EFB, distances and amount of forage

[meidel]

I didn't think you had EFB, I thought you suspected your friend had?

So are you saying both you and your friend have EFB?

Chris

My friend and I both suspect her bees have EFB.

I think (miss pessimist of the year) that my apiary is going to get EFB soon and if we don't our bees must be jolly lucky! This is because of the close proximity of all the EFB colonies to ourselves.

 

[meidel]

Having read polyanwood's post I now feel fairly re-assured and less pessimistic - we do try and keep our colonies large - by which I mean at least 6 frames of BIAS and if they fall under that we try and keep an eye on that and boost the laying rate by donating frames from clean disease free colonies to each other. Of course in the peak of the season, oneof my colonies was brood free for a good 6 weeks but it was a combination of 2 colonies of bees so there had been upwards of 60000 bees for a while.

When my OH and I went to a disease workshop we also visited an apiary which had had a standstill order imposed but at that inspection, the sanction was lifted. All the same, we both came home and scrubbed and sterilised everything to the nth degree. Since then, our bee mentor had come down and checked that 3 of the colonies in our apiary was alright.

And I think I can more or less tell a healthy colony from an unhealthy one and so far everyone on the apiary seems alright, bees calm as usual and fingers crossed it stays like that.

But as I said what about when there's a dearth of forage and bees go further afield and encounter nasties??

 

[Bee-Key-Pur]

.

EFB is not a problem. When you get a queen from EFB RESISTANT STOCK, you have nothing to worry about.

I wonder why the British keep those bees which do not stand the disease. Many are willing to breed mite resistant bees but Why you do not use EFB resistant bees? Is it so nice to burn hives or what is the reason?

How exactly do you tell which Queens are resistant to EFB and which ones are not, surely they either get EFB or don’t and I wouldn’t think anyone is likely to breed from a Queen that has been effected, but then I may be wrong about that!!!

 

[Chris Luck]

I think the point that is being missed is that a decent colony should get over it, simple as that, not "resistance" as such, just the ability to overcome.

I like strong bees that hopefully sort things out via survival of the fittest.

AFB would clearly be an exception to that.

Chris

 

[Finman]

.
You British you have not even capacity to learn. You run like bottle arse baboons with your national things.

.if your read what other countries say about EFB, yuo would do thing in another way. But no. Soda and wash beekeeping suite. Oh boy.

 

[Finman]

How exactly do you tell which Queens are resistant to EFB and which ones are not, surely they either get EFB or don’t and I wouldn’t think anyone is likely to breed from a Queen that has been effected, but then I may be wrong about that!!!

and you have afford to be another opinion when I tell to you how to manage the problem.
One is sure, don't use your own queens. Bye a one which is far from district. Then if does not work bye a second queen as long as you get a resistant queen. This way I got ridd off chalk brood.

 

[Finman]

AFB would clearly be an exception to that.

Chris

AFB is difficult disease and bees have not much resistancy against that. If you read legistation against diseases, AFB is a reason to restrict transporting and many other things.
But how much EFB has been mentioned in legistation. Not many. In most countries it is not a problem.
.

 

[DanBee]

I have heard beekeepers say that EFB exists at very low levels in most colonies. Do people think this is true?

Yes, it is a stress diseases, and the unusually widespread EFB outbreaks this year are the result of the stressful winter and spring.

I do believe that the causative organism is reasonably widespread, although in un-stressed colonies any expression as disease is small scale (no pun intended) and quickly mopped up by the house bees.

Prof Len Heath (he of chalkbrood fame) was called as an expert witness in the early 1980's in a case regarding colonies which had been sold and then rapidly succumbed to EFB; his advice was "if you look hard enough, you can find EFB in any colony", based upon trying to determine if there was a pattern to the disease outbreak.

 

[meidel]

.
You British you have not even capacity to learn. You run like bottle arse baboons with your national things.

.if your read what other countries say about EFB, yuo would do thing in another way. But no. Soda and wash beekeeping suite. Oh boy.

Well I do want to learn - so tell me besides buying a queen from the nether lands and forgetting about soda and washing my bee suites [sic], is there anything else one should do?

The subtext I am getting is this - keep strong colonies - give them as little stress as possible - is that the key minus all the ridicule?

 

[Chris Luck]

The logical thing to do I would think is to stay as you are and continue with keeping your kit clean, after all you don't actually have a problem with your bees, you just appear a tad over anxious and you don't want that stressing your bees. Personally I avoid opening my hives unless it's really necessary but that falls foul of the new order.

Chris

 

[meidel]

At the assoc apiary, as it's a learning apiary we open hives a shocking number of often! But they do have good hygiene practice and the apiary manager is well sussed and the bees are always calm (apart from stressful times like Q-ness)

I find I need to keep a balance as regards checking for swarm cells and build up - so with the larger colonies we tend to inspect every week but with the smaller ones, we can obviously inspect quicker and hopefully stress them out less. Because they're so even tempered we rarely smoke them - at least 3 of us hardly ever use smoke - the other chap is newer and likes the reassurance of doing things "by the book". But that's fine, they're his bees and that's the way most other beeks do things anyway.

 

[Bee-Key-Pur]

The logical thing to do I would think is to stay as you are and continue with keeping your kit clean, after all you don't actually have a problem with your bees, you just appear a tad over anxious and you don't want that stressing your bees. Personally I avoid opening my hives unless it's really necessary but that falls foul of the new order.

Chris

Check that there isn't some factor stressing them, ie, low on stores, wasp problems, etc... and as Chris Luck said, keep your hive gear and wear clean, be observant with your inspections, look at the brood for condition, not just trying to spot the queen or queen cells...

 

[meidel]

Check that there isn't some factor stressing them, ie, low on stores, wasp problems, etc... and as Chris Luck said, keep your hive gear and wear clean, be observant with your inspections, look at the brood for condition, not just trying to spot the queen or queen cells...

Cheers for that - we're more vigilant than ever now - the others in the apiary have been alerted and today I think everyone made an effort to check the brood conditions were normal when they inspected plus keeping their equipment clean between colonies.

We're fortunate that we're on an allotment so that there's still plenty for the bees to forage at home - I saw bees on lobelia, mint, echinops, persicaria, sunflowers, pompom dahlias (!!), artichokes, bolted onions, lavender, sage, thyme, marjoram, chives. Sadly the nearby HB have been pulled up by the allotment police but there's HB further along the brook behind the allotment. There's also fireweed on the golf course periphery - but that's very near another suspected case of EFB ...

 

[mbc]

and you have afford to be another opinion when I tell to you how to manage the problem.
One is sure, don't use your own queens. Bye a one which is far from district. Then if does not work bye a second queen as long as you get a resistant queen. This way I got ridd off chalk brood.

Much as we'd like to listen to your advice, there is the small matter of staying within the law, EFB is a notifiable desease in the uk, this means if a beekeeper even suspects he/she may have EFB then they are legaly required to notify the relevant authorities.
We do have baffling rules though, why shook swarm EFB and not AFB ?

 

[meidel]

Much as we'd like to listen to your advice, there is the small matter of staying within the law, EFB is a notifiable desease in the uk, this means if a beekeeper even suspects he/she may have EFB then they are legaly required to notify the relevant authorities.
We do have baffling rules though, why shook swarm EFB and not AFB ?

I think it has something to do with how they are passed on - EFB is a brood disease - passed on by brood food and not by the bee themselves so shook swarm can eliminate problem whereas AFB is a spore that lives on the mouthparts of the bees themselves and are passed on by adult bees although affecting the brood most detrimentally

 

[mbc]

I think it has something to do with how they are passed on - EFB is a brood disease - passed on by brood food and not by the bee themselves so shook swarm can eliminate problem whereas AFB is a spore that lives on the mouthparts of the bees themselves and are passed on by adult bees although affecting the brood most detrimentally

The biggest problem with AFB is that one of its effects is to leave a sticky mess that the bees physically struggle to get rid of once its in the combs, but all the mess is left behind with a shook swarm. EFB lives in the guts of bees so is less likely to be left behind by a shook swarm.
This http://pub.epsilon.slu.se/1053/1/Avhandling.pdf paper supports how effective swarming can be at curing bees of AFB.

 

[Finman]

Much as we'd like to listen to your advice, there is the small matter of staying within the law, EFB is a notifiable desease in the uk, this means if a beekeeper even suspects he/she may have EFB then they are legaly required to notify the relevant authorities.
We do have baffling rules though, why shook swarm EFB and not AFB ?

read more beekeeping books and less law books.

What I have looked TV series, British villages are full of criminals and self made detectives. I am sure that police has no time to catch beekeepers when they hunt village murderers.

.

 

[meidel]

The biggest problem with AFB is that one of its effects is to leave a sticky mess that the bees physically struggle to get rid of once its in the combs, but all the mess is left behind with a shook swarm. EFB lives in the guts of bees so is less likely to be left behind by a shook swarm.
This http://pub.epsilon.slu.se/1053/1/Avhandling.pdf paper supports how effective swarming can be at curing bees of AFB.

That's quite an interesting paper altogether but I think this bit from the paper itself might answer your question of why we in the UK don't advocate shook swarming AFB:

Although shaking AFB infected hives is an effective control method, there are also good arguments to continue stamping out of clinically diseased colonies where this method is used. In Sweden, this system has dramatically diminished the rate of clinically diseased colonies since applied in 1974 (Anon., 2005). Data from New Zealand also show that stamping out of clinically diseased colonies has decreased the number of colonies that become infected each year (Goodwin & Van Eaton, 1999). In Denmark, where shaking of AFB-diseased colonies is allowed, the prevalence of AFB is higher than in Sweden (Hansen, 1992).

edited to add: As for EFB - it lives in the guts of larvae and starves the larvae - it's passed on when the bees feed infected brood food to their larvae - so I believe the thinking behind shook swarming EFB colonies is to eliminate the infected larvae

 

[Finman]

.
Situation in Sweden and in NZ Is very different. NZ has in nature swarms which carry disease. When professional hives robb weak hives, they get disease. That is the way it goes in Australia.

Shaking bees in Denmark and in Germany has been a great succes and disease level has dropped.
Secret weapon is that you make laboratory tests from honey and reviele contamination before visible signs of Afb appear.

I thas been researched in Sweden that swarm and shook swarm does not move disease with it.

 

[Finman]

.
When I have compared AFB levels in UK and in other countries, figures in UK are good.