourite type of hive?
I think that one.
With the handles?
Yes.
Okay, so, and it's Dadant, yeah?
Yes.
Yeah, okay. So it's strange, 'cause in the UK we have Nationals, Langstroth, Commercial, Dadants, we have everything. and no one can kind of like agree on what the best one is. All of the hives out here are Dadant. And when I look at the pricing out here, I'm like, wow, it's like a third of the price of the UK because everyone uses the same. So Dadant, that was a really easy answer. All of the hives are Dadant. They use that for production hives, starters, finishers, keeping their mothers. Everything is done in Dadant beehives. So the next question, Gaia, is what can people do to get maximum amount of honey?
I think the genetics is the more important thing.
Genetics, okay.
You have to choose the best for your place.
Yeah.
For example, for us is really good Buckfast.
Buckfast, yeah.
Yeah, Buckfast.
Okay.
And a little bit less the CGS, but because here he's really hot. Also Ergon, like, yes, because he's really good for honey, less for the brood.
Okay.
The Ergon prefer To collect honey and pollen.
Okay.
And not to become a big hive. Yeah, exactly.
Really, really good advice there. I didn't think she was going to say that. It's all in the genetics of the bees. This line here is Italian Lagustica Continental Gold Star. Not so good for honey, they say. What they're good for is rearing huge colonies of bees, lots of brood, and they just focus on creating a ton of brood. Perfect for making splits, perfect for harvesting young bees for mini mating nucs, not so good for honey. Gaia said her favorite one for honey is the Buckfast. F1 Buckfast and Black Mountain honey provided by Melitta Bees is the very best one you can get. But also, quite surprisingly, she said the Elgon is very good as well. So the Elgon is bred specifically for its varroa-sensitive hygiene nature, the way that they clean out the cells and ensure that varroa doesn't take over. But she says the colonies don't get too big and they focus on providing lots and lots of honey, going out and foraging that honey, foraging nectar, and the brood nest is like an average size compared to the Ligustica where it's very, very big. Okay, so bee health is very important, like the health of the colony. How do you monitor the health of the colony? Like, what are you looking for in terms of poorly bees?
Quality of the bees for me is not really important that they stay really, really calm. Yeah, sometimes I prefer that they are a little bit, you know. Yeah, because mostly of the time when they are too calm, it's like you don't have the— I don't know, I don't feel the contact with the hive.
Yeah, yeah, no, that's fine.
I prefer to find her a little bit happy. What I look in a hive is for sure that The brood is really compact.
Compact brood?
Compact, yes, covered. Because most of the time when you find some wall inside the brood, it's not really good advice.
Yeah?
Yeah.
And then in terms of viruses, do you see deformed wing virus or chalk brood or sac brood? Do you see any of that?
Not a lot. Sometimes it happens, but Most of the time it's because we have other, uh, um, you know, other beekeepers near us.
Okay.
Probably because they put the hives and don't, uh, have any certificate, so we have to, uh, take the hives and go to another part.
Yeah.
And because it's not normal for beekeepers, all of the beekeepers continue to maintain the, the hive Without varroa.
Okay.
It's like they start to see the bees on spring and summer and after stop to watch them. But that is the most important time that you have to see your hives when they don't— you don't have to use them, but you have to feed them, to check for varroa, to check if the brood is okay, because if you do a good job during autumn and winter, it's sure that in spring and summer you will have the best bees for you.
Makes sense, cool. So really, really like that answer, and it's something that I think a lot of beekeepers get caught up in. I 100% got caught up in this when I was younger, And far less experienced as well than Gaia. But people focus on keeping beehives to get honey, and that's their focus. They keep a beehive in their garden, they maybe don't inspect that much, they come back and they want some honey, and then they wonder why their bees are not healthy, why there's deformed wing virus, why there's chalkbrood, why there's sacbrood in the colony. But what Gaia said there is early treatments in autumn and in the winter, you know, catching that queen, caging her, keeping on top of varroa, ensures that the viral load in the colony is very, very low. And then she says it's very rare that they see any deformed wing virus, any varroa kind of at all. There will be varroa in here, but at super low levels. But they don't really see chalkbrood, no sacbrood, with the exception that if someone comes and puts some bees close by and then their queens go and mate with those drones. But in the more isolated areas, the queens are so well selected to be able to manage that viral load of those viruses and those diseases. but they very, very rarely see it, which is very nice to hear. So what do you think is the biggest challenges in beekeeping for you, and how do you overcome it?
The biggest challenge for me, for our place, is to collect honey for our place. Yeah, but this year we have more rain, so it's not the most important thing.
Okay. I was speaking to Romano and Gaia and Tommaso, and they say in Italy and in Malta, the honey production is quite low. When I spoke to Romano in Malta, he was saying the average is about 6 kilos, so kind of like 12 or 14 pounds of honey per season per hive. So they don't go after any honey because they know that unless the rain comes and the flowers yield nectar, then they're not actually going to get any honey. So they focus on producing nucs, mini mating nucs, raising queens, package bees, Full-size nucs, and then that's how they run their bees specifically for that task. And I think that's a really good piece of advice, which is identify the challenges, identify what your bees can do, identify what your bees can't do, and then just focus on where your bees are going to actually provide the best value to you. Top, top advice. Can you not find her? No, no, she's going to be here, I reckon. Oh no, this one. Go on.
I hope. I have to close it because I don't want that—
Too slow.
Yeah.
Sorry.
I don't want to put in a, you know, like they became, they go to the wall and after it's possible that I kill her if I don't find the— Okay, okay.
So I had a few more questions to ask Gaia, but I can actually answer some of them. She needs to focus on finding that queen. The next question I was going to ask her was, how do you handle aggressive colonies? And an interesting answer that she gave me, I wasn't actually prepared for this. She said they don't like colonies that are super, super calm. Not good for the surroundings here because it means that kind of natural pests and predators can take over the colony. And these bees here aren't aggressive at all, but they have what she says is vitality, you know, prolific, strong colonies of bees. They fly up, but they're not aggressive and they don't want to sting you. She says if they do find a specific hive that is super, super aggressive with lots of stings, they just kill the queen. They take that hive away from any mating areas so the drones can't influence it, and they requeen with a much calmer stock. The next question I was going to ask Gaia was about natural beekeeping varroa treatments versus chemical ones, and I think she already answered it before by saying they are effectively organic, but they don't apply for the certification because in Italy it's very, very difficult. It's not the same in the UK where you need to ensure that 27 square kilometers is certified organic and then bees in the middle. But over here it's just a case of ensuring that you don't add anything that has chemicals into your beehives, but it's quite difficult. However, Gaia said that they are an organic company and they only use natural treatments for treating varroa. They're not going and picking up rhubarb leaves and stuffing them into the colony, but they do exclusively use oxalic acid to keep that level down and force the brood breaks by caging those So the next question was, how do you ensure that the bees have sufficient forage? And I spoke to Gaia about this last night actually, and saying in Italy all of the forage is very, very condensed down into the early season. So in the spring when it's nice and wet on the ground, all of the flowers come up, there's loads of forage. We are here early March and the amount of flowers that I'm seeing is absolutely crazy.
It's massive.
A real impressive amount of flowers. However, for the remainder of the season, there is effectively Nothing available for the bees, so they have to consistently feed protein patties, fondant, sugar syrup to ensure that the bees stay alive. It's a matter of life and death, but they get an additional benefit on top of that, which means that the bees are stimulated, the queen lays loads of eggs, and then they have access to lots of brood, lots of young bees, which is required for mating queens. So that was all the questions I was going to ask Gaia. I got told off there for kind of taking up too much time, so I won't do Tommaso just yet. We'll do that tomorrow. I think that's some excellent, excellent advice there. I've certainly learned some new things. If you want to see more from Gaia, stick it in the comments. I'm going to convince her to make her own YouTube channel.
