Cbpv

[thenovice]

Have 2 hives with suspected Paralysis Virus. 1 has plenty of hairless bees but is still going strong with a minimum of dead bees on the OMF. the other had hundreds of them piled up on the OMF but has no naked or trembling bees. I added a 14x12 on both of them with foundations to reduce congestion as I read they spread the virus by rubbing against each other. they both have now 4 supers and 2 14x12s.

Is there anything else I can do apart from good apiary hygiene? should I harvest the honey and give back the wet supers to spread them out? supers very heavy but a lot of uncapped frames. Both colonies seem to be doing ok for now but I dread going into winter with them...

 

[dickbowyer]

I have been told that shaking the bees out and allowing them to return to the old frames on the same site having found the queen and reserved her for return is the way to go. It removes the infected bees so reducing viral load.

 

[thenovice]

that sounds like a sound suggestion. I would shake out far enough from any hives so stragglers do not get into other hives?

 

[sjt]

I had this problem in one of my hives earlier in the year.
I had tried giving them lots of extra space which hadn't helped.
As it was very close to 7 other hives, not all of them mine, I was anxious it didn't spread.
I caged the queen and shook all the frames out at a distance having given them a clean hive and frames (apart from a couple of frames of brood) and then replaced the queen. The bees all retuned very quickly.
I thought at first it had solved the problem but a week or so later the bees were showing the same symptoms.
To safeguard the other hives and not having another site to take them to I had to make the decision to destroy the colony.
I sealed them up late evening, enveloped the hive in a large polythene sack and poured in the petrol...awful! (but quick)
I later used a solution of Virkon S to sterilise all components and just to be sure used the blowtorch over everything after rinsing off the Virkon S and drying in the sun.
No problems since.

 

[thenovice]

No problems since.

you'd think so, the colony is no more ;-).

 

[masterBK]

Removing the sick individuals doesn't affect things very much as there will be others within the colony with the virus but not showing any symptoms. In most Viral diseases genetic susceptability of the individual plays a big part in whether the bee shows the signs of the disease or not. Changing the queen changes the genetics and changes the susceptibility so requeen if you can from a queen from a resistant strain.
In the meantime ensure the bees aren't congested

 

[Beefriendly]

so requeen if you can from a queen from a resistant strain.

Do you know of anyone who advertises and sells Cbpv resistant queens?

 

[Finman]

.
Change the queen. Virus, or any bee disease does not go anywhere by shaking. And this is not "better hygiene" issue.

As smart as shake worker layers.

 

[masterBK]

If you have several colonies in an apiary you will soon notice which ones have bees that show the signs of disease and which ones don't. By only breeding from queens whose offspring show no signs of chalk brood, sac brood and CBPV and culling queens whose offspring do show signs,after 5 or more years of doing this you will notice a marked drop in the incidence of these diseases in your colonies. However with open mating you will always get a few Queens you need to cull every year as you would for other traits you don't want

 

[dickbowyer]

http://www.vita-europe.com/blog/chronic-bee-paralysis/ provides some support for doing shake out as I previously described. I treated a hive like this earlier in the week and will report outcome.

 

[SDM]

I had a colony with CBPV earlier this year a d tried the shake out/up as per Chris Neels advice in the bee farmers journal. 3 weeks later they were still dying off and the nearest hive to them also had it. Culled both to save the remainder in the apiary.
All the advice I read said comb could be reused, I destroyed drawn comb but reused some foundation in a nuc that also promptly came down with it. The frames had been without bees for about a month the when reused, so there's at least a degree of persistence with CBPV.
I'd maybe try the shake out again if I thought I'd caught it early, but otherwise I'd cull.

 

[protheroe]

I had some colonies with it and requeening seems to have sorted it out

 

[stilllearning]

So if a colony hasn't got it you breed from that.....but how do you know it's not susceptible and therefore your just making the problem worse. Truth is , no one knows . Weather must play a huge part and as we all know we can't control that. A few years ago I lost a lot of bees through it , got the nbu out and they knew sweet fa contacted other experienced commercial keepers and they didn't know what to do , ended up just letting nature take its course . If the queens were young and full of laying they got over it if they were coming to the end of their laying life the colony wasn't strong enough to requeen then I'm afraid it was curtains.
I still get it and looking back I'm sure it's been around for a long time , my opinion for what it's worth is the lack of feral bees natural selection if you like , those drones floating around sowing their oats.

 

[Fritillary]

I had some colonies with it and requeening seems to have sorted it out

How long ago did you requeen them Protheroe?

I'm certainly starting to wonder about this, thinking about the ones of mine which went down, and also those of nearby beekeepers. Mine have always been 'local mongrels' but these ones were lighter, very laid-back and v prolific (too prolific for the space they were in as well I think) than the others I had, and I think the others I know about were likely to have been from imported queens.

But surely others will have learned this by now, if it works, especially commercial beekeepers, no?

 

[Fritillary]

Have wondered also if thymol i.e. Apiguard treatments might confer any protection too.

 

[Finman]

Have wondered also if thymol i.e. Apiguard treatments might confer any protection too.

Thymol has been used with bees at least 60 years..

 

[Fritillary]

But not all beekeepers use it do they? Some use other treatments.

As an antiviral I suppose a tea tree derived treatment would be more effective, but I guess that doesn't work with varroa, or people might be using that instead of thymol.

 

[Finman]

As an antiviral I suppose a tea tree derived treatment would be more effective, but I guess that doesn't work with varroa, or people might be using that instead of thymol.

Do you have any facts?

 

[thenovice]

How long ago did you requeen them Protheroe?

I'm certainly starting to wonder about this, thinking about the ones of mine which went down, and also those of nearby beekeepers. Mine have always been 'local mongrels' but these ones were lighter, very laid-back and v prolific (too prolific for the space they were in as well I think) than the others I had, and I think the others I know about were likely to have been from imported queens.

But surely others will have learned this by now, if it works, especially commercial beekeepers, no?

As it happens, the 2 colonies affected seem to have these Italian traits as well..

 

[Fritillary]

Finman - Whatever is the point in asking someone for facts, who is not claiming to present them, but is - I would have thought: obviously - wondering aloud about this on a beekeeping forum, in the hope that others might have their own own input or empirical evidence?

Or may know of research?
(For all I know tea tree derived treatments were tried with varroa but were found too toxic for the bees, for instance.)