American Foul Brood ?

WISHBONE said:

A friend of mine called a few minutes ago & said he has AFB in one of his hives. Since I don't know much about it , I'm asking what he should do? He had another beekeeper come by to check, he said afb, so he wrapped the hive in heavy trash bags & will burn & bury in the morning. He had taken a empty super off yesterday & put it on another hive. What about this other hive, should he destroy it also, or can it be saved with terramicine or something else? What should he do with the other hives in his yard? He caught these bees about a week ago & used my beevac to get them. Should we burn the beevac? Beevac is not a big deal, I can build another one. I don't know what to tell him, I've had bees all my life, but never had afb that I know of. Thanks

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How did they diagnose AFB? It is a brood disease and you would have to have brood to diagnose it. A week in, I can't imagine having enough brood to make that determination. Even if you saved some brood comb from the capture, it would be suspect that it was damaged in the capture.


Sorry, these are questions not answers...

EFB is more common than AFB and if you do not re-use the cutout's comb, and make the bees draw all new comb from sugar water, you shouldn't have to deal with EFB.

AFB shows up after brood is capped and I don't think 7 days is long enough unless you brought capped brood with the bees when capturing.

EFB is transmitted by honey, I would take the super off your hive and shove it in a freezer during investigation, or harvest, melt wax and burn frames, scorch inside of box.

He did take brood from the old hive. The man that came out called the state inspector & they decided it was afb. I have not seen the hive myself. I had to work all day & then went to start a trapout with the Hogan swarm harvestor method ( 1st time trying this). He said the brood had holes in the caps & brown & runny when they stuck a small wire in it. It came out stringy in several cells. It does seem like it is afb, but he said nothing about a smell. The inspector is in Ca. & can't come to check. To tell the truth, I didn't know we had a state inspector. I'm 58 & had bees has long as I can remember, & checked deadouts a lot over the years, but don't remember ever seeing stringy or foul smelling brood. It could have been damaged during capture. Thank yall for the response.

If it IS AFB, I would get the super off the other hive, burn that too, and watch the other hive carefully.

Antibiotics will not kill spores, I would watch the other hive closely rather than treat - if it is infected, Terramycin will only mask the symptoms by killing active bacteria but NOT spores. I myself prefer to know if a hive is infected NOW, rather than mask the problem and find out a month or year from now - after it has infected other hives too.

American foul brood is a slow killer it takes time to destroy a hive. during that slow time it spreads to other hives. if you have it destroy it now with a bon fire. but are you sure of your diagnosis? send a sample to the usda lab, Beltsville Maryland. I too wonder how you can see stringy brood in a week? maybe sqkcrk can add some light, as a retired ny bee inspector mark knows this subject better than any one I know... I got put out of the bee business by AFB 45 years ago.

I thought this was from a cutout, but it was a big swarm he caught about 3 weeks ago. He put some old brood comb in the bottom to help it get started. Don't know if the old comb or the swarm had the afb. He did burn & bury every thing this morning. I was not in on the diagnosis, but I don't doubt it. He just called me late last night with questions. I am concerned about his other 2 hives & a bee tree in the front yard. Could the afb have been in the swarm & should I burn the bee vac boxes? Thanks, Randy

for afb to show in 3 weeks it was much more likely bad drawn infected comb rather than the bees. if he had had more comb in this batch or stored with it, it should go too, frames and all... the spores last forever, when they get up to a critical number there is an outbreak. some races of bees can handle this low level stuff better than others.. years ago I had mid-nite bees, they were real susceptible to afb, you won't find many mid-nites today.