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[Hebeegeebee]

I am worrying about beekeepers who leave broken comb laying on the floor of their apiary and who clean their supers by just leaving them in a stack for all the local bees to rob clean. I am worrying about the beekeepers who feed their bees honey from the bought jar and not just honey from that hive, and I am worrying about the beekeepers who wear the same pair of dirty leather gloves from one year of the next and I'm worrying about the way the natural beekeepers harvest their comb so that my bees might get to their honey.

Perhaps I am worrying too much? Sigh.

I think not!

 

[gavin]

Now there are very few feral colonies; it's beekeepers who will be harbouring the disease in most cases. Sloppy practices - when there is a known outbreak - such as leaving parts to be robbed - should result in the beekeeper undergoing serious chastisement.

Yes, but I suspect that there may also be feral colony sources of disease. The case near me might have come from an old feral site in a castle - intermittently occupied for centuries more than likely. Even if the bees die out due to Varroa or other causes, and these ones do, occasional occupation might reawaken a local outbreak. Bees move in, build a colony, store honey, die out due to Varroa, get robbed and spread it.

There have been cases near Edinburgh in the last two summers, just a few miles from a case which occurred around 30 years ago in the bees of the father of someone I know. That seems to me possibly the reawakening of old infection somewhere, then the spread to apiaries within flying distance.

 

[BBG]

My nearest beekeeping neighbour left a couple of dead hives open to be robbed in the past few weeks, wears dirty leather gloves, leaves open feeders to be cleaned out by bees/wasps, dump hunks of comb in front of hives, but hopefully not that stupid as to feed bees from bought honey!

I may yet have my most fervent wish and have all cities ring-fenced to keep them out of the countryside

 

[tonybloke]

I may yet have my most fervent wish and have all cities ring-fenced to keep them out of the countryside

my wish is to keep all Motorways out of Norfolk!!

 

[BBG]

my wish is to keep all Motorways out of Norfolk!!

I feel we could be creating a movement that would unite many like-minded people

Hope they never Mway Norfolk

Second thoughts - the ring fencing stops the demand for more highways - in the old days - city dwellers only came out at w/es and two weeks during the year - now they want to live there too.

 

[Polyanwood]

I've just bought 100s of pairs of nitrile gloves in different sizes. There will be no liberalism if any of the new batch of students are nervous this year. I'm not having their marigolds in my boxes, and certainly not their gauntlets. If they are too scared to handle the bees in nitriles, then they can just watch.

 

[tonybloke]

I've just bought 100s of pairs of nitrile gloves in different sizes. There will be no liberalism if any of the new batch of students are nervous this year. I'm not having their marigolds in my boxes, and certainly not their gauntlets. If they are too scared to handle the bees in nitriles, then they can just watch.

I always use nitriles, cheap enough to dispose of between inspections, so lowering the risk of disease transfer

 

[Hivemaker.]

my wish is to keep all Motorways out of Norfolk!!

My wish would be to keep all holliday makers out of Exmoor.

 

[tonybloke]

norfolk would be almost empty without the tourists

 

[Dusty Rhodes]

(Someone has to say it.)

The best thing about Norfolk are the Broads.


Over to you guys.



D

 

[tonybloke]

I've been across the widest broad in Norfolk

 

[Hebeegeebee]

That's enough of your mis-spent youth Tony.

 

[RoofTops]

Hi all
WARNING !!!!
have just been notified by the NBU that AFB has been found within 3kms of (LEE) SE12

I have checked my hives today all seems ok

For those worrying about AFB it is probably worth a quick reminder of how to check for it because put simply this is a very difficult disease to detect, especially in the early stages.

The first thing you have to do is shake all the bees off the frame you want to inspect. A few stragglers won't matter but you need to see the caps of all sealed brood. If you don't shake the bees off you will not see the tell tale signs - of which the easiest to spot are:

A pepper pot brood pattern - which you can also get with chalk brood but the mummies in the empty cells give the game away for the latter.

Cappings of sealed brood slightly sunken. There may only be a few so don't expect great swathes of sunken cappings - you need to look carefully across the full face of the frame.

And that's it and believe me it is difficult to see even when, as in my case, the bee inspector gave me the frame and said it had AFB and could I see it? Could I heck - until he pointed out what to look for.

The above is why in England 95% of AFB cases are found by bee inspectors as most beekeepers simply cannot identify it.

Confirmation of the disease needs further tests but these are straightforward after the tricky initial identification.

The Fera booklet has pictures and further advice and well worth re-reading if you haven't looked at it recently.

 

[mbc]

For those worrying about AFB it is probably worth a quick reminder of how to check for it because put simply this is a very difficult disease to detect, especially in the early stages.

The first thing you have to do is shake all the bees off the frame you want to inspect. A few stragglers won't matter but you need to see the caps of all sealed brood. If you don't shake the bees off you will not see the tell tale signs - of which the easiest to spot are:

A pepper pot brood pattern - which you can also get with chalk brood but the mummies in the empty cells give the game away for the latter.

Cappings of sealed brood slightly sunken. There may only be a few so don't expect great swathes of sunken cappings - you need to look carefully across the full face of the frame.

And that's it and believe me it is difficult to see even when, as in my case, the bee inspector gave me the frame and said it had AFB and could I see it? Could I heck - until he pointed out what to look for.

The above is why in England 95% of AFB cases are found by bee inspectors as most beekeepers simply cannot identify it.

Confirmation of the disease needs further tests but these are straightforward after the tricky initial identification.

The Fera booklet has pictures and further advice and well worth re-reading if you haven't looked at it recently.

Its alot simpler than that really, look at brood frame, if you cant see all the capped brood move the bees or shake some bees off untill you can and then flick the capping off any partially capped, broken or sunken cells, investigate further if contents look brown. AFB makes the larvae sticky so they wont come out whole, "roping" instead. If you find brown goo which ropes when you try and pull it out with a matchstick or the corner of your hivetool then you've succesfully found AFB, well done !

 

[itma]

And a good sniff can be helpful too?

 

[RoofTops]

And a good sniff can be helpful too?

Only in the later stages - the smell is from a secondary bug.

 

[mbc]

Only in the later stages - the smell is from a secondary bug.

Not so, AFB stinks.
I believe the secondary bug infection thing makes larvae killed by EFB stink.

 

[itma]

Only in the later stages - the smell is from a secondary bug.

It is well worth keeping in mind, as deserving closer investigation.
If you open the hive and it doesn't smell 'nicely' of honey and wax, you need to investigate. Especially if you are in Sarf London or the East End...

 

[RoofTops]

Not so, AFB stinks.
I believe the secondary bug infection thing makes larvae killed by EFB stink.

Quote from Fera leaflet: (my italics and the "then" means after the early stages)

"There may then be an unpleasant smell associated with decomposition."

But as ITMA says any bad smell needs investigating. However, I wasn't trying to list all the symptoms - just the ones you might see in the early stages of the disease. The later scales which appear, for example, are mega difficult to see in my experience.