I've found & destroyed a hive with AFB in a yard that has 5 other hives. The hive was being robbed but it was only 2 days prior that I had checked this yard and things looked normal. I wasin the process of making 5 double nucs into double 10-frame deeps and had done all but this AFB hive. I needed more eequipment so I returned 2days later & found this hive being robbed. As I mentioned I burned the bees & frames and scorched the boxes.
I medicated the other 5 hives in hopes that there wasn't robbing going on prior to brood in the other hives that was old enough to not get AFB infection.
Just wondering if others have had hives with AFB yet still have hives in the same area survive?
Thanks
Mark B "One case of AFB does not doom the whole apiary. It does need to addressed properly. Which means burning ALL of the frames, brood combs and honey combs. Doing so in a pit allows one to bury everything after the fire is out and making any honey unobtainable by bees. "
I have found that a hot fire will destroy all the honey and in my case there was no honey left to obtain by bees.I use the same pit to burn any suspect/old beegear.
Etholyn oxide fumigation under high pressure was somewhat a popular technique used to address AFB infections, a way to save the equipment. A friend of mine has a bunch of supers w/ ETO and AFB stenciled on some of his medium supers. Under pressure the ETO will kill spores. It is also carcinogenic for humans handling it. So, for the most part, the practice was abandoned. Leastwise the portable units in most of the Eastern US States.
State of Virginia used to fumigate (ETO) hundreds and hundreds of our frames and boxes 20 years ago. Not sure if they still offer that service now or not. It used to be free.
Challenger, what precautions have you taken to sanitize your hive tool, smoker, veil and the like?
This is a good video on the subject, at about four minutes into it, (personally, I don't like the idea of prophylactic use of antibiotics for EFB or AFB)
Maybe your question was rhetorical? How does a hive of bees get infected from a veil? How does it get infected from a smoker or hive tool as far as that goes? My smoker and hive tool do not carry teaspoon sized clumps of honey from one hive to another and deposit them in the next hive. You must gave been being facetious.
This is a rather old video by Dr Keith Delaplane. I tried to find something a bit more recent by keith but it would not open for me. It would be interesting to see what his approach to AFB is now?
IMO if bees robbed the AFB colony they spread the disease. All hives in a range from approx 3-4 km are in danger. An outbreak can come anytime, if not this year, the next year or later. As soon as there are enough spores per cell there is an AFB outbreak. I would say, the whole bee yard has now a big problem.
There are only two ways to solve the problem; fire or radiation. Antibiotics will hide the problem but it will come back very soon even worse.
IMO this is opinion is based on a knee jerk mentality.
It makes the point for saving boxes at minimum, "As soon as there are enough spores per cell there is an AFB outbreak."
So the spores in the cells are the issue? Why burn woodenware - rhetorical question.
3-4km to me says that a hive with AFB will contaminate another apiary. This one will contaminate another and so on. Using your scenario all apiaries would be wiped out unless they are miles apart.
Lastly who actually does a complete sanitization between each hive inspection? Simply put there is always a risk/reward for all situations that may have detrimental results. The amount of effort one puts into preventing AFB while there is no AFB outbreak present (there are AFB spores in all hives) = risk. An apiary that has a clean AFB history = reward.
Personally I would love to be able to start a new out yard with bees in new equipment and keep it isolated and have dedicated inspection tools etc. I know this would never be practical for me. I would slip up somewhere and put other yards in peril.
My pleasure. Not really the kind of info I was looking forward to exchanging when I took up this hobby though, lol.
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