Bio security

[hedgerow pete]

I have in the past ranted on about bio security at the bee shed. honestly I did.

What are you opinions on this subject and more importantly what are your bio security measures? do you have any or do you think its not worth it?

 

[East Yorks New Bee]

I think it is a good idea Pete. I have separate gear (smoker, hive tool, jacket & veil) for my home apiary and my out apiary. What the point in transferring any diseases (god forbid) from one to the other? No point finding out when its too late. My opinion anyway.

 

[Apis]

Washing soda, I always have a pot of it in the bag and always wash down any tools I use. Disposable gloves, care in removal of waste all help but living so close to a large port where bio security is barely considered, I wonder if sometimes I'm wasting my time. Hopefully I won't cross-contaminate between my or my friends apiaries though.

 

[Baggyone]

Seperate kit for each place, especially gloves

 

[tonybloke]

disposable nitrile gloves for each hive, and a clean suit for any other site visits.

 

[Somerford]

remind me of your view Pete, in case I ever pop by !

 

[hedgerow pete]

My views are some what hard core, as untill the foot and mouth I had never taken any , but after "helping " friends and farmers though it i went a little ott some what, I have also spent three year's removing all traces of varroa from my bee's so i dont want to allow a human to bring it back, other bees yes people no so my rules are easy enough you turn up and use my equipment that includes jackets and if needed trousers or over alls and my gloves, ( you will need them some days)If you turn up with your own equipment the answer is a big NO. as for going to other peoples apiaries i have a second bee suit and outfit that i keep at home that never goes to the ranch so never the two shall meet, it is washed every single time it leaves the house, so am i and a change of clothes before heading to the bee shed. as for equipment i prefere to either use washing soda or a flame to clean my kit with altho I do use alot of jayes fuild at the ranch now as it is a very good cleaner/steriliser . i used to buy the disposible suits from thornes as they are great for one off visits , but i dont do to many of those any more.

I have avalible to me four out apiaries one of which is under my tight control and for security aswell as bio security reasons only the partners i worrk with are allowed to go there, if all survive the winter (25% lost predicted) we will have a pile of 48 varroa free hives to start honey collection from or to produce varroa free nucs

when you suddenly think that the idea of a breeding base of 50 varroa free hives and the avalible income that could produce from those hives , at increased rateds for CLEAN varroa free bees you see why I get very twitchy about it

 

[RoofTops]

Are these the same bees which you have previously said never swarm and produce more honey than I've heard of coming from a hive in the UK?

Now they are varroa free?

They will indeed be very valuable bees.

 

[Bcrazy]

HP

If as you say you have a number of colonies that are Varroa free, and you have been working to that goal, then would you publicise your work so others may try to emulate your great achievement?

Regards;

 

[Somerford]

just an observation Pete - I am a little uncertain how a varroa could transfer from a 'human host' as I wasn't aware we were carriers - how does that fit in with your reasoning ?

my view, although I'll mention here that if others want 'scrubs & coal tar soap' standards in their Apiaries I am happy to oblige, is that a bit of dirt is good. I hold my hands up in horror when one is srubbing one's tools/overalls/hands to an inch of one's life out of season so to speak (IE when there is no control zone in place, a la FMD).

Most farmers would agree with this for standard herds. When I see friends with chickens (16,000 plus) I am asked have I been with chickens in the past 3 days. I always say yes as we keep chickens - in which case I am ususally asked to dip my footware (if i is the same footware used when I am feeding our chickens, which is usually isn't as wellies don't tend to look great with clean jeans)

If/When there was an outbreak of a notifiable disease, then I would crank up measures - the main one being no outsiders visits to my apiaries especially if they came from the control zone, or if they had bees (My reasoning is that someone without bees is unlikely to be a carrier of any bee disease!)

Do I wash hive tools in soda/jeyes fluid - no, not routinely. Apart from varroa, nothing has changed since I started beekeeping and I have visited hundreds of apiaries in the past 19 years or so. I am also lucky that I have never had an incidence of AFB/EFB and this is something I check for and have been trained to check for too.

I think sometimes one can over egg the issue.....however if you have breeding livestock, especially some that may be more suseptible to disease (as they are clear of pathogens) then one could reasonably expect a higher level of bio security.

regards

S

 

[hedgerow pete]

thank you rooftops and somerford for you less than impressive comments , so as ever lets us start again from the begining

roof tops, as stated before several times, try the search button, my bees are varroa free and have been since i have got them , i have used several differant meathods to reduce NOT REMOVE reduce varroa in other hives to the point that it is physicly posible to tweezer the last few this also means that you have to remove all wax from the hive several times to break the breeding cycles, blah blah

massive honey crop, AS STATED BEFORE , try having cancer this winter and spring and chemo, then when you have upset the wife so much you can sit in your bee shed and inbetwen filling buckets, you can sit there all day and mess with the bee's, then you can feed them on every thrid rainy day only enough to keep them going and after all of that you can loose your job for having to much time off work, blah blah blah

MY BEE'S DO SWARM, they are bee's and there fore they will always swarm, If you were able to read more than two words before mis quoting me you will find out ( try the search button again) that I requeen my hive every 24 to 30 months removing the queen that COULD swarm with a fresh queen that will not, blah blah b;ah , queen breeding , blah blah

next

Somerford I have used my bee's varroa free hygene as an example of thier owners bio hygene standards, they are also free of all known to me bee dieseases and infections and i wish to keep it that waynot just varroa we are talking about EFB and AFB for starters .

Thanks for the update on the chicken hygene issues i will imform jermima the chicken what to ask next time someone comes up, again you completey missed the point this thread was designed to get people to state thier bio security measures,then if any so other members of this forum can use these ideas as a base to there own bio standards, not a slag hedge row off thread AGAIN

there are many many ways to protect my bees for infections of all sorts so why is it not possible to disscuss them here on the forum and by doing so helping others, why do you see the point in a them and us battle.

so for my security methods lets just restate the facts from the up stair messages

all my hives and equipment were stolen several years ago so i built a shed to stop that happening again, I have never suffered from a transfered infection AFB EFb etc etc and i dont want to there fore dont come to me with dirty anything , to prevent i supply my own to be safe , a nuc in todays money is at lest £100 i have 48 in a field out of sight plus 4 at the shed that is a cost of £4,800 plus frames and boxes,( we have just spent over a £1,000 in frames alone so lets call it a rough £6,000 for those 48 hives and that is money i can not afford to loose ( why i invested in bee's???) so i have a £500 pound security system watching them AGAIN TRY THERE SEARCH BUTTON

so if everyone has finished with the sarcastic remarks and get back to helping other bees to make an informed decision about where or not they need to start to inplement some ideas

 

[Bcrazy]

Hi HP
Please correct me if I am wrong but you mentioned;

that I requeen my hive every 24 to 30 months removing the queen that COULD swarm with a fresh queen that will not, blah blah b;ah , queen breeding , blah blah

It's my understanding that the queen does not initiate the swarming of bees. The workers decide when to swarm and the queen will follow. There is probably a better chance of them not swarming with a new queen and on saying that the new queen is no guarantee the colony will not swarm.

Anyway when are you going to let us all know how you got rid of the Varroa mite?

Just had a thought about Nosema and Acarine. Are your bees free from these problems?

Regards;

 

[hedgerow pete]

a very valid point bcrazy, I have always found that a younger queen will swarm less than an older queen so by removing the queen wat before any form or sight of swarming is due they just carry on as normal, and so they dont swarm, the trick is to not wait for the swarm impluse before acting on it as i dont quuens are changed way before the swarm season just in case of that, I still have to do the usual weekly swarm inspections to just make sure

 

[Somerford]

next

Somerford I have used my bee's varroa free hygene as an example of thier owners bio hygene standards, they are also free of all known to me bee dieseases and infections and i wish to keep it that waynot just varroa we are talking about EFB and AFB for starters .

Thanks for the update on the chicken hygene issues i will imform jermima the chicken what to ask next time someone comes up, again you completey missed the point this thread was designed to get people to state thier bio security measures,then if any so other members of this forum can use these ideas as a base to there own bio standards, not a slag hedge row off thread AGAIN

there are many many ways to protect my bees for infections of all sorts so why is it not possible to disscuss them here on the forum and by doing so helping others, why do you see the point in a them and us battle.

so for my security methods lets just restate the facts from the up stair messages

all my hives and equipment were stolen several years ago so i built a shed to stop that happening again, I have never suffered from a transfered infection AFB EFb etc etc and i dont want to there fore dont come to me with dirty anything , to prevent i supply my own to be safe , a nuc in todays money is at lest £100 i have 48 in a field out of sight plus 4 at the shed that is a cost of £4,800 plus frames and boxes,( we have just spent over a £1,000 in frames alone so lets call it a rough £6,000 for those 48 hives and that is money i can not afford to loose ( why i invested in bee's???) so i have a £500 pound security system watching them AGAIN TRY THERE SEARCH BUTTON

so if everyone has finished with the sarcastic remarks and get back to helping other bees to make an informed decision about where or not they need to start to inplement some ideas

Pete, in all honesty, I think you are being a little over sensitive - I was under the impression you wanted to know what other beekeepers did re.bio security, and I stated my process. I also compared vs yours and also stated that I would accept someone elses methods if I was visiting their hives. I didn't realise we were also discussing 'security' of hives too now.

My bees are also free of AFB, EFB and other viruses....they are also 99% clear of varroa based on the mite drops in the past few weeks.I would never claim they were 100% free at any time as I personally believe this not to be possible considering we have total varroa saturation in the UK.

I don't believe my remarks were sarcastic in any way, and I would welcome other views on this.


I would also add that I mentioned the farming aspect as I believe there are similarities to what we are discussing and I used it as a comparison.

Hope this clears the air - differing views create interest and diversity and development !

regards

S

 

[hedgerow pete]

using the power of mathamatics it is so easy to prove that there can be a completley free varroa hive the old adage of being 99.99% that alone means the someone some where is free, now just working on your own bee hives, by using a single treatment has not produced your results i take it that you have used several meathods to get where you are?? I used to use at least four or five at times, now lets see if we can in thearoy get you completly varroa free by the weekend, in theroy you would have an over wintering sized nest say 5,000 bees, just for easy and simplisity lets say 10,000 bees and lets say we have a varroa might drop that would be say roughly 90% dropping that means you are now holding a hive that has 9,000 varroa free bees and 1,000 dirty ones, so what I have done on several hives and it is sad and very extreme but just play it out , 1,000 dirty bees, if we now remove the hive to the side of the stand i used two seperate places in the bee shed, light gennerator a magifying lens and other junk, so any way new bee hive filled with fresh plain foundation and one found queen all i did was link the two hives with a small length of clear plastic hose pipe with a small notch cut in it small enough for a bee to escape but only if i moved my finger in front of the notch is a small hole to stuff a match stick in to block it and then all you do is get the girls to walk along the hose pipe and you pick the dirty ones of, just dont forget to have a mirror under the pipe to check for under mites, it took me a whole day 10 hours to do it but it did work and the bee hive is then VARROA FREE

can i also point out two massive facts that everyone blindly misses that
NOT EVERY HIVE IN THE WHOLE WORLD IS INFECTED WITH VARRO AND THERE FORE VARROA FREE MITES EXIST

THE LAW OF DARWIN SUGGESTS THAT THERE ARE SOME WHERE IN THE BEE KINGDOM A VARROA MITE RESISTANT BEE

both of these ideas point towards the simpler idea that someone some where with a lot of time on thier hands and far bit of breeding knowledge could produce both, ( re brother adam) so who is up for a life time of breeding to perfect the next super bee

heres a massive hedgerow state ment that will cause erouptions,

I DO BELIEVE THAT A VARROA FREE HIVE CAN BE PRODUCED AND THAT A VARROA FREE BEE DOES EXIST, IT JUST HAS NOT BEEN MARKETED YET

 

[Baggyone]

As varroa do not seem to have the same impact on Apis Ceranea I wish we could get a cross going over and get the best of both worlds. Time for the gm boys to come out.

I'll get my coat.....

 

[hedgerow pete]

dont laugh but there might be some mileage in that idea

 

[Somerford]

I get your method Pete, but surely, the law of averages would suggest that, inspite of your 10 hour session checking each bee, the very next day a stray forager from another hive could easily have re-infected your varroa free hive, so starting the whole process off again (albeit at greatly reduced numbers initially) ?

To paraphrase your last statement...Perhaps a Varroa free Apis Melliffera could exist once bee breeding/selection and genetics (perhaps even GM bees) comes full circle.....maybe in 100 years time...maybe never ?

regards

S

 

[hedgerow pete]

the chance of reinfection does exist I fight it every day with my bees, I am better off with my style of bee as they dont like " johny foriegner" in there bee hives and i dont have yet any flippin carni bee's where i live so we are pretty well of at the momment, as for the varroa resistant bee, or should i say the slightly more resistant than normal bee, as i said it does exist some where in a tree some where is a nice clean colony living the quite life some day someone will find it and market it then it will be known to everyone, sorry but I am a great beliver in darwins theorys and it and they do work very well and mother nature has a brilliant habbit of kicking a know it all human right into touch at times so i realy do belive that every thing is posible

 

[Hombre]

There is at least one carni drone zone not too far from you Peter.