What would you do with this equipment?

6551 Views 41 Replies 19 Participants Last post by fieldsofnaturalhoney, Mar 26, 2014

ricky_arthur

Discussion Starter · Mar 20, 2014

Recently an aquaintance let me know they had some bee equipment they didnt need and wanted to know if I wanted it. Someone had been keeping some hives on their property but had moved and left the bees a few years ago and last winter the last of them died out. My main concern was I had heard from a local beek that he had been asked to look at her dead outs and had suspected one of them had AFB. After asking several times if I wanted it i went over and looked at it and took it with me. The person giving the equipment away knows nothing about bees, but I aksed her what she did with the suspected afb hive. She told me she had burned it.

I'm not 100% positive she did. there were 5 queen excluders 10-10frame deeps and 5 med supers. 5 bottom boards and 5 inner covers, 5 entrance feeders and misc frames. All the equipment for 5 hives.

notice everything in 5's ? Im thinking if she had burned one set of hive equipment I would have sen an extra feeder and queen excluder.

Anyway, what to do with it?

for starters.

Table Wood Furniture Soil Floor

Flame Fire Heat Bonfire Event

Grilling Barbecue Cooking Barbecue grill Grillades

I have been scorching the boxes and I may try to see if the boxes will fit in my shop oven for 30 min at 325. but in the end I havn't decided wether to even use them or not. What would you do with all this equipment?

Ricky

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Jon B

· #2 · Mar 20, 2014

My first recommendation would be to get rid of all of it since you can't verify the history of the equipment. If you are determined to salvage some of it you can torch the inside of the boxes and lids and use them again. I would be really weary about reusing the frames. With the bee yard going so long without attention, as the hives died off there would have been a lot of robbing. The hive with AFB could have been heavily robbed and spread disease to the other hives.

mgstei1

· #3 · Mar 20, 2014

Bleach it all in a drum after removing all the comb and propolis. Be sure and throw your tools in with it.
Let it sit for about an hour in the bleach water and then air dry it all for a good week in the sun.
Just mark it all as "salvaged" and date it with a Sharpie.
Germs, bacteria, and viruses have hell with Bleach!!

GLOCK

· #4 · Mar 20, 2014

I would never bring in any old beekeeping equipment that may of had AFB in to my apiary . Just think how bad you would feel if you get AFB lots of time and resources that just crumble and ya have to start over. I would of never took the stuff I would burn everything but thats me . Some my disagree but I'm a Paranoid sort when it come to my apiary. Good luck .

Vance G

· #5 · Mar 20, 2014

I bought used equipment and it turned out to be loaded with AFB. I started 30 splits and all developed it. That being said. If you keep bees for any length of time, you too are going to have a colony contract AFB. The spores are everywhere. AFB doesn't just happen to bad beekeepers. Get a weedburner out of harborfreight and carbonize the inside of your boxes and bleach is cheap! Get a tub that will accept at least half a box lengthwise and dip those charred boxes in straight bleach and they no longer have spores. Covers and bottom boards can be treated the same. The frames need destroyed by fire if you have a place to burn them. Boil your tools and sanitize your extracting equipment. Go to a homebrew shop and buy Idophor. An iodine no rinse sanitizer to wash everything down cheaply.

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Acebird

· #6 · Mar 20, 2014

Well you got the equipment there. Look for evidence of AFB. If you don't know what to look for find someone you trust to look for you. The equipment looks new. I can't see burning it because of fear.

Mike Gillmore

· #7 · Mar 20, 2014

I've been tempted with free equipment a few times ... it's enticing, but I could never get past the risk factor. I hear the horror stories as Vance described, and worse, and it's kept me from taking the plunge. When I consider the cost it has the potential to incur, it's just not worth it to me.

I suppose you could go through all the sanitizing procedures, but when you add up all the time and expense involved, I would rather just invest that into new equipment and not worry about it. That's just me, but I sleep well at night.

kyell

· #8 · Mar 21, 2014

Check with your state apiarist or other state beekeeping authority to see if they have a ETO sterilization chamber at their disposal. I have read that these chambers are not common in state ag department beekeeping programs; but if they have one in your state, then you should be able to reuse all the equipment after it has been treated in one of these chambers. You might search Beesource for other posts on AFB.
Kyle

Roland

· #9 · Mar 21, 2014

Sell it to someone else, with warning, take the money and buy new. The risk is not worth the cost of new.

Crazy Roland

VodoBaas1

· #10 · Mar 21, 2014

If you know of a place that will hot wax dip the woodenware I would do that. Just my .02

Acebird

· #11 · Mar 21, 2014

kyell said:
Check with your state apiarist or other state beekeeping authority to see if they have a ETO sterilization chamber at their disposal.

ETO is a very deadly gas and it takes time to dissipate from the product that is treated. I don't know if bees would readily use equipment that has been ETO sterilized and if they did there might be casualties.

Acebird

· #12 · Mar 21, 2014

Roland said:
Sell it to someone else, with warning, take the money and buy new. The risk is not worth the cost of new.

Crazy Roland

This is what makes me question in another topic about the asset value of used equipment. There is such a fear of AFB in used equipment even when the number of cases don't warrant it. How much new could you buy by selling something used?

odfrank

· #13 · Mar 21, 2014

Don't burn plastic foundation. Air pollution.

ricky_arthur

Discussion Starter · #14 · Mar 21, 2014

Ok. Here is my approach. After reading studies on removing AFB spores I burned all the foundation. Scorched the boxes and am in the process of baking each box at 325 for 2 hours. Probably over kill. And definitely more work than just building from scratch. But if I decide to use or sell the equipment at least I have done all that I can. This box is not yet scorched. But you can see how it fits into my shop oven. Study says this should remove 100% of surface spores and 99% of imbedded spores.

Wood Gas Ceiling

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WesternWilson

· #15 · Mar 21, 2014

I had a run in with purchased bees last season which turned out to carry EFB. My whole apiary ended up under quarantine and I lost my entire honey harvest. So I am not a fan of buying and rehabbing used equipment. Particularly when the equipment comes from an apiary where the beekeeper medicated preventive-ly (and almost all beekeepers used to medicate constantly, particularly new-bees as that is what they are told to do), you have no way of knowing if the spores for EFB or AFB are present until they blossom inside your own bees.

In your place I would buy new. You will sleep better! You can use the old boxes for other things ie. a 10 frame deep or two and an old cover make a good hive-side workstation. I saw an ad for using stacked old supers as potato growing boxes.

Acebird

· #16 · Mar 21, 2014

WesternWilson said:
You can use the old boxes for other things ie. a 10 frame deep or two and an old cover make a good hive-side workstation.

If there was an infestation of AFB I would not want to use the boxes as a work station in my apiary. The potato boxes would be fine if they were far enough away from the apiary.

sqkcrk

· #17 · Mar 21, 2014

It didn't cost you anything but your time, so you have nothing invested. Whereas your other equipment and bees you have invested more than time in. I'd have a nice fire.

Roland

· #18 · Mar 22, 2014

Acebird - we run our commercial operation as two seperate entities. One is old equipment that we "inherited", the other all new since 2007. We have not had ONE case of AFB or EFB in the new equipment. On the other hand, after two years(2006,2007) of no foulbrood in the old equipment, every year we seem to have a dozen hives with it. On the whole, you could not pay me to take old equipment, and can not understand why anyone would buy nucs. The problems can take a few years to pop up, and by then you have mixed the infected equipment in with all of your uninfected equipment.

As for the plastic foundation, ya, what do you do when that is infected?

Crazy Roland

WBVC

· #19 · Mar 22, 2014

Aren't we taking a risk each time we purchase nucs? It seems the frames they come on are a mish mash of aged equipment.

fieldsofnaturalhoney

· #20 · Mar 22, 2014

Roland said:
Sell it to someone else, with warning, take the money and buy new. The risk is not worth the cost of new.

Crazy Roland

If you wouldn't use it in your own apiary, why would you warn someone else and try to sell it to them?

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