I am ending a colonies life tomorrow night

[Chrissy Shaw]

I trust people, i usually ask a few times what treatment people use for foul brood etc...but i trusted this beekeeper, had enough time, had enough experience and was headed into commercial beekeeping. It was still cool, so, other than to feed them before i picked them up, i said leave them glued up, i never even popped the lid.

I have scaring in my sinuses and with the low humidity i did not smell that sicky sweet smell until today. It was on a super i took off one colony earlier. I didn't even look before, just set it in the stack. Then today that smell permeated the box. On one old frame there was scale. There was fould brood in the fall or late summer. So my clean yard has spore.

At the end of my feeding i opened up the brood in the 50 degree weather. Not one infected cell, no scales anywhere, but the box came from that colony and i have no idea why there is now no infection, but it goes anyway, along with the money spent, because it could take out everything. I meant it and it is hard, no antibiotics, no fast fixes, no hoping for miracles. I know that smell, i even compared the smell of the bagged old frames to old frames from last season--the bees must go.

This is the most difficult thing to do on earth. That brood right now is perfect, exactly textbook, but American Foul Brood was there.

Chrissy Shaw

[peggjam]

Why would you do that if there is no sign that they have it now? They very well may have some restiantance to foulbrood, and to kill them now would be losing those genes......If your really concerned, shake them out on fresh foundation and let them draw it out, then shake them out a second time on fresh foundation, after that you should have no problems...

[Mike Gillmore]

Have you sent off a sample of the comb for AFB testing? I would do that before making the decision to destroy a hive.

[JohnK and Sheri]

It seems a bit premature to kill the entire colony just because the equipment they are on had foulbrood at one time. I agree with James, at the most I would shake them into new equipment. If there are spores they are already in the yard.
If you are indeed trying to go it with no antibiotics, why kill a colony that is alive and thriving after a bout with foul brood and may be the resistant strain you are looking for? Seems counter productive to me.

everyone sing along......All we are asking, is give bees a chance.....all we are asking, is give bees a chance.....8-)
Sheri

[Chrissy Shaw]

Unless there is a new brood disease that has the sweet-sick odor of AFB and leaves scales in old combs, there is no need to test. I assume in the fall, it was a very advanced case, while i found scale on but one frame, there were patchy old cappings on others. Dead brood, while quite a foul smell, lacks that sweet yuck of ABF.

Pegjam, if i shake, there is liable to be drift and while i might have one resistant queen, those young bees are liable to go anywhere in the yard because the idea of home is not there yet with them. The other problem could be that a stressor was relieved, feed, fresh healthy pollen and for a time there will be a clean up only to relapse. I think this is the reasoning of the freeze brood tests rather than the active disease tests done at the old Laramie, WY lab years ago, in that the spore is simply too contagious to deal with and the risk too high. Hygenic lines were all developed by the freeze test methods.

In the old days we would put up a hospital yard, but here is bear, a big bear very local i hear and there is honey coming in. I don't have the cash to fence a seperate colony.

Of course i am angry with myself. Just to keep a queen from getting slapped by loose frames on the trip back i did not pop the seal and take a close look. In that respect this is all my own fault and i know it. I figure there had to be five infected frames in the lower hive body last fall and to be honest with you i have seen EFB come and go before, but never saw AFB do this without TM dumped on. They have been here a month, did he dump TM? Did he know? I would really hate to think he would have, but i can not rule that out either and the shake would cost me forty dollars worth of frames considering shipping. If it spread, gets out in the feral population when swarming starts then i wind up testing AFB resistance with my purse strings. Just because my queens did not mate last year does not preclude a feral colony out there somewhere and then it is in the system and anyone else up here could loose yards.

Like i said, this is a tough choice, but if i am going to stick with principles and advise people to allow no American foul brood, to try and slide this one past seems wrong. Explain to me if i am wrong in this, i will listen why i am wrong. That was my hard work that bought those bees and AFB is not their fault, but i have learned just how nasty that stuff can get. I broke one of my rules on trust alone--no old equipment. Bad Chrissy..bad, bad , bad.

Chrissy Shaw

[NW IN Beekeeper]

Oh boy, another Chrissy Shaw "please disagree with me" topic.

-I mean it has to be, else if you were set in your ways the hives would be burned and tomorrow we'd all be patronizing you with 'how sad it is" replies.
Instead, predictably here you are, and so are we.

Anyhow.....

Foulbrood Resistant bees aren't like what I think people might be thinking.

I'd like to explore this topic because it needs it.

Foulbrood is a bacterial spore that needs certain conditions to rupture and multiply. These conditions are ideal in a bees stomach. The ruptured spores in the honey stomach are fed to larvae, inwhich the spores multiply and kill the larvae. The dead larvae contributes spores to the envirnoment of the hive (primarily honey) where the cycle begins again until it goes into run away and kills the colony.

With this in mind, Terramycin (TM) works by preventing the bee stomach from rupturing the spore, thus the spore is pooped outside the hive (cleaning the spores from the hive). TM does not devitalize spores within the hive, so TM does not cure foulbrood. Fouldbrood comes under control in a colony when the spores are so few that they are consumed and eliminated out of the hive by the adult bees and not fed to the larvae. This breaks the life cycle of the bacteria.

With this in mind, this means a hive can have AFB spores, and not have an active AFB infestation. The odds of this increase as the hive count in your yard increases and depends on your managment of your combs (are your old diseased combs culled, or do you pride yourself on 30 year old black combs?)

Hygienic bees can detect disease and remove AFB infected larvae before they become disease scales. Over time the bees remove the larvae and diminish the spore count in the hive. This can take some time before levels are low enough (often during a honey flow where the spore to honey ratio decreases) for the infection to subside. But it can flare up when honey reserves become low and infected honey is fed to the colony.

This means a hive can contain AFB spores, and not show signs of an active AFB infestation. The odds of an outbreak increase as the hive count in your yard increases (bees robbing diseased hives) and depends on your managment of your combs (are your combs old and full of scale and do you pride yourself on 30 year old black combs? Or, do you replace your combs every 4 years?)

The aussies use a system by culling combs to diminish the spores and recover a colony. This combined with woodenware sanitation can clean up a foulbrood outbreak.

I'd likely burn very suspect frames/hives because I'd second guess any future outbreak as a result of weak fortitude towards this case.

Don't ask me to plead with your to cease your disease control.
You're a big enough girl to mix it up with everyone all the rest of the time.
Make your own decision and live with it.

-Jeff

[Chrissy Shaw]

I do, but the shake i have never done and above are my reason why i hesistate to employ it now. I spoke with Dr. Sheppard last year regarding a situation like this and his advice was as i have outlined. Also, i have seen so many problems from AFB. Our former inspection policy, when we had one, was a red tag to kill and burn in fourteen days from issuance. Before the abandonment of our laws here due to cuts, that was the law. Even in its heyday twenty-or-so years ago TM treatment of active AFB was illegal. Those were the days of the wink and nod and those were the same days that gave us antibiotic resistant AFB, much the same way that EFB became a renewed menace. We went from requeening to dusting.

So we have three posts and it seems i am all alone, is anyone in agreement?

Chrissy Shaw

[Chrissy Shaw]

Sometimes one is wisest to get outside information. the old combs in question are not mine, they are really not all that old, and plastic, so that precludes burning due to EPA laws.

I came close to putting a colony down last year, please recall that there was a twenty year gap and i do put things out to gain more information. And Jeff, most certainly i am outspoken. I want information to compare with what i know, to see if the reason by which i approach a problem is worthy, or if it might not be fine tuned. I think things through, compare with what i learn from others and i compare it to twenty solid years of experience. I am constantly challenging my own long held ideas.

What i learned last year is that opened brood might be a mite cleaning action and that information i had to call around to get. I did not post this so people could vote or argue, i did it to see if i was dead wrong in my premise and if so, how. I like to take time and consider things fully, one i spray the soap on them, they are gone and that event would not be worth posting.

From you i just learned of the Aussie way of dealing with it. I know how we used to deal with it, but in all my years i have never gotten used to putting a colony down though in SD that was what was done to one third of all of them headed for Texas just to not haul the SD compliment south.

I won't use TM, i should have not bought old equipment and my worst fear is that a few weeks from now i find out i was too late. You can feel however you wish to about all of it, but the information and how i deal with that is up to me, i know this as well. I take American Foul Brood very seriously and i am, most certainly prepared to deal the blow.

Imagine that, i come here when i am certain and uncertain both. As for the combs, the roation should be completly new this year, all old combs coming from nucs or purchased hives having been shed as soon as possible, but comb building is just now possible at my location.

Chrissy Shaw

[Chef Isaac]

Chrissy:

I am sorry to hear that. As long as you learned to check each colony before buying.... that is the learning point.

I would really encourage you to have a "welfare" bee yard away from your own. This works for me when hives are suspect and need a little TLC.

I would shake the bees off into new foundation and go from there. Burn the old equipment.

[Brent Bean]

Are you sure it’s not European foul brood if this was the problem they may have recovered from it. Seems a waste to kill a productive colony that appears healthy at the moment. I have read many other good options besides destroying them.

[Ruben]

I would send a sample to the Beltsville Lab they will test it for free and notify you of the results. I had a simular case last year where I bought 11 hives from a guy without looking in them and one had AFB which Beltsville confirmed. I burned the hive and the beekeeper I bought them from did not know he had it and felt so bad he cut the price of the entire deal 50% . The other hives in the yard showed no signs of AFB are are doing great this year. He had captured the bees from an old bee tree as he called it where he had seen bees come and go for years. One day he went by and there was a swarm so he got it. He said he now knows why bees would come and go from that place. He got with the land owner where the tree was this winter and they burned the tree to the ground and made a big fire out of it.

[Fusion_power]

I disagree with you Chrissy. But for a reason not yet stated clearly. You have diagnosed AFB by odor and scale. Odor and scale can be caused by at least two other circumstances that are NOT Afb. The first is a pesticide kill and the second is chilled brood. Do you know how to perform a Holst milk test? A a very minimum, I would do this test and preferably would follow up with a sample to a lab. Only if AFB is confirmed would I do the crash and burn act. I would definitely get rid of any infected colony and sterilize all affected woodenware.

Most colonies of bees have AFB spores. That is right. Most of them have the spores. But the disease does not break out because the spores are not present in high enough numbers to be infective.

Proper hygiene in the beeyard will keep AFB at bay. I haven't seen it in my bees in 30 years, but I have inspected other beekeepers bees and found AFB twice in the last 10 years.

Darrel Jones

[Chrissy Shaw]

Obviosly darn AFB scares me half to death. The colony is not going to be robbed as it stands now. You'd think at the amount of cynogas that i have dumped in colonies for no reason other than that is what i was suppose to do that i would have been quiet about all of this. I am certainly listening to all of this. The old equipment is on the way out and i restarted with all new stuff right from the get.

I don't recall ever seeing so much brood killed from winter kill, the brood area was a good pattern i would have expected in mid-september up north. It had to be so visble that anyone who had seen it before would know, but it is all dried out and did not have the sour smell of EFB, but the glue sweet smell. We never did tests in the old days, so maybe, just maybe i should do a confirmation. The reason i caught the smell is the humidity rose and my sinus were clear.

Initially i pulled the last bad looking frame the bees had not got to and slapped in a PF-100 and as i walked away i hit my head and asked how much i wanted to loose.

I am angry at myself too, real angry. I was finishing a twelve day week and a six hour drive up there and just was too loopy and tired to do the right thing. Everything i do during the day is for my bees six and seven days a week, tired, dirty, hungry and this week my fridge fritz, my food money got mowed over by a lawn mower (seriously) i spent money on brakes i didn't need it turned out and tonight we are suppose to get 1-2 inches of snow. I suspect that is why i am so darn dumb regarding all this right now. That said, it is not the end of the world i suppose and i should maybe slow down a tad.

Chrissy Shaw

[Chrissy Shaw]

How do they want the sample prepared? I will do that.

Chrissy Shaw

[Mike Gillmore]

Samples of diseased comb for laboratory tests can be sent to Harrisburg at the above address or to:

Beltsville Bee Laboratory
Building 476 BARC-Fast
Beltsville, MD 20705

Select a sample of brood comb about 4 inches square that contains a large number of affected cells. Mail it in a strong cardboard box without an airtight wrapping. Do not use aluminum foil or plastic bags. Samples that are crushed, wet from condensation, or moldy because of improper packaging make diagnosis impossible.

OR

SAMPLE COLLECTION PROTCOLS

Brood Samples:

The Comb Sample
The best sample for diagnosis of brood disease is a piece of comb containing as much diseased brood as possible. Cut a 2” x 2” (minimum) square of comb from the suspected equipment. Include as much dead or discolored brood as possible. Wrap the sample in a paper towel or newsprint and package loosely in a heavy cardboard box for shipment. Do Not send samples with honey or nectar. Do Not wrap the sample in foil, wax paper or other material that will encourage decomposition and growth of molds. Be sure to assign a unique identifying number to the sample and to include your name, address and a brief description of the problem in a letter placed in the envelope.
The Smear: If you are unable to cut out a section of comb, you may still be able to obtain a diagnosis if you can submit a sufficient quantity of diseased material. Using a flat, wooden toothpick, remove as much material as possible from one suspected cell and place it on a 2" x 4" rectangle of paper. Include the toothpick, as it may contain a considerable amount of diseased material. Fold the paper carefully to cover the sample. Place the sample in a coin envelope and then in a regular envelope. Be sure to assign a unique identifying number to the sample and to include your name, address and a brief description of the problem in a letter placed in the envelope.

[King bee apiary]

"Unless there is a new brood disease that has the sweet-sick odor of AFB"
I don't know what foul brood smells like but I can tell you this,if you have small hive beetles at all then you will have a smell that can be very bad and disgusting.Almost rotten garbage type smell..

Just a thought.

[Chrissy Shaw]

The problem is there is mold, this was a lower deep from a winterover and it took me some time to find scale. The capped dead brood was extremely sparse, the scale dried and the combs in rough shape. I will look again, but from what is required it sounds as though i may have problems. I could always cut into the good brood that is with the active colony and cause the folks at Beltsville to think i need glasses. I do, but... Had this not been a bottom super with typical northern winter dead bees in it? I guess i can send a sample and see and if i spot anything along the way i revert back to my intial plan. I could always set 4.9mm in there and test that for my own peace of mind too. I won't shake until this brood hatches, this is early season up here.

KBA: I have not seen SHB, but from what i hear they are hard to spot unless one is looking for them. I was unaware that SHB did much damage in brood areas, but as i say i am not familiar with the pest, or its markings. I had heard only of things in regards to honey amd dropping is such. I appreciate the idea though.

Does anyone know a study of it showing AFB spore to be proven to be constantly in the hive envirionment. I am not asking to do anything but see such a report with my own eyes. Just perhaps my thinking on AFB is going to change as a result of this.

[Fusion_power]

Chrissy,

My statement was direct from a past president of the ABBA who was involved in a study about 30 years ago. In a nutshell, they took honey samples from several hundred colonies of bees and put them under a scanning electron microscope. Every sample contained non-clinical levels of AFB. I don't know if this study was ever published.

There was an article in Gleanings about 20 years ago discussing extractor samples of honey which were tested for AFB. Heavily infected colonies had very high levels of spores which was reflected in the extractor counts. Un-infected colonies showed minimal spore counts. The extractor tended to mix honey containing varying levels of spores. This resulted in a very strong recommendation to never feed back extracted honey because of the probability of spreading AFB. The extractor and honey processing equipment can act as a reservoir for disease spread.

Just some more to think about!

Darrel Jones

[Chrissy Shaw]

and frames and keeping things fresh really is the best control measure. Now i understand the idea of shaking. I have seen package bees on new frames and equipment develop AFB, NOT this year and not from my current installation, and if such were shook from heavily infected colonies, heavily medicated, that woule explain why such colonies could easily develop AFB, or even from robbing some source i did not know of. Just smelling that smell makes me want to weep and run to the drug counter at the feed store, though i have not.

Like mites, it is here and i need only watch, keep it clean and continue on. From gophers, mites, deer, bear, skunks and all the rest, the hammer approach only works as a stay. I make my enemies stronger by making them enemies. This theme keeps repeating itself in everything from my raspberry field to my honeybees. I need to consider this and not reach for my hammer perhaps. I will think this over now.

Chrissy Shaw

[Ishi]

Chrissy


About 6 years I ordered a Buckfast Queen from Canada I found out when I called the breeder to tell him that she had arrived ok he told me that she had started as an egg from Buckfast Abby. (He was able to import some frames of eggs and hatch them in Canada.)

About 3 months after I installed her the hive came down with AFB with the knowledge as to where she came from I did not want to loose her. I shook the hive on to new foundation about dark put in a full frame feeder and closed them up for 3 days.

She lived for 3 years and never had AFB again.

I did use TM in the syrup just in case which I know that you would not do.

Best of luck in whatever you do.

[Chrissy Shaw]

As far as i ever understood, TM (tetracycline sp?) is inert in syrup. It is an active antibiotic that dies in water solutions. At least that is what i was told and read years ago, the formulation may have changed. I stepped away from bees for twenty years after twenty. The biggest change i have noticed thus far is that a lot of people were thinking as i was nack then.

Are you in the US? If you are, are you saying you were able to get small orders of queens from Canada and do you know if that is still possible?

Chrissy Shaw

[tecumseh]

crissy sezs:
Those were the days of the wink and nod and those were the same days that gave us antibiotic resistant AFB, much the same way that EFB became a renewed menace.

tecumseh replies:
well crissy I for one am not totally convinced that afb is in fact resistant (at least to the point suggested) to terramicin. if you read the label the direction states three application at 5 day intervals. how many folks do you think follow the labeled instructions? my guess for the commercial fellows likely 'zero' and the numbers for us sideliners and hobbist only a percentage or so better.

furthermore in regards to the ccd episode didn't you ever wonder why one of the first recommendations was the return to terramicin?

then crissy sezs:
As far as i ever understood, TM (tetracycline sp?) is inert in syrup.

tecumseh replies:
it is my understanding that tm in syrup deterioriates quite quickly and every recommendation for feeding tm in this manner states quite plainly that the syrup must be consumed very quickly to be effective.

[dickm]

>furthermore in regards to the ccd episode didn't you ever wonder why one of the first recommendations was the return to terramicin?>>

I think it's because CCD often is accompanied by EFB because of the stress on the hives. Tylosin has not been proven on EFB, but Terra has.

dickm

[Jeffzhear]

Chrissy:

I am sorry to hear that. As long as you learned to check each colony before buying.... that is the learning point.

I would really encourage you to have a "welfare" bee yard away from your own. This works for me when hives are suspect and need a little TLC.

I would shake the bees off into new foundation and go from there. Burn the old equipment.

Chef Isaac, Right on, I couldn't have said it better...while I had never heard of the term "Welfare Bee Yard" I have a few of those also...locations where I can take a hive and observe them before I introduce them to a location that is healthy.

Chrissy, One thing, people burn plastic everyday...I have a neighbor that burns all of his garbage including plastic...fortunately he is a quarter mile from me and the prevailing wind blows away from me. While it's not environmentally sound, I wouldn't hesitate to burn up plastic frames that I thought might be infected with AFB. I sure beats sending them to the dump...of course, I suppose if you dug a deep enough hole, you could just bury them. I don't have any machines that dig deep enough to drop contaminated frames into, so I would just burn them up.

BUT, try to save the bees if they don't exhibit symptoms of AFB...

[dcross]

I had foulbrood in 5 of 12 colonies two years ago, shook down two of them, haven't had it since.

I only used terra that fall on the other three to try keeping them until spring to shake down.

I haven't had it since, and I'm looking every time I open the hives.

Is it possible you're just seeing a winterkill frame with dead brood? Mine smell a lot like foulbrood.

[Chrissy Shaw]

I am refering back to packages in the eighties and the recomendations at that time on TM. I seem to recall that the idea was it did not work effectively in water for the treatment of brood diseases, but i don't know if that was the myth we all held to or if it has been reformulated, so on that point i can not state clearly.

DickM, that was my impression from reading one of the magazines this last month, that EFB was the target and that the new drug has been cleared for AFB alone.

JeffH, I have some private messages from Mr. Chef here that seem to indicate that Mr. Chef has not had AFB in his bees. While he is quite correct that after my long trip i should have used the prudence to open the hive, recomendations regarding treatment of AFB i would rather take from those who have had actual experience with such.

Mr. Cross (lordy i have not said that in a very long time), that was another one of my fears. Once i get a notion that that is what i smell, suddenly i smell AFB everywhere. I have been sniffing under the cover crack of that colony twice a day now and the sweet smell that is in that colony is new nectar and brood at this time, but it could be that the scale came from frozen larva and i was so intent on my diagnosis that i added my memory to the cause. Even if this is benign, the equipment goes, new equipment all around. While northern Idaho's winter, where these bees came from, is very close to what i have here, i can not rule out that the Rockies west slope in that state did not experience a warm period where brooding was heavy and then a sudden cold front. I don't wish i had fresh disease to have diagnosed though and these old moldy combs would never give effective results from tests.



"People burn plastic everyday." FBI statistics indicate that people make armed robberies everyday, even so, i understand why one should not burn plastic. The other reason for not burning frames with AFB with honey is that honey becomes more viscous with heat and spores can survive in burn areas from AFB with the added attractant of honey being there. The land fill can dig a far greater pit than i can and the deeper such material is, the less likely that it will ever be exposed to prolonged robbing by others bees. So my plan was to follow Dr. Steven Sheppards recomendations and dispose of these contaminated objects as does Washington State University does. I consulted by phone with Dr. Sheppard prior to getting my bees in regard to AFB and mites. I have also kept a keen eye on the material published in ABJ's "Classroom", by Jerry Hayes and have written back and forth with Dr, Collison regarding decontamination of AFB spores from plastic frames and how extremely unlikely it is to actually achieve full decontamination, even with irradiation treatments or ethelyne oxide treatments.

Am i concerned about AFB? Some would say beyond reason, perhaps. Mites do not destroy equipment, so the top danger, at least until i see CCD in my own equipment seems to be AFB, perhaps nosema as well.

Even so, having heard of shaking and frame exchange as a treatment and assuming that the reports of spore pretty much being universal in honeybee colonies and the fact that there is now no evidence of active AFB in the particular colony i am willing to try the exchange of all equipment and rotate the old frames out and replace with new ones. Given the size of the colony, they are not likely to be robbed, especially as the main flow is near on. I plan now to add this to my series of articles and if it fails everyone will certainly know. I would have rather not had this situation, but i do and now must deal with it.

Mr. Cross, i simply swore off TM with great trembling and shaking of my self. This was my worst fear and now...if i am to get to where i want with lines i must hold fast to that conviction.

[Mike Gillmore]

The land fill can dig a far greater pit than i can and the deeper such material is, the less likely that it will ever be exposed to prolonged robbing by others bees


If you believe this, then you should take a Land Fill tour and see what goes on "before" trash in buried.

If you really do care about the bees, then Burn it!

[Fusion_power]

So a refresher re oxytetracycline aka terramycin is in order. ALL and I mean ALL of the instructions for use are for application via a non-liquid form, i.e. powder or patty. The reason for this is very simple. It is to prevent contaminating honey with an antibiotic. James Tew wrote an article in Gleanings about 10 years ago debunking the "it breaks down in syrup" nonsense that had been published for who knows how many years. So the fact is that syrup feeding does not appreciably diminish terramycin's effectiveness. But I would not feed terra syrup just because it could be inadvertently incorporated into the honey.

I have not used terra in about 3 years, mostly because I am trying very hard to stay organic and sustainable with my bees. They have not been treated for mites. So far, they are taking care of their problems very successfully and that includes no disease outbreaks of AFB, EFB, or even chalkbrood. I hope it stays this way. They are infested with varroa and in one yard they have small hive beetles. Tracheal mites are one issue that I just ignore.

I am using small cell foundation and a 4 year cycle of comb renewal.

Darrel Jones

[Chrissy Shaw]

Well Mike, my neighbor has turned a few people in up here for buring plastic, he uses a call to the fire department and brags about it. The other key issue up here is that we have already had a fire on the face of Mount Hull and one must wait for rain (which is a rare event though it did last night). If there ever was a sound arguement against plastic frames, this is certainly it. On five acres i should be able to dig a deep pit somewhere. Until then it is all wrapped in plastic bags, wooden ware included.

Darrel, I was out of the loop ten years ago, so i did not see Dr. Tews writing. I know from the original formula of patties and having used that on ten Starline nucs (1971) that it did not work at all. I had just switched from the use of Sulfa powder and initially was not very impressed with TM25. I can see how it would be a risk using it with syrup and honey and have never confirmed my own fears that it may as well wind up in honey from being on bees who then enter an open honey cell. The super bactera's were bred up in some of the most sterile environments (hospitals and clinics) and by people who failed to follow directions. I know we older beekeepers in most areas of beekeeping aided in the last and even though i know better, i still carry too much faith in the latter.

I applaud you sticking to your non-chemical approach. It is what i am trying to do as well and i am more firm on this than ever. Some of the great beekeepers of the past followed the syrup myth, which is what i would like to avoid doing with all myth i may have stored over these last four decades. I don't mind being wrong, but i sure do not wish to do wrong.

Chrissy Shaw

[Ishi]

If you go back to my post I said that I shook the hive on foundation gave them a feeder full of syrup with TM in it and closed them for 3 days. Having to feed the colony for 3 days and draw 9 frames of foundation how could there be any TM put in the honey.


From a 6.4 oz. pkg. of Terramycin (oxytetracycline HCI)
EXP 2 – 04 (guess I will throw it away)

Honey Bees
For the control of American Foulbrood caused by Bacillus larvae
200mg/colony

The drug is administered in 3 applications of sugar syrup or 3 dustings at 4-5 day intervals. The drug should be fed early in the spring or fall and consumed by the bees before main honey flow begins to avoid contamination of production honey.



Remove at least 6 weeks prior to main honey flow.


Chrissy

Queens from Canada. The breeder was about 20 miles from the border and at that time there was no restrictions on importing queens from there. They would drive them across and mail them from the US so that they would not be held up in customs. Rules have changed from then.

[NW IN Beekeeper]

[Chef Isaac - I would really encourage you to have a "welfare" bee yard away from your own.]

[Jeffzhear - Chef Isaac, Right on, I couldn't have said it better...while I had never heard of the term "Welfare Bee Yard" I have a few of those also...locations where I can take a hive and observe them before I introduce them to a location that is healthy.]

So you have isolation (or so you think), but what about everyone else that could have a yard within flight distance? This practice is terrible, and really unnecessary. Your welfare/hospital yard was the location from which you bought the hives. If the disease was already there, then why move it elsewhere and chance the spread?

The bottom line is you shouldn't move hives unless you know they're healthy.

If you want to talk about preventing the spread of disease, perhaps you should reconsider the practice of moving sickly hives.

I know I don't want your diseases.
Treat/burn them where they lay.

-Jeff

[Chrissy Shaw]

Also, having given some thought about landfills, especially since a good number of commercial operators are down in that apple valley below me, perhaps, no most assured, honey exposed to those bees down there could cost those folks and i have no right to do that either. So in that regard i am of the opinion that both the sick yard and the trash dump are not places to place disease material.

This old hound is learning some new tricks. I really thought i had all this thought through, so i appreciate all of you helping to remove brain-scale regarding AFB. Part of being set in ones ways with age comes from the pain of moving in directions new and unfamiliar regading what one thinks they know. Truely, there is always something one can rethink...

Chrissy Shaw

[Chef Isaac]

NW:

You can say that about everything..... how about the farmers that do not use chemicals on there farm but the next farmer across the road does... how do you think he feels.... how about the beekeeper who uses chemicals in there hive while the next beekeeper a half mile down the road doesnt want to use chemicals in there hive....

come on......

The welfare yard that I use are for weak colonies that need to be fed and watched over more closely and are for swarms that are caught and need to be evaluated.

I think we all can agree that rushing to make a desicion on a colonies health without proper diagnosis and rushing to make a haste decision is not the right way to go. If a colony is suspect to having a problem of some sort, i will move it to my welfare yard and take a closer look at it.

I agree, I do not want colones that are unhealthy in my gene pool however, I am also not going to rush to make a haste desicion based on information that I neglected to see because i was in a rush.

[okb]

If AFB stays around for 70 years does that mean that the human beekeeper can be a carrier of it or their clothing or home or car or truck?

[Chrissy Shaw]

We used hospital yards, usually at ones home because we used TM. Before TM it was kill and burn. The use of hospital yards is pretty much a note in history. Of course i am the only one to rush and make an error.

Aside from that, the idea of containment is because a active AFB colony often is weak and getting weaker. Especially in the fall, robbing can carry AFB far and wide. It has nothing to do with weak genetics. Abundant drones are not the main problem with an active case of AFB, or old stored combs of AFB. In western Washington, in the Orting valley, my former inspector, the late Harry Hiller, often warned me about having yards up that way because somewhere was a reserve of AFB that infected almost every yard he inspected up there. Somewhere there was a source, perhaps a dead colony in a wall, or perhaps a few such reserves of old combs that reinfected bees due to robbing out the latest swarms honey stores.

Initially i mention the old days only as a point of history, not as a proposal. I also mulched forty dollars this last week. I do make errors in life and have never stated that i do not. Life does not stop because of errors and i am very sure this will not be my last. I very much hope it is not the last i notice. Afterall, problems are simply life circumstances seeking solutions. In all my many years i never met a perfect beekeeper, only read about them, there probably is a good reason for that dispartity and my hunch is it has little to do with beekeeping.

I never will be the best beekeeper ever. No such animal exists save in the imagination. I do pretty darn well overall and have know many beekeepers who do pretty darn well overall. We share ideas, learn from each other and sometimes share a good laugh at what we do, or have done. The best beekeepers i have ever met do not take themselves too seriously at the end of the day. There are serious problems, but that is just life. If this yard was swept clean from AFB as a result of this, i would burn it all, buy new equipment and start again. This is an isolated yard, but even still i would not wait for 100% to fall. I share this world with other beekeepers, some i may never know and they don't need this problem. I could lay this all on another sideliner, how dare he, but there is no proof he planned this and i am not too sure i would want to know if he did. Fault does not fix problems, it only makes some other person feel better than someone else, often times without genuine warrent.

It could be i misdiagnosed winterkill as was mentioned. Then i would have done two errors--i better watch out, i may not pass the class.

Chrissy Shaw--laughing

[Chrissy Shaw]

I talked with my friend from whom the bees came tonight and it seems that he only got them back from another fellow in the spring and there was equipment switches and it was still deep snow, so he'd not been in them either. I now know who he did business with and will not be doing any business with that fellow.

That eases my mind regarding my friend, he'd been forthright and honest in every other dealing, people generally don't change on one item like that. It may well be the equipment that i suspect to be diseased was placed under the top unit on purpose. My friend had to rattle this guy to get his bees back in the first place. The sad part is this guy hauls to California so that form of bad beekeeping business is not a local issue.

There were a number of issues about the condition of the lower deep i could not make sense out of. The condition of the top deep comapred to the bottom made no sense and the type of frames were different as well. If i do have AFB i have a character near Montana to thank. My advice to you pal, take up gardening.

Chrissy Shaw

[Aspera]

I always enjoy your commentary Chrissy....primarily because on your willingness to share mistakes and embrace the ever humbling nature of beekeeping. I'm sure that anyone could end up with AFB and I enjoyed hearing about how you handled the situation. I learn so much by comparing peoples habits and opinions to what is published as the "correct" way.

[Chrissy Shaw]

I rely upon feedback, so that i can reconsider what i think i know. Like anyone else, i can get stuck in a rut and just because something has always been done a certain way has no bearing on its correctness. Half the time i think some profound thing i have done with bees has caused a great surplus of bees and honey, just as often it has to do with things being just right. The other side of that is when things go afoul, i too often take the credit for that as well. Is it not the primary human trait to assume we have mass control over so much?

I enjoy your posting and they cause me to think Aspera. I heard from a reliable source that your state has even more bears than here. A humorous aside; locals here claim there is a "brown bear" here. I guess they mean a brownie, the legedary Kodiak coastal grizzly in Alaska (fish is good food mind you) and this particular bear went from estimates of 400 pounds to 600 in just one week. Can you blame a bear for getting on a bus and taking the trip south if the food is that great? So somewhere out here is a 250-300 pound brown colored black bear who must really be getting worried over weight gain.

Chriissy Shaw

[Aspera]

Yes we have many black bears in the middle of PA. My apiary inspector has become pretty well known for bear-proofing bee yards. He told me that he thinks that the solar panels are the way to go. Our bears don get too large, but from what I've heard they are the destructive equivilent of a 200 lb raccoon. I was up in Denali Alaska four years ago, and saw some pretty big bears (grizzly, I think). Hehe, Alaskan fish is definitely a happy way to gain a couple hundred pounds. I really enjoyed seeing the bears, but was relieved that none of them ever investigated our campsite.

[dcross]

Chrissy, how's it going?

I had a few sleepless nights, found some perforated cappings in one hive, but the dead larvae weren't melted. Just got word back from Beltsville, no disease found:)

[Michael Bush]

>If AFB stays around for 70 years does that mean that the human beekeeper can be a carrier of it or their clothing or home or car or truck?

No.