[Capricorn]

I tried to do a walk away split and failed. I ended up with a weak laying worker hive (a single deep). I started in a deep but it quickly only had 2-3 frames of bees, so I moved them into a nuc. Over a month I added three frames with eggs and larva (I added them each about a week apart). I noticed that when the hive got weak in the deep that there was a pretty big problem with chalk brood. Now when I look at the frames in the nuc I see shotgun patterned cell caps that are darker then normal. The cell caps seem about the height of the cell. At first I though maybe AFB, but I don't smell an odor. I haven't done a rope test but I will. Looking at pictures it looks more like EFB. However, looking at some chalk brood photos, I'm wondering if it could be left over cells from the chalk brood? It does kind of resemble this photo I found online:

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~reute001/images/disease/F5a-chalkbrood.jpg

However I didn't see larva in there last time I looked. I'm wondering if a weak hive will leave behind the old chalkbrood capings? I'm at the point where I think I am just going to shake out the nuc, but now wondering if its is EFB if I need to burn my frames and scorch my box. Kind of a bummer, I was thinking about adding the deep and frames back to my strong hive, which is full at a deep and two mediums of honey. I was thinking I could add back the deep and then harvest two mediums instead of just one! But I definitely don't want to contaminate the strong hive..

I want to start running more colonies (2-4, I have only 1 queen right atm). But I'm hesitant to keep buying things, like queens at 20$ a pop. Maybe I should look into raising queens, or catching swarms?

 

[clarkfarm]

I don't know anything about foul brood but I have experience with chalkbrood. I brought in chalkbrood with a nuc I bought that had 4 frames. Kept thinking it would go away as the Spring turned to Summer and sure enough it did. However, this coincided with the queen moving into a new deep on top of the original frames. Just about the time I thought the chalkbrood was a thing of the past, it came back just as bad. This was now in the hot weather of summer. Queen was working in the bottom deep again. By this time the hive was so depleted I figured the colony was a goner. I could not find a local queen and was afraid to mix this hive with another. So just kissed it goodbye and waited for the inevitable.

But the experience made me wonder if the chalkbrood spores were only in the original 4 frames I bought. So I placed them above an excluder and when all brood had hatched (or died from CB) I burned the 4 frames. Bottom line, to my surprise by September instead of dying out the hive revived on its own with their own new queen, came through the winter strong and this year is my strongest hive with no evidence of chalkbrood. My point is, even if your problem is chalkbrood, you might want to consider trashing any old frames that seem to be giving you the problem. Most beeks don't destroy frames for chalkbrood but it worked for me, Good luck. Hope its not foul brood.

 

[Capricorn]

Hey Clark,

Thanks for getting back to me. I appreciate hearing about your experience. I don't want to knowingly introduce any problem into my good hive, so I think I'll probably end up shaking off the frames and burning any chalkbrood ones. Who knows.. :ws

 

[fish_stix]

Requeen and ventilate your hive better!

 

[Capricorn]

If I had access to a cheap queen, I probably try it. Although I hear after a hive has been in laying worker status for a while it takes longer for them to accept a queen...

 

[Capricorn]

I made a vent shim last night and installed it this morning..