Chalk Brood. A cure?

[dickndoris]

Hi all

Have a problem with one of my colonies in that it is suffering pretty bad now with chalk brood. 7 days and the floor is covered with little white hard mummies. It seems there is no cure from what I can read apart from replacing the queen from a non affected colony? They have just replaced the old queen themselves in the past week as the old queen disappeared. This swarm came out of a compost bin in a terrible state last year and looked like they were doing well until recently.
They came out of a wooden nuc into a 14x12 poly hive. Maybe its the extra warmth in the poly that has made the fungus increase that causes chalk brood?

I always find, no, impossible to nip a queen:-(

Any help greatly appreciated.
Rich

 

[VEG]

If they have just replaced the queen then leave them to it and see how the chalkbrood looks after a while.

 

[BBG]

You have the OMF open for plenty of ventilation?

 

[Travelator]

I thought the "replace the queen" advice was based on the observation that some strains of bee are more resistant to chalk brood and that this trait is inherited. (In other words, it's not the case that the queen herself has become "infected" with chalk brood - it's that her genes are bad)

So, replacing the old queen with one of her own daughters might improve matters very slightly (depending on the father's genes), but you would be much better off replacing her with a queen from stock that has a good history of not succumbing to chalk brood.

 

[beestie]

You can get something called BeeVital; comes in bottles or sachets. I tried it using the sachets with one hive last year and it seemed to work, but it might just be that the colony had settled down anyway.

I'm not saying whether or not it's snakeoil, but it certainly didn't do any harm, although others in the forum would be very sceptical.

Look it up on t'internet and you should find some suppliers...Good Luck!

 

[oliver90owner]

but it certainly didn't do any harm,

Only to your pocket, if it didn't do any good!

 

[Bates]

You can get something called BeeVital; comes in bottles or sachets.

Never seen this work with a previous employer. The only way we got rid of chalk was to replace the queens.

Luckily all the stock we run now has never had a trace of chalk.

 

[Poly Hive]

Requeen with another strain of bee.

Poly being drier is less likely to support it not more.

PH

 

[Polyanwood]

I was interested to read on here about a queen breeder not bothering to clean out mating nucs between queens because he wanted the new queens to be exposed to chalkbrood, because with each new queen he could then tell whether her offspring had resistant traits.