ProDFM 1kg

01 · THE TWO WEEKS

The rule to read before the dose

A preparation of micro-organisms and a product designed to eliminate them do not coexist. That is why it goes on at least two weeks after any treatment against varroa, nosema or foulbrood: before that, what you apply never establishes itself.

It is the difference between using it and spending it. For the same reason the tub is kept cool and dry and the date is respected: this is not an inert powder.

02 · HOW IT IS APPLIED

Ten grams over the top bars

The standard dose is 10 g per hive — roughly a tablespoon — dusted over the top of the brood-chamber frames, straight onto the top bars.

The alternative, when you want it spread more evenly, is to mix those 10 g with 30 g of icing sugar and dust the mixture. It is applied in spring and autumn, and every four months in migratory operations.

03 · WHAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT

Vitellogenin is the reserve, not a tonic

When people talk about a colony recovering, they are talking about reserves. Vitellogenin is the protein of the bee's fat body: it is what nurse bees draw on to produce jelly, and it is what separates a summer bee from a winter one.

That is the frame in which a supplement like this is used: after a period of stress, when the colony has to rebuild. It is not a treatment and it replaces none.

04 · CHALKBROOD

Here we have to be honest

Chalkbrood turns up associated with genetic factors and with brood that gets chilled — colonies short of bees, cold springs, too much volume — and that is where the underlying fix lies.

A supplement can accompany a colony while it recovers, but what changes the picture is requeening and adjusting the management. Buying this expecting it to solve a genetic problem is buying badly.

05 · BEFORE YOU BUY

It is a management supplement, not a veterinary product: you buy it to accompany, not to cure.