AFB: cause or effect?

[Kieck]

American foulbrood (AFB) has come up in a lot of threads on this board lately, dealing with ways to sterilze contaminated equipment, possible causes of dead-outs, reasons for inspections, etc. In some of these threads, beekeepers have posted information indicating that the spores are present in virtually every hive, and only weakened colonies are affected by AFB. Others have indicated that AFB can even take down seemingly healthy colonies. The idea has even been suggested that bees could become resistant to AFB through two concepts: 1) some keepers might deliberately choose to keep infected colonies to selectively breed resistance, or, 2) if regulations hadn't been put in place to artificially reduce the incidence of AFB, bees in North America would have likely developed resistance years ago.

I see, apparently, a contradiction in these assumptions. If almost all hives have AFB spores, but few hives express symptoms of AFB, aren't they already "resistant?" On the other hand, if AFB is such a contagious, dangerous disease, doesn't the presence of spores in most hives imply that we're all likely to lose our bees to AFB?

So, I'm curious about the impressions on other beekeepers. Is AFB a cause of problems, or is it a symptom of other problems? Why do you classify it as a cause or as an effect?

[peggjam]

<I see, apparently, a contradiction in these assumptions. If almost all hives have AFB spores, but few hives express symptoms of AFB, aren't they already "resistant?" On the other hand, if AFB is such a contagious, dangerous disease, doesn't the presence of spores in most hives imply that we're all likely to lose our bees to AFB?>

This is a good question. First, I don't think there is AFB spores in every hive. We know that spores can live along time, and that burning the infected hives is the only real cure. We also know that we should scorch the inside of the hive bodies, cover and bottom board to destroy the spores that might be left. I'm not sure if Mark ever kept data on wether the AFB hives he found were placed in used equipment purchased by the beekeep. That would be something nice to know. Also we really don't know if AFB spores can "hitch" a ride with mites departing a dying hive. That would also be nice to know.

My own feeling is that if one was to use only new hive componets, and not buy used stuff, their incedence of AFB would be very low.

I don't think there will ever bee an AFB resistant bee. Yes we can see that grooming ability plays a role in removal of AFB scale, and comb cleanup, but if the spores are so hard to get rid of, will they ever really get rid of them? Proably not.

Will a small outbreak of AFB kill a strong hive? Maybe, but it will kill a strong hive that is being stressed by not only AFB, but also mites, SHB, and the virial syndrome that comes with mites. I don't think that AFB is that big a deal anymore. If cases are caught and dealt with quickly, spreading of AFB would be minimal. It just boils down to knowing what is going on in your hives.

I would say that AFB is an effect of not knowing what is going on in your hives. Every hive, not just one or two in a yard. :rolleyes:

[ January 25, 2006, 12:53 PM: Message edited by: peggjam ]

[Ian]

If the bug was always there, you would think that failing hives, due to queen problem or mites ect, would always fall to this disease as the hive weakened. But thats not the case.
Seems to me, from people I have talked to who have been through an infestation, make out as if it came into thier operation. It was so invasive that it distroyed everything to the point where they had to shake everything into new equipment, to get rid of the diesease out of their operation.
This fellow hasnt seen it sence.

That tells me that the bug is spread,

[sqkcrk]

The AFB spores contained in scale and vegetative stages are the pathogen by which colonies of bees end up being diseased. There is a theory that these spores can be found in almost all colonies feral or managed.

The best way to avoid an expressed case of AFB is to have hygenic stock, queens. Hygenic behavior(house cleaning ability) is a heritable trait that can be selected for by breeding bees from colonies that exhibit hygenic behavior. It can be tested for.

Drugs, such as Terramycin, can aid in boosting the colonies resistance to the disease pathogen. This not a recommendation of mine. I recommend not using drugs and not keeping diseased colonies or equipment from diseasd equipment. If the stock is weak, why keep it in hope that it will become strong?

Putting diseased equipment on colonies, or visa versa, will not make colonies resistant to the disease. They have to be resistant in the first place.

The effect of AFB is the expression of the disease, caused by lack of good beekeeping and undestanding of bee biology which leads to beekeepers thinking that they can do things that others haven't before.

Beekeepers are an independent lot and can be quite narrow mionded and stubborn, at times. I'm a beekeeper, too. So, I am talking about myself, too. I've tryed to do things with AFB that were just not worth the trouble, in the long run.

"The bees don't read the same books as we do." said Dr. Jim Tew of OSU-ATI. So, keep that in mind when talking bees and bee diseases and beekeepers. Not very many things in life do what anybody thinks it does at all times.

[sqkcrk]

peggjam hits on some very good points. It's an integrated system of AFB prevention that one need to take.

The ignorant beekeeper is the most obvious cause of the spread of AFB. That's how most people "get" AFB. They buy it. Used equipment and tainted nucs.

Dr. Walter Rothenbuile bred a bee that would not come down with the disease. The diseased frames were put into this bees hives and it cleaned it up. The draw back was that it didn't produce very much honey. So hygenic behavior was conterproductive to foraging ability in this case. But selecting for bees that have both traits can be done.

I never did keep track of whether the colonies that I found, through inspection, were in used equipment, but my anecdotal, gut feeling and general memory is that mostly the cases were in used equipment.

There certainly were the cases where the equipment was new. One case was in new styrofoam supers. Other cases that stick out in my memory were in new equipment. Almost made me want to cry. But, I was used to it by then.

I'm not really kissing up to peggjam but, I think that he generally has the right attitude, and not just about AFB, here.

If you are diligent, observent and thoughtful beekeeper, who pays attention to your bees, you will be on top of the disease and pest situation. And if you have a colony that is starting to show the disease, you can minimize the exposure to your other colonies.

Early diagnosis is important in disease and pest managment. Know bees, know your bees.

[Ian]

>>There is a theory that these spores can be found in almost all colonies feral or managed.

If that were actually the case, then why dosent more or all hives fall to AFB infection when put under extreem stress due to unrelated problems ( queen failure, mites, weather stresses ?
AFB acts in an opertunistic manner as dictated by mother nature. If the disease is there, and conditions promote its growth, it will grow. I dont believe it is always there. But I do there is alot out there, to be spread around.

[Jim Fischer]

>> There is a theory that these spores can be
>> found in almost all colonies feral or managed.

> If that were actually the case...

Ian, you aren't going to convince anyone holding
this view that their position lacks any shred of
logic. The problem is that beekeepers want
to believe such nonsense, as it allows them to
avoid feeling guilty when AFB becomes a problem
in their operation, and avoid taking the
responsibility of changing their practices to
avoid spreading AFB.

I agree, if larger operations don't have regular
outbreaks of AFB, there clearly are not enough
spores "everywhere" to infect a hive, as the
larger operations would tend to have both more
hives in close quarters, and more "stressed
hives", what with moving them around and really
working the hives with an aim towards putting
money in the bank at the end of the day.

[sqkcrk]

I believe that it is in some ways similar to the common cold. The causitive agent is always present. It's just the individuals sercumstances which causes it's effects to be shown.

Such as, more colds appear to happen in the winter. Many people "think" that the cold winter conditions cause people to get colds. Not true. Close proximity of many people packed into confined quarters, that's the situation which gives the common cold it's winter relation.

AFB "appears" when it does for various reasons. And just because a colony under stress from other causes doesn't succumb to AFB, doesn't mean that it wasn't there.

kieck, can you ask the same question but insert Varroa for AFB?

I believe that Varroa is a more devistating problem than AFB is now. Varroa is one of the reasons that AHb is so succesful, in my opinion.

[sqkcrk]

Jim, you mention "putting money in the bank at the end of the day." as if it were a bad thing.

What do you do with your money?

Do you believe that the commercial beekeepers should cease their practices, all together?

Or do you have constructive critisisms of their practices and suggestions that could be implimented, in practical terms, for the betterment of all beekeepers?

[Michael Bush]

Here's are previous discussions on the subject:
http://www.beesource.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/001244.html
http://www.beesource.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/001264.html
http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=003440#000000
http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=003352#000000
http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=002704#000000
http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=002170#000008
http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=002156#000000
http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=001388#000000
http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=001014#000000
http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=001074#000001
http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=000209#000001
http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=000426#000000

[sqkcrk]

Thanks MB. Is your point that it's already been talked about? Nothing new to say? What?

[John F]

Kieck, great line of questioning. I would think that your 1) and 2) are pretty much the same thing, but no biggy.

Anyway, my only contribution is:

I once went to my doctor because I felt really low energy. She took pictures and showed them to me. I had pnuemonia. She told me that I was this close <holds fingers about 1/2 inch apart> to her having me put into the hospital.

Turns out pnuemonia can be devistating in a really fast way.

So we chatted about pnuemonia a bit. She told me that everybody carries the bacteria with them all the time. It lives in our sinuses. It most often is a secondary infection and most often falls on the coattails of a viral infection.

So, smart guy me asks, "If we know what it is, and we know where it is, why can't we just go there and kill it?" She replied by explaining that if you took it away you would ultimately become more susceptible to pnuemonia.

Explaination made sense to me.

Anyway, I would be curious if these spores really are all over the place. It also seems that the equipment cleaning choices seem extreme. I would wonder if a good dose of clorine or some exposure to ultra-violet would do the same think only way cheaper.

[peggjam]

Some of the states own a device kinda like an autoclave that you can pile your equipment in and have it disinfected. Cost was about $1 per piece. However, when one considers the shape of most used equipment available these days, it doesn't seem worth it.

[Michael Bush]

>Thanks MB. Is your point that it's already been talked about? Nothing new to say? What?

No. My point is to save a lot of typing for everyone. I stated my opinion on it many times before. Feel free to discuss it some more.

[Beefather]

Hello from Germany,
I have seen your discussion about the question, if AFB is in all bee colonies or not.
Our situation:
In Germany there were never drugs again AFB , such as Terramycin, allowed by the government.
Since ca. 10 years, there is a programm for searching the spores of AFB in bee colonies.
After many tenthousends of tests, there is one result:
Only in 3-10 % are AFB Spores found in the colonies.
If there is a positiv result, it is nesessary to bring the bees in a new hive with new wax and feed them with candy. ( Its also a good moment to kill all the mites in the colonie because there is no brood for them to hide. )
After that, normally, there are no more spores in the colonies. And you have a good colonie without AFB and Mites or other diseas.
Hubert
Please excuse my english.

[Michael Bush]

So 3 to 10% have detectable amounts of AFB spores.

Doses this 3 to 10% show symptoms?

[Kieck]

I've read in threads on this board that 99% (roughly) of all hives in this country have AFB spores present within them. I've also read, like Hubert points out in the data he cites from Germany, that very few colonies actually have AFB spores in them. Does anyone have any actual data on this? What percentage of all hives actually have AFB spores in the honey and/or the comb?

Remember, AFB is caused by a species of bacterium. "Spores" of AFB are not like fungal spores or plant spores. Bacterial "spores" are actually dormant forms of the bacteria. As soon as conditions are favorable, they start reproducing.

I know the topic has at least come up before. I've read some of the threads on it. I was more interested in how beekeepers perceive the problem -- is it analagous to preventing the spread of a cold in humans, or is it analagous to preventing coughing in humans? Do you think it's an problem by itself, or is it simply a symptom of other problems?

[Jim Fischer]

> Jim, you mention "putting money in the bank at
> the end of the day." as if it were a bad thing.

Not at all, I was just pointing out that
a larger and for-profit operation would
inherently tend to subject hives to more
"stress situations" than a hobby beekeeper
would, and would therefore be inclined to
show a higher incidence of AFB if it were
as ubiquitous as some seem to think.

> Do you believe that the commercial beekeepers
> should cease their practices, all together?

Certainly not! Re-read what I read, I think
you got it backwards. My point was that
severe outbreaks of AFB are rare in a serious
and professional operation where profit is the
goal, even though (as Ian said) the hives
themselves are certain to undergo more stress
than in any other type of beekeeping.

> Or do you have constructive critisisms of
> their practices and suggestions that could be
> implimented, in practical terms, for the
> betterment of all beekeepers?

Well, I recently pointed out that simply recycling
comb was not going to assure the AFB was stopped
in its tracks unless the frames themselves were
treated as a normal part of the process, but I
forget which thread that was. The trick here is
to assume that every hive might have a low-level
case of AFB and get really anal about equipment
moving between hives. For example, after
extracting, get the SAME frames back in the SAME
supers, and put them on the EXACT hives from which
they came. This takes a level of organization,
record-keeping, equipment stenciling, and rigorous
discipline that most beekeepers can't be bothered
to attempt.

Beekeepers themselves spread more AFB than any
other transmission vector, and I don't mean
because they don't sterilize their hive tools
between each hive. Its all the little cracks
and crevices in equipment that carry the
significant number of spores required to
get an uninfected hive infected.

[Ian]

>>Doses this 3 to 10% show symptoms?


I'd say yes, when given the chance, it will express itself. When not hidden by chemical treatments, and when the bees tolerance to it falls due to stress.

[sqkcrk]

Let's remember that there is almost nothing new under the sun. And everything that one wonders about has probably already been wondered about, as pertains to AFB and bee diseases.

Read about it, learn about it. Don't waste your time and your colonies lives trying to do what others have shown doesn't work.

peggjam, the auto clave that you speak of uses a highly carcinogenic material called Ethylene Oxide. It is used in a pressurized fumigation tank. A number of states have had them, but no longer do.

You are very right about the state of the equipment. Why keep it if it is in poor shape?

Jim, your right I did misunderstand you. I understand you better now.

Ian, Hidden by chemical treatments. That has always been a wonder to me. If a person has an infection and a Doctor administers an antibiotic is the chemical hidding the infection?

How many folks here know what it takes to infect one larvae? Under what conditions will a larvae be susceptible to AFB?

[sqkcrk]

kieck, I don't mean to be picky about the meaning of words but, AFB is the result of numerous conditions coming together. The effects of which are caused by those conditions. Of which, the presence of the pathogen is primarily necessary.

So, I'm not really sure of what your original question is after.

[Joel]

AFB spores exist in virutally every hive. We can test honey and make a pretty accurate prediction when a hive will succumb. Colonies which display the 2 recessive traits that are hygenic (uncapping and removing dead brood quickly) are the bees which are showing resistance. It takes far fewer (thousands vs millions) of spores to infect a 1 day old larvae vs 2 day old larvae. This is where medications come in. Treating an active hive however is masking the disease. Once the medication has lost effectiveness the spores still exist in combs and the hive will eventually develop the active stages of the disease unless the infected combs are removed. The recent Poll indicates Foulbrood is a minor issue overall in the industry. We need to keep in mind that a colony of bees is an organism as whole and not just a random group of individuals. In many cases a hive which succumbs to any disease has been weakend by a variety of causes.

Just some thoughts.

[Beefather]

Some answers for the questions:
to Michael Bush:
If the number of spores is less, normally there are no symtoms in the brood. But, also normally, most of them show symtoms in the next year, if the beekeeper does nothing again the spores. If the numbers of spores are high, you will normally find the symtoms of AFB.


"Kiek:I've read in threads on this board that 99% (roughly) of all hives in this country have AFB spores present within them."
Remember, in Germany and in most of the other lands in Europe, there is no medications allowed.In the past, every colonie with symtoms of AFB was killed by the government.
Germany is a land, that imports most of the honey, that is sold, from countrys around the world.
In this honey, you can find in many times spores of AFB and medication like Terramycin.
I think, the number of spores in European an other colonies is very different.

[Aspera]

There is a concept known as the minimum infective dose. It is the number of organisms required to infect an organism. This number can vary by strain of bacteria and will change depending on environmental factors and the health status of the host. Disease is caused by complex interactions between host, enviroment and pathogen. Yes, a bacillus is the etiologic agent of AFB, but I think that it is a mistake to focus management strategies on this fact alone. Chronic metabolic stress, high production, travel and comingling of the sick and well, are all good examples of factors that weaken animals, and therefor select for more virulent ("hotter") strains of a disease.

[Ian]

>>Ian, Hidden by chemical treatments. That has always been a wonder to me. If a person has an infection and a Doctor administers an antibiotic is the chemical hidding the infection?


No, the infection is killed. As far as my limited knolege about general bacterial infections, the treatment will have battled the bacteria off enough to allow the bodies natural ammune system to over come the infection and rid of it.

Hidden by chemical treatment means that the chemical isnt allowing AFB to reproduce and spread, and thus not showing any symtoms. Yet the spores lie dormant, not being affected by the treatment.
I'd say its the chemical treatments biggest disadvantage.

[sqkcrk]

So, if terramycin is used in a colony with one cell of AFB, and that colony appears to show no more signs of the disease, is it still infected?

Did the terramycin "cure" the infection?

Did the terramycin "hide" the infection?

Did the terramycin have nothing to do with the signs of the infection disappearing? In otherwords, the colonies own hygenic behavior recovered their previous healthful status.

What should people believe about AFB and how to handle it?

[Kieck]

>>What should people believe about AFB and how to handle it?

I don't know. That's partly why I asked the questions in this thread. The way I see it, what you believe about AFB dictates how you handle it. Or, maybe, the way you handle it defines what you believe about AFB.

Starting from beginning of both arguments:

1) It's a terrible disease, a primary infection that kills hives. To me, this belief means that anyone with evidence of AFB in any of his hives must make every effort to destroy any sign of the disease. The problem I keep running into with this argument is the assertion that some people make about virtually all hives containing AFB spores. AFB spores aren't like fungal spores; they're really just inactive bacteria. Sooner or later, these "spores" either have to start reproducing or die. If AFB is a primary disease, and the spores are in just about every hive, just about every hive should wind up dying from AFB.

Otherwise, you're necessarily implying either 1) some sort of resistance to AFB, or, 2) most hives actually do NOT have AFB spores present within them.

2) AFB is actually a sort of "secondary infection" that starts after something else weakens the colony. That suggests, to me, that the most effective way of "treating" for AFB is simply keeping colonies strong enough that AFB never really gets established.

Along these same lines, if AFB is more or less a symptom of a weakened colony, there should be no harm done by placing contaminated comb in other hives. As long as the other hives are healthy to begin with, the AFB that is introduced shouldn't cause any problems.

I'm not arguing one way or the other; I'm genuinely interested in the opinions of other beekeepers on this one. So far, the general concensus of this thread seems to be that AFB is a dangerous pathogen easily capable of primarily infecting bee colonies. What I'm curious about, then, would be 1) really what percentages of colonies do contain AFB spores?, and 2) if the percentage of colonies with AFB spores is high, why don't more colonies end up dying from AFB?

[Ian]

>>if terramycin is used in a colony with one cell of AFB, and that colony appears to show no more signs of the disease, is it still infected?

Yes if that cell is dormant. Otherwise it would of been killed by the terramycin.

[peggjam]

<Yes if that cell is dormant. Otherwise it would of been killed by the terramycin.>

If there is one spore, there are bound to be many spores, and they will be in various stages, some vegitive, some active. It is the ability of the bees to clean up the active spores that count.

I really don't think that every hive has spores in it.

<Did the terramycin "cure" the infection?

Did the terramycin "hide" the infection?>

If you had an active infection of AFB and you used terramycin, all you've done is mask the infection. If you are worried enought that you may have AFB in your hives to do a previtive treatment of terramycin, it is time to change your beekeeping practices and all of your equipment and start over.

[Ian]

Proactive comb culling is agreed by all here to be the most effective means of managing a preventative and controling in operation AFB .

Culling old dark comb is smart, for it has been around longer, having increased chances of holding AFB spores than newer comb.

BUT just because the comb is dark and old doesnt mean the comb has any AFB infection what so ever.

Last year I took in some old dark (black) comb that I was culling from one of my bee yards that had experienced an 80% winter loss. Lost them to mites, and starvation, but a undetected AFB outbreak was in the back of my mind. So I took in a few of my worst looking comb, (even though none to be found with scale)
They found no AFB in the comb.

You would think, that if AFB lingured in the bees environment, always there, I would have had at least a few spores found in my dark black brood wax.

[Kieck]

>>They found no AFB in the comb.

>>You would think, that if AFB lingured in the bees environment, always there, I would have had at least a few spores found in my dark black brood wax.

I agree. If AFB spores really are present in virtually every hive, I would expect the same or maybe even greater incidence from really old, dark comb.

I've often wondered, too, about the possibilities of contaminating samples before testing. Some of the reports I've seen suggest something along the lines of, "90% (or insert any other high percentage here) of honey sampled tested positive for AFB spores." I'm assuming the sampling equipment itself wouldn't be contaminated, but what about the possibility of honey being mixed? I would think the honey from one hive containing AFB spores could contaminate at least all the other honey extracted at the same time as well as any other honey that was mixed with that containing the AFB. Possibly some of the spores could remain even on extraction equipment or bottling equipment, and could contaminate even more honey.

Your observations, Ian, are just the sort of information about this topic that can help determine if AFB is present as spores in most every hive. Thanks!

[TRC]

I know this is a newbie question but:

Can't we kill AFB in our equipment with something at hand? Bleach? Alcohol? Peroxide? Anyone know?

Any of the above could be used over and over, if they worked. How many times can you lay flame to a frame before it's ruined?

Best,
Tom

[peggjam]

<How many times can you lay flame to a frame before it's ruined?>

Usually if you have a hive with AFB, the coloney is depopulated, then the remains, including the frames is burned and buied. The only equipment that is kept is the hive bodies, bottom board, and covers. Which are all scorched to kill the AFB spores.

[Aspera]

A strong oxidizer such as bleach or lye should work reasonably well. In spite of its dangers, a boiling lye solution will remove all wax and propolis as well. Bjorn showed me some frames he treated in this manner and they looked like new except for some corrosion on the cross wires.

[Michael Bush]

>Can't we kill AFB in our equipment with something at hand? Bleach? Alcohol? Peroxide? Anyone know?

Here's a post from another site:

"It is known that spores of american foulbrood is in combs in previous year honey. We know also that it need to be quite a much spores before signs of disease come visible. Presence of spores can be detected 2 years before that visible symptoms emerge.

"In Finland it was made research 2005 that old honey was washed away and combs was handled then with sterilizing chemical Virkon S. http://www.antecint.co.uk/MAIN/virkons.htm.

"The aim was to save new white combs in hive renovation where has not been brood.

"Sick hive was shaked and double shaked on treated combs and they researches how foulbrood emerges.

"The results were quite good. Good fames is worth to save with this method and not to burn.

"Do you know these kind of results?"

Finsky

[George Fergusson]

When "they" test for AFB, what exactly are they testing for? The presence of spores, or the actual viable reproducing bacteria? If they're testing for spores and spores are supposedly present everywhere, wouldn't they find AFB every time?

[Ian]

>>"they"

They, as in our cheif apiarist extentions office.

[mwjohnson]

Looking for opinions;

(1)Culling brood frames to reduce the likely build up of spores seems to be a widely held technique.
So,I am asking,IF you had old dark brood combs that were on Pierco 1 piece frames,and you took them inside,scrape them down,scrub(to remove the "skins" on the bottoms of the cell impressions) and then ran them thru the dishwasher,could there be any significant amount of "spore holding ability" in the tiny amount of wax that would still remain?
We are assuming that a person were just culling comb as a part of a ongoing recycling program,not trying to recycle frames that were known to be infected.

(2)If we as apiarist are our own worst enemies,how do we become truly anal retentive about frame swapping when splitting,shook swarming,etc.?
Seems like we would need to shake our own packages to increase.

And,I have seen it,but haven't been able to find a source to buy VanEton & Goodrich's "Control of American Foulbrood without the use of drugs."

Thanks,
Mark

[Joel]

Mark, it is posted here on the site. Try doing a search, someone found the site within the past 2 months.

One thing the study indicates that plastic can be soaked in hypochlorite (bleach solution) for 20 minutes and it will kill AFB spores. Remove the wax 1st.