Acetic Acid Treatment

[Rory Fields]

All you need for a sulphur burner is a tin can with a lid and some holes drilled in it and a bent nail- I bought one of the Thornes ones for a few quid in the sale but a treacle tin would make a DIY one. The sulphur comes as round discs with a hole in them and I use two discs for a stack of six supers.

I don't know if it will eradicate chalkbrood and nosema ..nothing on Thornes website to indicate that it does.

https://www.thorne.co.uk/health-feeding/pests-diseases/wax-moth/sulphur-burner.html
and the late great Hivemaker would have said if it did in this thread:

https://beekeepingforum.co.uk/threads/sulphur-strips-and-disinfection.13948/

Concensus online generally seems to be that sulphur doesn't kill chalkbrood or nosema, so I'm leaning towards acetic tbh, which the majority of sources state does. Acetic, air them, then DiPel is looking my likeliest route, just to be as belt abd braces as possible

 

[pargyle]

Concensus online generally seems to be that sulphur doesn't kill chalkbrood or nosema, so I'm leaning towards acetic tbh, which the majority of sources state does. Acetic, air them, then DiPel is looking my likeliest route, just to be as belt abd braces as possible

Well ... the further question is - have your colonies suffered from chalkbrood and nosema ?

Chalkbrood is rarely something that kills a colony, it's often present in early spring - particularly when it's cold and damp in the early spring build up. Very often signs of chalkbrood will disappear as the weather warms up. If you are seeing large amounts of chalkbrood present in the colony throughout the season the perceived wisdom is to replace the queen. Unless your colonies are seriously threatened by chalkbrood you may be worrying unnecessarily.

Similarly, Nosema - people mistake short term dysentry in a colony for Nosema Apis - a few spots of bee faeces on the front if the hive is not unusual, but it may not be Nosema. Nosema Ceranae will only manifest itself when you see a colony that is seriously weakened there will be few visible signs and no dysentry. If you suspect either variant there is a simple test for both types of Nosema and you should be either testing yourself or getting someone with a microscope to do it for you. Hivemaker had a formula (sticky on this forum) for treating and preventing Nosema using Thymol.

https://beekeepingforum.co.uk/threads/hivemakers-thymol-recipe-see-sticky-post.13381/
It strikes me you are looking for prophylactic treatments for both chalkbrood and nosema and the reality is that they are both carried by the bees and you are looking to treat frames of comb to either try and prevent something that may occur - so why bother ? When, perhaps, you should be thinking about whether your colonies are inflicted with these infections and in the case of Nosema - treat the bees..

But ...Like I said previously ... if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

[Rory Fields]

Well ... the further question is - have your colonies suffered from chalkbrood and nosema ?

Chalkbrood is rarely something that kills a colony, it's often present in early spring - particularly when it's cold and damp in the early spring build up. Very often signs of chalkbrood will disappear as the weather warms up. If you are seeing large amounts of chalkbrood present in the colony throughout the season the perceived wisdom is to replace the queen. Unless your colonies are seriously threatened by chalkbrood you may be worrying unnecessarily.

Similarly, Nosema - people mistake short term dysentry in a colony for Nosema Apis - a few spots of bee faeces on the front if the hive is not unusual, but it may not be Nosema. Nosema Ceranae will only manifest itself when you see a colony that is seriously weakened there will be few visible signs and no dysentry. If you suspect either variant there is a simple test for both types of Nosema and you should be either testing yourself or getting someone with a microscope to do it for you. Hivemaker had a formula (sticky on this forum) for treating and preventing Nosema using Thymol.

https://beekeepingforum.co.uk/threads/hivemakers-thymol-recipe-see-sticky-post.13381/
It strikes me you are looking for prophylactic treatments for both chalkbrood and nosema and the reality is that they are both carried by the bees and you are looking to treat frames of comb to either try and prevent something that may occur - so why bother ? When, perhaps, you should be thinking about whether your colonies are inflicted with these infections and in the case of Nosema - treat the bees..

But ...Like I said previously ... if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Yes, I know about chalkbrood and nosema - all good advice for a newbie though - wouldn't be fixing it if chalkbrood wasn't a vexation of mine. Thymolated syrup is something I prefer to steer clear of if possible - an inconsistency of mine when I'm all for knocking chalkbrood back as far as possible. I'm planning on sterilising drawn comb that have had chalkbrood and will still contain chalkbrood spores to save the bees time and effort and myself money. I obviously cull any dreadfully affected colonies and I've sited my bees in good positions at the top of hills with trees behind; I've no concerns there. I've had some bought in queens before and had a few that swiftly became susceptible to chalk I suspect was already endemic in the hive (though I was still disappointed that a few of said bought queens proved unable to clear it out and we all agree, is failure on the part of the queen in the main, but the sticky spores hang around in huge numbers in the comb whilst requeening and the subsequent new bees on sterilised comb will logically carry a much lower bacillus threshold), so I'm wishing to knock down the pathogen load as much as possible to give my current hygenic and future queens, less obstacles to contend with. I'm v fortunate in that apart from a commercial beekeeper's 30 breeders nearby, nobody else keeps bees as I'm in the arse end of nowhere, so have a lot of control over which colonies I choose to raise drones etc. Nosema is obviously only diagnosable with a microscope, which I don't have, but I'm, as you say, thinking prophylactically - obviously both nosemas are like to exist in subclinical levels, so blitzing the nosema is just an added bonus. Killing chalkbrood spores, which if you start off with AMM and swarm mongrels like I did, is my priority. It doesn't kill any of my 100 colomies you're right, except perhaps in one poor swarm I collected a few years ago from my brother's at Wallsend, but given my fortunate position of having an isolated home apiary, I see no reason why I can't rid this apiary of it at least, and keep my poorer bees that I use just for production, elsewhere. So has anyone experience of using acetic in poly hives for sterilisation purposes? Cheers