EFB in my area

[VEG]

Had an e mail through from beebase saying there is EFB within 5km of my apiary.

 

[susbees]

Happy New Season. Not.

 

[mandabow]

Had an e mail through from beebase saying there is EFB within 5km of my apiary.

sorry to hear that VEG

i don't know what the official line is on this, but personally i would kill all drone from now on in unless you need them for breeding, put up wax moth traps

and not rear any virgin queens to try and minimise cross contaminations from hives around you to flower sharing only. i e no direct bee:bee or bee:moth:bee contact

after a few months when it will have killed off the local ferral colonies that were infected risks wont be so high. unless you ahve local beeks that don't check their hives

Edited to add, thanks for reminding me to join beebase!

 

[VEG]

I have my suspicions that it is not from the wild but a beek in the area

 

[mandabow]

I have my suspicions that it is not from the wild but a beek in the area

indeed.. no way beebase would know if in wild popn.. but that doesn't mean it hasn't already spread to them (wild ones).

the beekeper will have been told to kill the hive, or if not too bad will ahve been given medication, some kind of antibiotics if i remeber right (i may be sooo wrong here!) problem is it may well have already spread into any wild population (if there is one) where it will go unchecked.. the hive in the area that has been inspected and treated won't be infectious a lot sooner (by cull or cure) wheras any wild, or poorly tended bees that have since become infected may struggle along with it for some time before it gets the better of them. in the meantime the risk of infection is high.

 

[Chris B]

I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it. We have a local who has EFB every few years but it's never crossed over to anyone else's bees. He's not in our BKA. Conclusion: it's spread mostly by beekeepers not bees.

 

[Chris B]

indeed.. no way beebase would know if in wild popn.. but that doesn't mean it hasn't already spread to them (wild ones).

the beekeper will have been told to kill the hive, or if not too bad will ahve been given medication, some kind of antibiotics if i remeber right (i may be sooo wrong here!) problem is it may well have already spread into any wild population (if there is one) where it will go unchecked.. the hive in the area that has been inspected and treated won't be infectious a lot sooner (by cull or cure) wheras any wild, or poorly tended bees that have since become infected may struggle along with it for some time before it gets the better of them. in the meantime the risk of infection is high.

Shook swarm is the standard approach. Burn frames and scorch the kit.

If a wild colony succumbs to EFB/AFB then our friend the wax moth does us a favour by destroying everything that harbours disease. They do have a purpose.

 

[gavin]

I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it. We have a local who has EFB every few years but it's never crossed over to anyone else's bees. He's not in our BKA. Conclusion: it's spread mostly by beekeepers not bees.

Completely agree. Here we had an outbreak discovered two summers back. It had spread among local bee farmers' stocks (250 colonies officially recorded, many more probably affected) but there has been not one case known in the hobby beekeepers sharing the area. I'm not pointing fingers at certain sectors (AFB was worse in hobby beekeepers for example) but just trying to say that a few years into a major epidemic it hadn't spread between many beekeeper, just a few. In my case there was an EFB-infected apiary 2 km away and my bees were fine.

G.