Medicine Record

It is a legal requirement to maintain a veterinary medicine record of ALL treatments applied to a honeybee colony.

Veterinary Medicines Regulations 2013

The Veterinary Medicines Regulations sets out legal text on the manufacture, authorisation, marketing, distribution and post-authorisation surveillance of veterinary medicines. Beekeepers must comply with these regulations because Honey bees are classified as a food producing animals. Generic substances such as Oxalic acid or self-made thymol solutions must not be used to treat colonies. It is important to note that some products available from beekeeping suppliers are not registered medicinal products. These should not be administered to a colony. You may be prosecuted if traces of unlicensed treatments are found during routine honey sampling

Medicine record card

Beekeepers must keep details of veterinary medicinal products administered in colonies for at least five years. This applies whether or not the colony is still in the beekeeper’s possession or if it has died during that period.

First of all, when you purchase a veterinary medicinal product, you must record:

(a) The name of the product and the batch number;
(b) The date of acquisition;
(c) The quantity acquired; and
(d) The name and address of the supplier.

When you administer the medicine, you must record:

(a) The name of the product;
(b) The date of administration;
(c) The quantity administered;
(d) The withdrawal period; and
(e) The identification of the animals treated.

When you dispose of any veterinary medicinal product other than by treating a colony you must record:

(a) The date of disposal;
(b) The quantity of product involved; and
(c) How and where you disposed of it.

To do this you should use a medicines record card which can be downloaded here:

You can use alternative formats to this form. For example, you could use a spreadsheet to hold the records. However, the form is useful as a guide as it shows the data that needs to be recorded.